Charley Pettibone’s mind would not stop racing as he worked his way through greenbriars and blackberry vines to where they could get a good look into Flynn’s cabin. He tried to move quietly and focus on the sheriff’s broad back as they circled around the pasture, but every step he made seemed amplified.
As soon as Charley had seen Willingham’s face in the light of the match, with a troop of cavalry gathered round him, he realized they had been tracking the Law and Order League all along, probably for weeks, waiting for their chance to surprise them as a group. By then the pursuers had reached them, but the soldiers were loaded and ready, and the fight was brief and lopsided. Afterward, they had rested for a few hours at the old Indian camp, where it was obvious that no Dathan, no Cedeh, had been sleeping last night. So it was just as well that he had shot Green Pratt when he did. If Pratt hadn’t shot him at the river, he would have shot him up here when their plans were foiled. Then the soldiers decided to head for town, and Willingham returned to Daybreak. And now this.
They reached the rail fence that marked the far end of Flynn’s pasture. Another damned lunatic move, running fences through the woods like this. Weapon or no weapon, he’d kill the son of a bitch with his bare hands if he had to. The Mick brute, striking a woman.
Willingham squatted and motioned for Charley to do the same. “Here’s the ticket,” he said quietly. “We follow the fence to the barn. From the barn we can get a good look into the back door and see what old Flynn is up to.”
“If I had a rifle, I could drop him from that distance and be done with it.”
Willingham dropped a wad of spit between his feet. “Lordy, son, then I’d have to arrest you. We’re the law and don’t forget it. We ain’t bushwhackers.”
They crept along the fence until they reached the heap of dead cattle piled up against the rails. Willingham picked up a branch and squinted at it in the dim light.
“Here’s your price of ignorance,” he said. “Our boy cut them cherry sprouts and left ’em lay for the cows to eat.”
“What’s the matter with a cherry sprout?” Charley said, immediately
regretting his own display of ignorance. Willingham cast him a sidewise glance and shrugged.
“Turns to sweet poison, is what I heard the old-timers say. They can eat it when it’s on the tree, but when it’s dead and curling up, it’s a deadly thing. I ain’t ever seen it before, but I guess it’s true.” He laid his hand against a steer’s flank. “This is going to be a ripe old mess in a day or two.” Then he shrugged again and turned toward the barn.
The barn was unworthy of the name in Charley’s opinion, little more than an unchinked square of logs with a slab roof, no milking stalls or grain bins. “Calls to mind the house I lived in when I first came out here,” Willingham said as they crept to the front. Charley couldn’t tell if he was joking.
In the entrance, a horse stood harnessed to a wagon, tethered to a peg driven into a stanchion. It snuffled as they approached. The wagon was heaped with clothing and furniture.
“All packed and ready,” Willingham murmured. “Quite a tale to learn here. This took some work.”
They settled against the wall and peered through the chinks. The back door of the house was open, and in the lantern light from inside they could see Turner, sitting stiffly in a chair by the front door, and what appeared to be part of Flynn’s back and arm at the table. A woman’s legs and feet could be seen between them.
“She’s alive, anyway,” Willingham whispered. “Otherwise he’d be out of here by now.”
“And what happens when Mrs. Turner and boy come back?”
They sat silent for a minute. “He won’t shoot her. He ain’t that crazy.”
“Fact is, he’s the man with the gun and he’ll shoot who he wants,” Charley said.
“I cain’t argue that point,” Willingham said. “But it’s also a fact, he hates you, and he don’t seem to care for James Turner. So if I had to lay odds on who ain’t getting shot, I’d put my money on Mrs. Turner.”
“That’s reassuring,” Charley said dryly. “So what’s your plan?”
“It ain’t exactly a plan,” Willingham replied. “But I figure it this way. Old Flynn in there has messed up good, and he’ll see that soon enough. A gal hurt bad on the floor, and even if it is his wife, there’ll be a price to pay for that. Looks like he was loading up to move ’em all out when something interfered. So….” He rubbed his face and peered through the crack. “Either he shoots Mr. Turner, or he don’t. Either way, he’ll break for this wagon. And if he throws down his weapon, or if he ain’t carrying it too careful, we’ll knock him down and tie him up.”
“And if he’s still got the gun?”
Willingham squinted at him. “Then we try to quiet-talk him. He can’t shoot us both without reloading.”
Charley sniffed. “Some plan. You should have let me bring my pistol.”
“Son, I got a family to feed, and them soldiers is long gone,” Willingham said. “We ain’t busting in there with guns a-blazing. If this old boy turns himself in, or somebody brings him in, it’s a dollar a day to jail him up, and good money, too. But there ain’t no pay in shooting and getting shot at.”
They turned their attention to the house, where Turner had not moved. “Wish I knew where the child was,” Willingham said. “I might venture some other little stratagem. But when there’s a gun pointed at you, you’re best not to take chances.” He paused. “Guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
Charley didn’t answer. He was calculating the distance from the barn to the house. With all the excitement of the day and evening before, Flynn couldn’t have gotten more than a couple hours’ rest. If there was some way he could signal to Turner, whose face was half-turned in their direction through the door, to let him know whether Flynn had fallen asleep, he could make his way to the house, screened by the back wall, and in a quick rush fly in and disarm him. He’d seen it during the war, men so exhausted by excitement and effort that nothing could rouse them, men sleeping even as the charge rushed toward them.
He glanced at Willingham out of the corner of his eye. He could talk him into it, if they waited here another half hour or so. But Willingham’s attention seemed focused elsewhere.
“Listen,” Willingham said.
“Okay.”
Willingham put his fingers to his lips. “No,” he said. “I mean listen.”
So Charley stilled his mind and listened. And in the silence of the morning he heard a voice, a child’s voice, Newton Turner’s voice, away toward the river, and it was calling, “Mama! Mama!”