“Who’re you?”
“I’m the one that gets to tie the rope.”
The clerk swiveled his head from one man to the other. “You won’t waken the other guests?”
Dr. Tom tucked the pistol back into his belt. “We’ll be as quiet as the grave.”
The clerk pointed above his head with one finger. “Innis Crenshaw. Room twelve. Up the stairs and to the left. The other two are gone. Both of them.”
“If you’ve lied to us, or if you make any noise, you’re dead.” Dr. Tom held out his hand. “Key.”
The clerk slipped a master key out from under the desk and handed it to Nate. A window at the top of the stairs showed the sky beginning to turn more gray than black. The men climbed the stairs and walked quietly down the hall to room 12.
Dr. Tom pressed his ear to the door for a few moments, then nodded for Nate to unlock it. The door hinges squeaked, but the form lying in the bed across the room, mouth open, arms flung wide, did not stir. The sleeping man woke only to the unmistakable clicking from the hammer on the navy Colt being cocked and readied at his head.
Dr. Tom said, “Hello, Innis. Nate, take that rope and tie his hands together.”
Nate tied Crenshaw’s hands tightly in back and pulled him off the bed, then gagged him with a strip torn from a shirt thrown to the floor. After gathering up Crenshaw’s pistols and boots, they walked him barefoot down the stairs.
As they passed the desk clerk, Dr. Tom tossed him the key and told him, “You can go back to sleep now.”
They collected the grulla mare at the stable, and, once they’d heaved Crenshaw into his saddle, they rode north again along the San Jacinto for several hours before stopping in the shade of some oak trees. Dr. Tom dismounted, yanked Crenshaw from the saddle, and threw him roughly to the ground. He hunkered down and studied the prisoner, saw the gag pulling the corners of his lips grotesquely back from his teeth. Crenshaw’s eyes above his beaked nose were alternately frightened and enraged; his black hair, long and pomaded to a greasy sheen, spread out wildly over the ground.
To Nate, he looked like a tethered stud horse about to be gelded.
Dr. Tom stood back up and motioned Nate to walk with him out of earshot. The ranger’s face was shaded gray from lack of sleep, and more disturbing to Nate was knowing how much of the laudanum bottle had been emptied since leaving Houston.
Dr. Tom began searching for something in his saddle pack. “You remember Maynard Collie?”
Nate nodded uneasily. A vivid image of Collie’s lifeless feet and blue lips came to mind. For the first time in a good while, he thought of the cyanide-filled rifle cartridge in his own pack.
“George spent less than half an hour with him and got him to swallow poison.” Dr. Tom pulled from the pack his medical kit and turned to face Nate. “You know how he did that?”
“I imagine with threats.”
Dr. Tom nodded. “He threatened his wife.”
“His wife?” Nate thought of Maynard’s crimes, brutally murdering prostitutes, and had a hard time believing that a man like that would have a weakness for any woman.
“George threatened to shoot her. She was the only one that meant anything to Maynard.”
“Would he have done it?”
“He only had to convince Maynard that he would.”
“What’s his weakness?” Nate nodded to the prisoner.
Dr. Tom looked over at Crenshaw, who had worked himself up to a sitting position, his darting eyes evaluating the options for escape. “His vanity.”
Dr. Tom opened the medical kit, revealing a neat array of scalpels, lancets, and probes slotted into green felt. “Nate, you’re either in this, or you’re out. If you feel your resolve fading, just think of that woman and the children of hers that he helped to murder.”
He closed the case and directed Nate to drag and tie Crenshaw to a tree.
Dr. Tom crouched close to Crenshaw, setting the medical kit down where the prisoner could see it. He placed his hat carefully aside and said, “Innis, I’m not going to bother asking you right away to tell me the whereabouts of Purdy or McGill because I know it’d be a waste of my time. Isn’t that right?”
Crenshaw moved his tongue against the gag, exhaling air.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. I say this because I know that you know if McGill found out you’d given us his whereabouts, he’d shoot you in the gut and leave you to die a long, slow death. A man can take a whole day to die from a gunshot wound to the belly. It’s painful, no doubt. But there are worse things.”
