Left Hand of the Law Page 2

  Confused, still dazed, he returned to consciousness, aware of a searing pain that seemed to clutch his entire body. Gradually, he began to remember the events that took place before his brain blacked out, and he tried to get up on his feet, but he could not move his arms or legs. Unable to see clearly in the darkness of the barn, he started to call for help, but immediately started choking as soon as he drew breath to shout. Smoke! He realized then that his barn was on fire and he was helpless to move because he was tied down. As he struggled against his bonds, he was struck with devastating pain in his chest that forced him to lie back and surrender to his obvious fate. In a matter of moments, he could feel the flames as they swept through the barn, closer to him, pushing a wave of black smoke to sweep over him. Calling on all the force he could summon, he strained against the ropes that held him, but his bonds were too secure, and he knew that in a very few minutes he would be helpless to save himself. He thought of his wife and son, and prayed that Mary Ellen had somehow escaped the evil deed that had claimed Danny and him. He lay back then to wait for the end.

  As the smoke began to fill his lungs, he began to slip away from consciousness again with the smoky image of a dark form hovering over him. Then suddenly, he felt his body being jerked and dragged over the hard dirt floor of the burning barn. The last sensation he felt before drifting away from reality altogether was a rush of cool air in his lungs.

  Finally, he woke again, this time to a world of stinging pain, but the choking smoke was gone from his lungs. He heard a voice then. “Damn, partner, I wasn’t sure you were gonna make it.” Though his vision seemed hazy, he was able to recognize Jim White Feather, his closest neighbor.

  He blinked several times in an effort to clear his vision before realizing that his head was bandaged with one eye completely covered. “Jim?” he questioned, confused. Then, in a moment, he remembered and tried to get up. “Mary Ellen!” he cried, but the pain in his chest caused him to drop back on the bed.

  “You’ve got to lie back and keep the strain off your chest,” Jim said, “and let them wounds heal.”

  “Jim!” Ben pleaded. “Mary Ellen, Danny!”

  Jim shook his head sadly. “They’re gone, Ben—both dead. I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time to help either one of ’em. But they’re gone and I was almost too late to get you out of that barn.”

  The memory of that most horrible moment in his life returned as details came rushing back to him. He saw Danny lying lifeless in his arms. The image caused an agonized moan to slip from his mouth. He remembered his panic to get to Mary Ellen, and the great loss struck him like an arrow in his heart. Mary Ellen was part of him. He could not live without her. The gentle moan increased in intensity until he roared out his sorrow. Standing beside her husband, Little Swan took a step backward, afraid Jim’s friend was going to explode uncontrollably.

  Feeling exhausted from the violent eruption deep inside him, Ben fell back on the bed again, drained of the will to live. Then he remembered Eli Gentry and the brief flash of the sword seconds before everything went blank in his mind. He reached up to feel the bandages on his head, and in a voice suddenly calm, he asked, “My eye?”

  Relieved to see Ben calmed down again, Jim answered, “You got a pretty bad wound across your face—cut to the bone across your forehead. Little Swan stitched it up as best she could, but your eye’s all right. She just had to cover it when she wrapped them bandages around your head.” That still didn’t explain the severe pain Ben experienced in his chest, and he strained then to look down at it. Understanding, Jim continued. “That feller shot you. Thought he’d finish you off, I reckon. Little Swan tried to dig the bullet out, but she couldn’t. It’s lodged in there against somethin’, and she was afraid she was gonna kill you if she kept at it.”

  “Where’s Mary Ellen?” Ben asked, his emotions still under control.

  Misunderstanding, Jim was quick to repeat, “Mary Ellen’s dead, Danny, too.”

  “I know,” Ben replied. “Where are their bodies?”

  Worried that Ben might become violently stricken with grief again, Jim explained, “They’re buried, Ben, already in the ground. You wouldn’ta wanted to see them like that, so I buried ’em right away, just as soon as the fire died out.” When Ben seemed to accept that without protest, Jim was at once relieved, for both bodies had been burned beyond recognition, and would only have created lasting memories of his family that might haunt him forever. Now that Ben appeared to have his emotions under control, Jim was anxious to ask the question that had been on his mind from the beginning. “Who did this thing to you, Ben?”

