The Law of the Trigger (7 page)

Owen shrugged. “A hill boy called Lester.”

“The girl's husband?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

Scowling, the young doctor unbuttoned his collar and cuffs and stretched out on the couch. He was asleep almost instantly, but before he dropped off he shook his head and said, “Owen, you and Elizabeth sure do take in some strange boarders!”

Owen went to the sickroom and looked in before going to bed. The girl lay pale and motionless beneath the small mountain of quilts. The boy sat slumped in a straight chair near the head of the bed, his eyes closed, his face sagging with fatigue.

Within Owen's mind a well-developed professional curiosity clamored for attention. The girl had mentioned “Cal.” Had she meant the younger Brunner brother? Was
she
a member of the gang? Was the boy?

At last he shook his head. What did it matter who they were? The Brunners were none of his business; he'd made that clear to McKeever and Judge Lochland and the whole county. He didn't want to get mixed up with them now.

However, Owen Toller did not sleep too well that night. Several times he heard the doctor get up and go to the sickroom, and once he heard Dunc Lester and Linnwood talking quietly. He was on edge and restless, and his tossings and turnings disturbed his wife.

“Owen, is anything the matter?” she asked sleepily.

“No. Everything is all right.”

“No, it isn't.” And now she turned to face him, awake. “It's that girl, isn't it?” she said. “It's an awful thing. What kind of person would want to kill a young girl?”

Owen thought for a moment. “The same kind of person that shot Edith Ransom,” he said flatly.

The next morning Owen was working the creek bottom when Doc Linnwood rode past on his way back to Reunion.

“Your patient's all right,” the doctor said. “Those hill girls are as tough as boot leather.”

“That's good,” Owen said gratefully. “Thanks for coming out, Doc.”

Owen rested for a moment on his hoe, glad that the girl was going to get well; glad that she and Dunc Lester would soon be leaving and he and Elizabeth could let their lives settle again into the warm, comfortable rut that he had come to cherish. I must be getting old, he thought. Strange trails and excitement no longer please me.

Deliberately he cleared his mind of curiosity. There must be at least a dozen boys named Cal in those hills, he told himself. And words spoken in delirium meant little.

At dinnertime he tramped back up the long grassy slope to the farmhouse, stopping to play with Giles and Lonnie in the back yard. He was smiling as he entered the kitchen, vaguely pleased with himself and at peace in his mind. “I hear our patient's better,” he said to his wife.

Elizabeth smiled, but with little humor. “That might be a matter of opinion.”

They went together to the sickroom, where the girl glared at them with hot, angry eyes.

“Well,” Owen said heartily, “the doctor says you're going to get well.”

She snarled like a cat and turned her face to the wall.

“That's what I mean,” Elizabeth said, looking at her husband. “Her name is Leah Stringer, but she didn't tell me that. The boy did, just before he left.” When she saw the surprised look on her husband's face, she said, “He rode off right after the doctor left this morning.”

Owen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It looked like Dunc Lester had left them with the responsibility of looking after the hostile girl. Elizabeth went back to the kitchen to feed the children, but Owen rubbed his face thoughtfully, and did not move. Stringer... The name was beginning to mean something to him.

He went to the other side of the bed and took a chair where the girl would have to look at him. “Several years ago,” he said, “I used to know a Cherokee missionary named Mort Stringer. He had a little girl, and, if I remember right, her name was Leah. You're Mort Stringer's daughter, aren't you?”

The girl glared and said nothing.

“Now why,” Owen mused aloud, “would a person want to shoot a preacher's daughter? Would you tell me that, Leah?”

She turned her head and faced the other way. Elizabeth returned to bring her husband to the table, but she paused when she saw the look of concentration on Owen's face. “Owen, do you know this girl?”

“I think so,” he said. “Her father was a preacher. He quit the Cherokee mission before statehood and moved into the hills with his family. He was a good man, as I remember.”