Dr. Tom opened the kit. “I want you to think on what I’m going to tell you, and I want you to look at my face to know that what I’m saying is true.”
Crenshaw’s eyes tracked back and forth between Dr. Tom’s face and the kit.
“I went to medical school a while back, and I’ve had occasion to use those skills from time to time. And it’s left an impression on me of just how much suffering a human body can endure before expiring.
“During the war, even though I’m not truly a doctor, I helped saw through shattered arms and legs while the patients were awake, fully aware of their own limbs being hacked off. I once had to remove a woman’s cancerous breast with only a pocket scalpel. The operation lasted for over an hour, her screaming the whole time. It saved her life, but I don’t think that woman ever regained her power of speech.”
Dr. Tom pulled a small scalpel from the box. He spread his fingers close to Crenshaw’s face, placing the edge of the scalpel against the big knuckle of his own first finger.
“Do you know how many nerves are in the human hand, Innis? Thousands. That’s why it hurts so bad when you scald your palm on your mama’s stove. I could sit here and saw on your fingers and hands all day until the only thing left to yank yourself with would be the stumps of your arms. And the beauty of it is, you’d still be alive.”
Crenshaw’s mouth stretched even wider, chuffing out air, and Nate realized he was laughing, or trying to.
“So here’s what I’m going to do for you, Innis. I’m going to remove the gag and you’re going to tell me where McGill has gone, and I give you my word I won’t hurt you.”
Dr. Tom untied the gag from Crenshaw’s mouth.
“You go to hell.” Crenshaw worked his mouth, spitting and hawking. “I tell you where McGill is and you’ll hang me. Besides, you don’t scare me with your talk, you runty little bastard—”
The gag was replaced and pulled tighter, exposing more of Crenshaw’s teeth. Dr. Tom slipped from the box a pair of pliers with a rounded head. In one practiced move he fastened it onto a tooth, and with his other hand he grabbed Crenshaw’s hair.
“I’ve also been known to practice dentistry.” Nate heard a cracking sound as Dr. Tom forcefully twisted the tooth key and pulled the tooth along with the living root from the bone. Crenshaw opened his jaws wider and screamed against the gag. He continued screaming and thrashing for a long time while blood pooled and ran from his mouth.
Dr. Tom took his time removing a piece of linen bandage from the box and soaking it with some of the laudanum from his flask. He carefully packed it into the cavity made by the missing tooth and waited for Crenshaw to quiet down.
After a while, Dr. Tom tapped him on the forehead to get his attention. “I give you my word that I won’t hang you. But I also give you my word that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I will carve every protuberance from your face.” He pulled out a larger scalpel and held it eye level with the prisoner. “Starting with your nose.” He ran the scalpel in a light-handed stroke down one side of Crenshaw’s face, and a thin line of scarlet appeared.
The prisoner began to shake his head from side to side, tears seeping from his eyes. Dr. Tom removed the gag.
Crenshaw said, “They went to a settlement to the south called Middle Bayou.”
“What for?”
“Some farmer found gold. McGill went to get it.”
“Why didn’t they take you?”
&
nbsp; Crenshaw just looked at him. Dr. Tom smiled tightly. “You were supposed to be watching for us to ride over with the ferryman. Was there a woman traveling with them?”
“No.”
Dr. Tom prodded the prisoner with his boot. “You sure about that?”
“No woman, I told you!”
“One last question.” Dr. Tom brought the scalpel to Crenshaw’s face and lightly etched a matching line down the other side of his face. Crenshaw flinched and the wound trickled blood. “Were you in Frost Town when McGill killed those children?”
Crenshaw nodded once and Dr. Tom looked at Nate and said, “Hang him.”
Crenshaw twisted hard at the ropes. The straining dislodged the linen packing in his jaw, opening the wound to bleed again. “You said you wouldn’t hang me.”
Dr. Tom stood up. “I’m not. He is.” He walked to Crenshaw’s horse and removed the length of rope from the saddle. He put his hand on Nate’s shoulder. “The only sin here is in hesitation.”