  “Eli Gentry,” Ben answered, his voice soft and calm.

  The answer surprised him. “The deputy sheriff from over in Crooked Fork?” Ben slowly nodded. “Damn,” Jim swore. “You sure that’s who it was?” It was hard to believe a lawman had been responsible for the massacre.

  “It was him,” Ben confirmed. Then he went on to tell Jim that the deputy had eaten supper with him and his family, and spent the night in the barn. Jim knew without asking that his friend had found a new incentive to live, if only for one purpose. Had he been able to read Ben’s thoughts, he would have seen that his friend wished only to live long enough to avenge his family.

  After hearing as much of the details as Ben could remember before turning to be met with a sawed-off sword in his face, Jim could make a pretty accurate guess about the rest. “I was followin’ a little herd of antelope all the way up from Dry Creek, tryin’ to get close enough to get a shot at one of ’em. I wasn’t but about two or more miles from your place when I saw the smoke. I studied on it for a while, but decided it was too much smoke for you to be burnin’ hedgerows or somethin’, so I figured I’d better take a closer look. When I got to your place, the whole house was in flames, just about gone, and the barn was goin’ pretty steady. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it went up like the house. I didn’t see nobody around—no livestock, either. The thought that first struck me was that you’d got sick and tired of tryin’ to grow somethin’ in this soil and you packed up, burned the place down, and left. I don’t know what gave me the notion to look in the front of the barn before it caught, but it’s a good thing I did. I saw you, tied to a post, and the fire wasn’t far away from you already. When I was dragging you out, I looked back and thought I saw a body—small, had to be Danny—lying in a big circle of fire. Wasn’t no way I could get to him, but he wasn’t movin’, so I figured I was too late, anyway.”

  Ben listened to Jim’s accounting of the massacre in thoughtful silence, trying to answer all the questions in his mind while struggling to hold his emotions in check. He almost sobbed when he pictured his son, innocent little six-year-old Danny, and the horror that had awaited him in the barn. Gentry had slit the boy’s throat, then waited for Ben to come looking for him. A bullet would have been easier, but Gentry likely didn’t want Mary Ellen to hear the shot in the house and react in time to defend herself. He tried not to think about the circumstances of Mary Ellen’s death, knowing it would drive him insane if he allowed his mind to dwell on it. Gentry had left him tied to the post to burn up in the barn. He must have come back afterward to finish him off with a bullet. Why he hadn’t made sure he was dead was something of a mystery. Maybe the fire had been getting too close and he’d decided to get out of there before the roof caved in. Maybe because Ben hadn’t moved when shot, Gentry had figured he was already dead. Who knows? he thought. But that was the mistake that sealed Eli Gentry’s death warrant.

  His healing was slow at first. The wound in Ben’s chest did not seem inclined to improve. The time spent lying in a corner of Jim White Feather’s log cabin was a grinding hell, filled with dreams of his wife and child and their horrible suffering, and he felt responsibility for their deaths. How could I have seen it coming? He asked the question a thousand times, unable to discard the guilt he felt. He should have reacted immediately when he found Danny’s body. Maybe if he had, if he had been quicker, he might h
ave at least prevented Mary Ellen’s death. Finally, he decided that he had wallowed in self-pity long enough and it was time to heal physically in order to avenge his family’s death. No amount of regret for his slow actions was going to bring them back. Eager to regain his strength, he improved rapidly from that point, causing Jim to remark, “We was worried about you for a time there. Looked to me like I was gonna have to dig another grave.” A few days after that, Ben got up from the bed, and in three weeks he felt fit enough to pronounce himself ready to leave their care.

  “What are you aimin’ to do?” Jim asked as he helped Ben saddle the horse he loaned him.