The girl turned her head again and looked at Owen out of those wild, animal-like eyes. She was frightened, and Owen did not know how to reassure her. She was bitter with grief, angry, sick, and alone. And Owen could not think of any word that would comfort her. The girl had raised a barrier of distrust between them and Owen could not break it down.

Leah Stringer stayed with them eight days. On the morning of the ninth day, when Elizabeth opened the door to take the girl her breakfast, she was gone.

Owen came forward with two large buckets heavy with strained milk.

“Pretty late for you to be riding these hills alone, isn't it?” he kidded Deland.

The deputy grinned. “I'm not as thickheaded as some people think. Since I had to come this way on business, I figured I might as well make it close to suppertime.”

Owen was always glad to see his old friend. He helped Arch stable his horse in the barn, then the two men took the buckets of milk back to the house. Arch joked with Elizabeth, and teased the children until they were almost wild before finally handing over a bag of striped peppermint sticks. The old man seemed perfectly at ease and happy, but Owen, who knew him well, could look behind those pale blue eyes and see that Deland was worried.

At last, when they were alone in the parlor, smoking their pipes, Owen said, “You mentioned you had business out this way, Arch. What kind?”

“Routine investigation of a gunshot wound. Your patient still here?”

Owen shook his head, then told the deputy everything he could remember about the girl and the boy who called himself Dunc Lester.

“To tell the truth,” he finished, “I was glad when we woke up that morning and found that Leah Stringer had left us. She wasn't the easiest girl in the world to live with.”

“What about the Lester boy?” Arch asked. “Have you seen any more of him?”

Owen shook his head. “And I don't expect to.”

“Was this boy a member of the Brunner gang?”

The bluntness of the question surprised Owen. “I don't know. What makes you ask?”

“Doc Linnwood's report that he turned in to the sheriffs office. He said the boy looked suspicious, and the girl was spouting some pretty queer things while she was out of her head. He recommended that both of them be held for investigation.”

Owen was puzzled and faintly angry. “Linnwood didn't say any of this to me.” Then he felt the cold finger of uneasiness on his neck. Had Linnwood thought that he was deliberately giving aid to members of the Brunner gang? Was that the reason he had kept his report to the sheriff secret?

Now he could understand the worry behind Arch Deland's eyes. “Well,” he said, “you've waited too long to make an investigation, because they're both gone. Why didn't Will Cushman go to work on this sooner?”

The deputy smiled. “The report was put on the sheriff's desk, but Will was off visitin' in Talequah until this mornin'.”

“That's Will's bad luck. There's no way I can help him now.

“I know,” Arch said heavily. “But I wish there was...” There was something on his mind and he was searching for a way to say it. At last he said, “Owen, do you figure to come to town next Saturday?”

“Yes. The Stringer girl had us tied down this week, but we'll have to go in Saturday to buy supplies.”

Deland shook his head. “Don't do it, Owen,” he said soberly. “Anyway, don't bring Elizabeth and the children. You don't know how worked up the town is gettin' about this thing.” He chewed on his pipestem, his face bleak and expressionless.

Owen could feel slow anger tighten the muscles of his throat. “What are they saying?” he asked quietly.

The deputy shifted uncomfortably in the chair, avoiding Owen's eyes. Then, showing his own anger for the first time, Deland blurted, “It's a raw deal all around! Ben McKeever started it, I guess, but he couldn't have kept it goin' by himself. The people wanted to believe it. They have to have somebody to be mad at, so they picked you. If they're mad enough at somebody, I guess they figure they can forget the wide yellow stripes down their own backs!”

“What are they saying?” Owen asked again, softly.

“They're sayin' that you're still mad about Will Cushman beatin' you out for the sheriff's office. They're sayin' that you're givin' help to the Brunners just to make Will's job tougher.”

That was as far as Arch Deland could go. He looked up and saw Elizabeth standing in the doorway, her eyes flashing with indignation and anger. She came into the room and stood behind her husband's chair. “Mr. Deland,” she said icily, “did you come here to start trouble?”

The deputy blinked. “No, Elizabeth. I came to stop the trouble before it started, if I could.”