“Oh, goddamn!” Crenshaw yelled. “My own goddamn rope!”
“Go on, Nate,” Dr. Tom said. “This is part of the life you chose. If you falter, just think of those dead children.” Dr. Tom handed Nate the rope. “You’re not in this alone.”
Nate turned his back to the prisoner and, after several tries, managed to pitch the coiled end of the rope over a branch. Fashioning a noose took longer than expected and he soon realized he should have made the noose first. Before he could position the grulla mare under it, he had to listen to ten minutes of bargaining and threatening from the prisoner. He thought of gagging Crenshaw again, his nerves frayed to breaking by the begging, but decided that tolerating the man’s last pleading words was the price he paid for killing him. It took both Nate and Dr. Tom to wrestle the noose around Crenshaw’s neck and reseat him in his saddle.
Nate thumped the horse and she bolted forward, but Crenshaw dropped awkwardly, desperately squeezing the saddle with both legs. He died badly, kicking and wheezing, scissoring his legs in the air. Nate would have helped him with the drop, but he was afraid of having his jaw broken by flailing feet.
Dr. Tom had his back to Crenshaw, repacking his medical kit, but Nate watched the hanging man dying by measures and wondered how he would tell his wife about it. Describing a hanging, in the general sense, wouldn’t be so difficult to convey in a letter. If a man commits himself to service and rides away from his home and family carrying a rope and a gun, he has to expect to use them.
But this hanging couldn’t be considered in the general sense, not while he was standing so close to the man’s purpling face and bulging eyes, not while he was the one who had fashioned the rope. He understood, watching Crenshaw’s purposeful kicks turn to spasmodic jerking, that he had come to a place farther from his family than could be measured in miles. In the few years of his marriage, he had withheld nothing from his wife. But come time for the next letter to her, that would change.
As soon as Crenshaw had quit moving, Nate quietly approached the mare, still wild-eyed and spooked, and settled her only after his own hands had stopped shaking. Then he mounted his horse and turned southward again, leading the mare and following after Dr. Tom, towards Middle Bayou.
Chapter 17
On the evening of Bill’s arrival, Lucinda took him to the clearing and pointed to the island.
“There,” she said. “The gold is there, somewhere on that island. Bedford says that it’s a large cache of coins.” She thought for a moment of telling him about the German, his remains snagged somewhere in the water, decomposing slowly, hopefully still submerged. But then she would have to tell him about Mrs. Landry’s stolen money in the tapestry bag. He would not be pleased by the risk she had taken.
She watched Bill’s face eagerly, looking for signs of approval, waiting for him to slip his arms around her, to palm her hair back from her forehead, to kiss her. But his brow furrowed in concentration, his gaze taking in the thick choke of hanging vines, the floating debris that might or might not be fallen logs. He lit a small cigar and stood looking at the island for a time.
Finally he pursed his lips and said, “I have a man coming in a few days with mules for the gold.” He breathed out, exhaling smoke. “My surveying partner.” He turned his head and smiled at her: a lifting of the upper lip, revealing straight, unbroken teeth.
His beard, along with the spectacles and the smoke swirling around his chin, worked to mask his features, and she understood the ruse. But it veiled the subtler expressions playing across his face as well, and it seemed for that brief instant that he retreated from her even as she stood next to him.
“Bedford has proposed marriage,” she told him. “There is an engagement party in two days.”
He smiled again and dropped the cigar, then crushed it out with one boot heel. He cupped one hand behind her neck, pressing her lips to his, and placed the other hand between her legs. “Well, then,” he whispered. “I have a gift for the bride.”
Bill had been welcomed readily into the Grant home. Soon the settlers began calling on their schoolteacher’s handsome brother, the men gathering on the porch to speak with him, attentive to his experience as a surveyor and engineer during the war, the women putting forth their eligible daughters with introductions, to Lucinda’s mind, as subtle as cattle being offered at auction. But his hours spent with Bedford at the supper table or out walking aimlessly in the fields—always accompanied by a whiskey bottle—dragged Lucinda into a deep and continual anxiety that Bedford would recognize him. Bill assured her that Bedford had been drunk on his ear in Harrisburg where he’d shown the gold coin, and that he’d keep the old man drunk until he left again. But at times Lucinda could see Bedford regarding Bill with puzzled concentration, a momentary confusion that Jane was quick to observe. Her wariness towards Lucinda—and now towards the newly arrived “brother” occupying her home and constantly feeding liquor to her father—had turned to outright hostility.