  “The same thing you would do, I reckon,” Ben answered. “But first, there’s a lot I have to do before I pay a visit to the deputy sheriff. I’m headin’ back to see what’s left of my place. I guess Gentry ran off with all my stock, but I’ll return your horse and saddle as soon as I can get my own. I’ve got money from the two cattle drives I brought up from Texas. I was savin’ it to buy five hundred acres next to my land.” He gave Jim a sorrowful glance. “I ain’t got no use for that land now. But if nobody’s found where I buried that money, I reckon I’ll be using it to buy a horse and a saddle.” He hesitated for a moment, thinking to himself before adding, “And a rifle and some clothes, and everythin’ else I need, plus some for you and Little Swan for all the grub I ate.”

  “You don’t owe us nothin’,” Jim said. “You know that.”

  Little Swan walked out of the cabin to join them. “When you coming back? You not well yet.” She reached up and touched the long scar that extended from his hairline, across his brow and the bridge of his nose. “It still pink, but look pretty good.”

  Ben chuckled. He knew what it looked like, and it wasn’t pretty. “Yeah, it looks fine. You did a good job.” He stepped up in the saddle then. “I’ll be back before dark if you’re sure you ain’t ready to kick me out.”

  “Hell,” Jim snorted, “you know you’re welcome here. You want me to ride over with you?”

  “No. I’ll be all right. Besides, you’ve got your own work to do. That plowin’ ain’t gonna get done by itself.”

  Jim and his wife stood watching Ben as he rode out of the yard. When he had disappeared from their view, beyond the line of cottonwoods, Jim looked at Little Swan and shook his head, concerned. He feared that his friend was setting himself up for a world of trouble if he went after Eli Gentry. He would have tried to persuade Ben to go directly to Sheriff Creed and let the law take care of Gentry, but he knew it would have been a useless endeavor. In the time he had known Ben Cutler, Jim had found him to be a man of strong but gentle disposition. Men like Eli Gentry ran roughshod over men like Ben. “I’ve got to get to work,” he finally announced to Little Swan, and started toward the barn. He gave Ben one last thought. Every man has a path to walk. It’s not for me to question the wisdom of it.

  Even though he had tried to prepare himself for the worst, his insides were suddenly paralyzed by an icy grip on his spine at first sight of his home. He paused on the ridge above the ruins of his barn to give himself time to control his emotions before nudging Jim’s horse to descend into the yard. Jim White Feather had been right. There was nothing left but a pile of charred timbers, leaving two great black circles where once his house and barn had stood. Thoughts of Mary Ellen, and what torture she might have suffered, threatened to send him into a wave of hopeless despair, and he fought hard to resist it. Dismounting, he walked into the midst of the burned rubble that had been his and Mary Ellen’s dream. Already, weeds were pushing their heads up through the blackened earth where his parlor had been. He stirred through the ashes with the toe of his boot, searching for anything that might have survived. Broken dishes, scorched cups, pieces of sooty rags, and all that remained of their clothes were strewn about. Footprints he found bore evidence that someone had been there before him. Judging by the prints and the number, he guessed a hunting party of Indians was the likely answer. Turning toward the kitchen, he saw the only thing that might have survived the fire, the iron stove. But in keeping with his bad luck, it was destroyed, broken by the heavy ridge pole that had collapsed upon it.

  There was nothing to salvage from his home, so he walked over to the ruins of the barn. He didn’t spend much time there, only long enough to search for any tools that might have survived. Anything with a wooden handle bore signs of the fire’s intensity. Some of his tools were missing, giving further evidence of prior visitors. Spotting a handleless shovel lying near the tack room, he picked it up and carried it with him. Deciding then that there was nothing to keep him longer in this melancholy place, he walked halfway up the ridge where he had cleared off a family cemetery. This was where Jim had buried his wife and son, alongside a small grave that he had dug soon after he settled his family there. It was marked with a carved board that read SHEP—MAN’S BEST FRIEND—APRIL 18, 1877.

  He stood over the two fresh graves for a long while. Jim hadn’t left stones or anything to mark them, and Ben decided that he’d prefer to leave them that way. He had never been a praying man, but he asked the Lord to take care of his wife and child, and he apologized for being angry with Him for the evil that had befallen them. When he had finished, he moved over to stand before the smallest grave and studied it for a few minutes. Then he dropped to his knees and with the piece of shovel he had found in the barn, began to dig up the grave. It was not easy, for the ground had packed hard over the last couple of years, but he continued to work at it until, finally, he uncovered the rusty metal container that held the money he had saved to buy land. It was more than enough to outfit him with a horse and weapons, and he would acquire what he needed at Lon Bridges’ trading post on the Grand River in Indian Territory.