“It doesn't sound like it, from what I heard. It sounds to me as though you're more interested in spreading McKeever's lies than in stopping trouble.”

Owen looked sharply at his wife and then at Arch. “That's enough,” he said flatly. “It looks like you're the only two friends I've got left in this county. I don't want you fighting each other.”

But there was tenseness in the room and fear in Elizabeth Toller's eyes. When she turned and left the room, Owen said, “I'm sorry, Arch. Women get upset sometimes and say things they don't mean.”

“I know.” Deland smiled sadly. “You're a lucky man, Owen. Elizabeth loves you and that makes her protective. She thinks I'm with the others, tryin' to get you to go after the Brunners.” He shook his head, still smiling, then stood up. “It's later than I thought. I guess I won't be able to stay for supper, after all.”

Owen did not try to stop him, for he knew that they would only be uncomfortable now. They walked together to the barn, where Owen helped his friend with the rig.

“Elizabeth will see this in a new light tomorrow,” Owen said.

“Sure.” Deland nodded and rode off into the gathering dusk.

Where is it going to stop? Owen wondered angrily. He had never been faced with this kind of problem before. His enemies had always been in the minority and on the wrong side of the law; but now he felt like an outlaw himself.

At that same moment, several miles to the east, another man had his own and angry thoughts. From his place on the high, rocky shelf of the Cooksons, Dunc Lester gazed down on a small, irregular clearing that had once been his family's farm. A few days ago there had been a fine stand of young corn on that sheer slope; there had been a sturdy cabin, stockade sheds, a brush arbor. Now there was nothing.

Now there was only a scattering of ashes and a shapeless pile of charred logs where the cabin and sheds had been. The young corn had been trampled to death under the hoofs of many horses. The Lester cow lay near one of the burned sheds, a bloated, stinking corpse being picked at by a cluster of sluggish buzzards.

For days Dunc had prowled these hills like some maddened animal, looking for Ike Brunner. But Ike and the gang had disappeared. They had vacated Ulster's Cave without a trace, and had vanished into the darkness of the hills.

And now, exhausted with fatigue and the knowledge of his own helplessness, Dunc had returned to this shelf overlooking the clearing. Incredibly long shadows of the hills stretched out over the land, and a blood-red sun settled slowly behind the edge of the western world. It had been almost eleven days since he had left the girl in the hands of the ex-marshal and his wife, it seemed more like eleven years. He felt like an old man, his bones aching, his clothing torn and filthy, his brain numb with fatigue. All the Lesters were strong, stubborn men, but Dunc was almost ready to admit that he did not have the strength to fight Ike Brunner alone.

Still, his anger kept him going. For all he knew, his entire family might be dead; his ma and pa, his married sister and brother-in-law, his two young brothers and baby sister. There was no sign of life at all down there, except for the buzzards.

Dunc rubbed his sagging face and swore softly. He had not dared go down to the clearing itself because the Tanis family lived just around the slope, and Gabe Tanis was a member of the gang. A lifelong friendship with the Tanises meant little now, for there was no telling what kind of lies Ike had spread among the hill people.

And yet he couldn't just sit here on this shelf and do nothing, Dunc told himself. Damn that girl, anyway! he thought. But he knew it wasn't the girl he hated. He'd do the same thing all over again if he had to.

And he couldn't hate men like Gabe Tanis, either, for they all had their own reasons for wanting to fight, and they thought the Brunners were helping them. Dunc had thought it himself. But if they had seen the things he had seen, heard the things he had heard...

Wearily he got to his feet as darkness closed down on the hills. No use thinking about that, he warned himself. They wouldn't believe me.

And now, Tanises or no Tanises, he had to go down to that clearing and see for himself what had happened. Maybe, he thought, there'll be something down there that'll tell me where Ike has taken the gang.

Leading the shaggy, brush-scarred little bay down the rocky slope, Dunc tried to prepare himself for whatever he would find down there among the ashes. The buzzards heard him coming through the timber and beat the air frantically with their heavy wings.