Bill had told her, though, that he was tired of waiting, that he had come “to grease the wheels.”
The engagement party was held in the Wallers’ home, the sitting room filled uncomfortably with invited settlers eager to congratulate Bedford and Lucinda but also there to see with their own eyes the transplanted remnants of old plantation finery. Most of the men, standing or sitting stiffly with their wives, were casting guarded, avaricious glances in May’s direction, their overly long hair manfully tamed with what looked to be axle grease. The women, in pieced-together dresses and shawls, struggled to gracefully hold Sephronia’s delicate cups and saucers, tiny embossed fruit forks, and slender-stemmed glasses with callused hands that had most recently held buckets, plow handles, or hoes.
Robert McKenzie, the one-armed neighbor that May had wondered about kissing, stood with his back against the green-and-maroon wallpaper of the Wallers’ sitting room stealing looks at Jane Grant. He was dressed in a dark suit, his left sleeve pinned neatly to his shoulder, and was indeed handsome, Lucinda thought, in a sickroom, wasting sort of way.
Jane sat at the Wallers’ ornate parlor piano, her back to the room, playing something appropriately energetic, although, Lucinda knew, her expression was dour. Lucinda sat next to her, facing the guests, her eyes shifting back and forth like a shuttlecock between the spectacled man newly introduced as Lucinda’s brother, Bill Carter, and May. They stood together talking, the top of May’s head coming only as high as his collarbone, her upturned face at times rising to meet his as she stood on tiptoe to better hear what he had to say. Bill rested one elbow on the mantelpiece and smiled, his head cocked to one side as May chattered on. He’s watching her, Lucinda thought, as a carnival barker would consider a rube, with both amusement and cunning. He ran the tip of his tongue slowly over his lips and then traced the wetness on his mouth with the pad of his thumb, causing May to blush. Only once did his eyes drift to Lucinda’s, where they lingered briefly.
She was about to stand and go to him, but she felt Bedford’s hand on her shoul
der and she stiffened. He bent down and whispered something unintelligible into her ear, his breath sour from drink. In a few days’ time, two whiskey bottles had been emptied.
She reached up, patted Bedford’s hand, and then slipped it from her shoulder. She stood and made her way to the opposite side of the room.
“Mr. McKenzie,” she said. It shook the one-armed man from his reverie and he blushed, then formally offered his congratulations. She thanked him and asked to refill his glass with punch. She took the glass and promptly handed it to May, instructing her to be polite and return a filled drink to the veteran standing all alone.
Bill leaned forward, looking into his own glass as though he could read the complicated swirls of the liquid inside, and, bringing his mouth closer to Lucinda’s ear, said, “What a festive wake.”
She smiled uneasily and settled her gaze on the stuffed owl on the mantelpiece, the bird with the staring amber eyes, and thought it an apt totem for the gathering in the room. All of them preserved, stiff and formal, arrayed in their downtrodden best, staring at everyone else with curiosity or with covetousness, but all with eyes seeking to root out the hidden things.
Bill set the glass on the mantelpiece next to the owl and said to her, “Make your excuses and meet me outside.”
He nodded brusquely to Sephronia Waller, who was moving through the press of bodies towards him, her weighted, hooped skirt catching and dragging on the legs of the guests around her like a fisherman’s net. But he slipped past her without speaking and walked out the door.
In a few minutes Lucinda followed Bill onto the porch and stood watching him smoking a cigar, the smoke curling into the wind away from his slender fingers, and she fought an impulse to cover his other hand resting on the railing with her own.
He stubbed out the live ashes on the railing and pitched the butt into the yard. “The trick will be getting him to point out the exact spot,” he said. “I don’t want to be digging up the entire island. Especially in the dark.”