  Finished with his grim task, he picked up the board that had marked the fake grave and the rusty container, then walked back down to the ruins of his home, where he tossed them into the middle of the charred timbers.

  Chapter 2

  “I’m pretty sure they all perished,” Eli Gentry replied in answer to the sheriff’s question. “All I know is there wasn’t no sign of any of ’em when I rode by there, and there was three graves up on the side of the ridge. Ain’t much doubt who done it. Some of them Injuns slipped over there from the Nations, I expect.” His story was not a total lie, for when he had ridden back two days later the bodies had been removed and there were three graves on the ridge. Someone had happened upon the scene right after he had left.

  It had been several weeks since Gentry reported the attack, and the sheriff rode over to look for signs that might tell him if there was any possibility for more Indian raids to threaten his town. What he found was consistent with what Gentry had said. The only thing that puzzled him was the fact that one of the graves, the smallest one, had been desecrated, and the body apparently removed. He assumed that the child had been buried there, but who would have dug up the kid’s body? He might have blamed it on a coyote or wolf, but he doubted that either could have used the shovel blade found beside the grave. Possibly Eli was correct in blaming Indians, although there were really no other signs that would confirm it. This was the second such raid on a remote farm in the last month. Both had been discovered by Gentry, not surprising to Jubal since Eli was more of a rakehell and more inclined to range farther from town than his other deputy, Bob Rice.

  Jubal was reluctant to send for help from the army, since there had been no trouble from either the Osage or the Cherokees for quite some time, but he supposed that he should at least report the two recent raids. “I reckon we’d best send word to Fort Gibson and let ’em know what we’ve found up here.”

  Eli hadn’t really thought things through to that possibility. His thinking had been to knock off a farm here and there once in a while and blame it on the Indians. Having a detachment of soldiers patrolling the country was definitely not to his advantage. “I don’t know, Jubal,” he was quick to reply. “It might be the wrong thing to get a bunch of soldiers comin’ in here to tell
us how to run our business. I just said it looked like somethin’ an Injun would do. More likely, it was an outlaw that struck that farm, and he’s probably long gone now. We don’t know where that Cutler feller came from, anyway. I’ve heared some talk that he mighta made some enemies down in Texas. A man like that mighta had somebody lookin’ to square things with him.” He paused when it appeared that Jubal was giving his words some consideration. “Too bad about that wife of his, though. She was a real looker.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the sheriff allowed. “Might be best to wait for a while to see if there’s any more trouble.” He wagged a finger at his deputy then. “You see that you stick close to town. If I need you in a hurry, I don’t wanna have to go lookin’ for you.”

  “Whatever you say, Jubal. You’re the boss.” Pleased to have diverted Jubal from sending for the army, he got up from the chair beside the sheriff’s desk and stretched. “I think I’ll go on over to Thelma’s now and get me some supper.”

  Thelma White managed the dining room in the Crooked Fork Hotel, an establishment owned by her husband, Harry. Under an arrangement with Jubal Creed, Harry had agreed to serve the sheriff and his deputies one free meal a day. Jubal and Bob Rice were fine with Thelma, but she was never pleased to see Eli walk in the door. She just didn’t like the man, in particular his habit of undressing every woman in the place with his eyes. Her only waitress, Rosie MacDonald, was especially vulnerable to his malicious scrutiny as she walked back and forth from the kitchen, carrying bowls and pitchers to the tables. Depending upon his mood, Eli would sometimes attempt to make physical contact. Rosie had learned to treat him with the same respect one would have for a wolf on a tether, making sure to always keep just out of his reach. Thelma had complained about the man’s behavior to her husband, but Harry was reluctant to talk to Jubal about Eli, so she and Rosie resigned themselves to putting up with Eli’s lewd glances and suggestive comments.