As he broke out of the woods a pale high moon shone down on the clearing, and Dunc Lester stood there for a moment, sick and heavy within his soul. There was nothing familiar in this silent place heavy with the smell of death and charred logs. It was impossible to believe that this was where he had lived out most of his young life, that he had helped his pa plow and plant these fields, that he had helped build the house and sheds. In this place his oldest sister had been married, here the youngest had been born. Now there was nothing.

He tramped the fields that he had hoed a hundred times. He scattered the ashes and burned timbers of the house and sheds. He found nothing but the dead cow; even the work mule was gone.

For a moment he felt lighter and breathed freer. At least the family was still alive somewhere. But where?

Suddenly all caution vanished. Dunc turned sharply to the edge of the clearing where the bay was waiting. He took down his shotgun, broke it to make sure that it was loaded, then climbed to the saddle and took the rocky, deep-rutted trail toward the Tanis place.

Soon he could smell wood smoke from the Tanis chimney, then the orange glow of the coal-oil lamp burning in the Tanis cabin. Riding to the back of the cabin, Dunc called sharply:

“Gabe, you there?”

Almost immediately the back door was thrown open and Gabe's woman stood in the cabin entrance holding a long-barreled rifle in her two big hands.

“Who is it?”

“Dunc Lester, Sarah Sue. I want to talk to Gabe.”

“Dunc Lester!” The two words told Dunc all he needed to know about what the hill people thought of him. “Gabe ain't here,” she said harshly. “And a lucky thing for you he ain't!”

“I want to find out about my family.”

Sarah Sue Tanis was a long-faced, leather-tough woman in her early forties. She had often cared for Dunc when he was little more than a baby, but she wasn't remembering that now. “There ain't no Lesters in these hills,” she said, her voice filled with hate. “We're decent, God-fearin' folks up here, and there ain't no room among us for preacher killers or their families!”

“Preacher killers?”

“I reckon you know what I'm talkin' about, Dunc Lester. Ike Brunner told us how you shot old Mort Stringer down in cold blood and then shot young Cal in the leg when he tried to stop you! All over that no-account girl of the preacher's.”

Anger welled up in him until he felt limp and sickish. But all he said was “Is that the reason you people burned us out?”

She said nothing, but grinned in self-righteous hatred.

“Where's my family? Where'd you run them off to- you and all the other decent, God-fearin' folks around here?”

“You might look in Arkansas,” she snapped. “I don't reckon you'll find them in Oklahoma.”

An overpowering sense of helplessness dulled the edge of Dunc's anger. He knew there was no use talking to Sarah Sue Tanis o/her husband. Because Ike Brunner had brought them corn in dry years, because he had brought doctors for their sick and filled their heads full of lies, they now believed everything he told them.

Sarah Sue hadn't shot him with that long-barreled rifle because it would be too much like shooting one of her own kin, but that wasn't saying that she wouldn't shoot him the next time he came. He reined the bay around and rode toward the dark timber.

He camped that night under a sandstone overhang not far from Ulster's Cave. Wolflike, he crouched under the shelter of rock listening to the sounds of the night, wondering what he was going to do next. If he was smart, he told himself, he would light out for Arkansas and look for his folks. He would forget that he had ever lived in these hills or had been hooked up with the Brunners. That would be the smart thing to do. The only healthy thing.

But he didn't feel smart. And he didn't think he would soon forget the Brunners in Arkansas or anywhere else. And besides, there was that girl of Mort Stringer's, who had haunted his mind since the first moment he had seen her.

It was a funny thing, saving a person's life like that. It made a man feel almost like God to hold a life in his hands, knowing that it was within his power to save it or let it go. Dunc wondered if that was the reason Leah Stringer was so constantly in his mind these days, in spite of all the other things he had to plague him.

At last he untied a small gunny sack that he had brought behind his saddle, took out a handful of parched com, and began to eat. The corn had come from Owen Toller's barn, and Dunc had parched it himself when he got back to the hills. On long hunting trips or forced marches, Indians could live for weeks on corn like this. And so could a white man, if he had to.