A Time to Slaughter Read online

  Julia blinked, seeing pictures she didn’t want to see. “There was blood everywhere. The cabin was full of blood, red, scarlet blood on the floor, on the walls, all over Pa, all over me. Then Pa roared as though he was in pain and he held Ma and my sister to him for a day and a night and then another day. We buried the bodies away from the house, but shallow because the ground was hard with frost. The coyotes came and took them and we never found anything of Ma or Bethany again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shawn said, knowing how inadequate that sounded.

  Julia took a breath and continued. “After that we moved to Dodge, where Pa thought he might prosper in the dry goods business, but he died of nothing more serious than a summer cold within a year.”

  Shawn stepped to a side window and looked outside. Sky and earth were the same shade of dark purple and snow cartwheeled through the sullen day, driven by a wind cold as a stepmother’s breath. Julia had lit the oil lamp on her desk, but its dull orange glow did little to banish the gloom shadowing the schoolhouse.

  “So you were left alone in the world,” Shawn said. “You were just a child, I guess.”

  “I lived as best I could for a while, then I jumped a deadheading freight to Wichita. I couldn’t find a job so I worked the line for the next three years for a four-hundred-pound gal I knew only as Big Bertha. That’s where Zeb Moss found me. I’d just reached my seventeenth birthday.”

  “And he gave you a new name,” Shawn said.

  “And a job. He paid Bertha two hundred dollars for me and made me a hostess in his saloon in Santa Fe. He said with my scarred face I’d have freak value to customers who valued such things.”

  “So after a while you ran away and came here?”

  “Not for a couple years. I became Zeb’s kept woman and he never let me out of his sight. Then I read an advertisement in the newspaper about a teaching job and answered it. I made my break from Zeb when Colonel O’Brien wrote, telling me the job was mine.”

  “You sent references to the colonel,” Shawn said. “Pa said you were obviously a genteel young lady of good breeding and that you’d worked as a tutor back East.”

  Julia smiled slightly. “Say what’s on your mind, Shawn. Tell me I’m not a genteel young lady at all. I’m just a cheap whore and now my pimp wants me back.”

  Chapter Three

  Julia Davenport’s words stung Shawn O’Brien like wasps, yet he had to push her and discover why the colonel could make such a mistake. “Your references were impeccable. You sent three letters of recommendation from good Boston families that fooled even Pa, and he’s not a man easily hoodwinked.”

  Julia looked like a woman in pain. “The letters were forged by a Caddo Indian by the name of Billy One Wing. He’s got only one arm, but he’s the best counterfeiter in the business. He gets a lot of work from Zeb, and I gave him mine. I trusted Billy because he doesn’t like white men and knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

  Shawn nodded. “He must be good to have fooled the colonel.”

  “Billy One Wing could fool anybody.” Julia took her cloak from the peg on the wall and threw it around her shoulders. She doused the oil lamp, then said, “Well, shall we go see the colonel?”

  “You’re a good teacher, Julia. Everybody agrees on that.”

  “My ma taught me to read and cipher. The rest I know comes from books.”

  “I’ll talk to the colonel first,” Shawn said. “Prepare the way.”

  “What difference does it make? You know he’ll fire me and throw me out of Dromore.”

  “If he does, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Run somewhere else, I guess. Just keep on running until Zeb Moss tires of chasing me.”

  Shawn thought for a moment, and then said, “Everything blew up this morning, Julia. Under different circumstances I would’ve said nothing to the colonel about your past, but suddenly you’re a danger to Dromore. You heard Silas Creeds. He means to do us harm if he can.”

  “I understand, Shawn. You must do what you have to do. I’ll survive.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Shawn offered again. “When we go back to the house, just go to your room and wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever the colonel decides.”

  “Is he down on whores?”

  “He’s down on anything or anyone that’s a threat to Dromore.”

  “And that includes me?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid it does,”

  Julia nodded. “Then I’ll do as you say.”

  She and Shawn walked to the door, but Julia stopped and looked up at the tall O’Brien brother. “Knowing what you’ve learned about me, could you love a woman like me, Shawn?”

  Shawn smiled. “What kind of question is that to ask a man?”

  “It’s simple enough. Could you love a woman like me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it the scar? In your eyes am I the troll that lives under the bridge?”

  “No, you’re a beautiful woman, Julia. I think that scar adds to your attractiveness, not detracts from it.”

  Julia absorbed that. “The reason I asked is I want a man to love me one day.”

  “One day a man will, depend on it.”

  “But not you?”

  “I’ve still got growing to do, Julia. Maybe a few years from now I could, but not right now.”

  “An honest answer.”

  “It’s how I feel.”

  “Will you give me your arm when we walk to the house?”

  “I’d be honored,” Shawn said.

  “So she’s a whore,” Luther Ironside said to the others gathered in the parlor of Dromore. “Damn me, but I knew it all along. I can just tell, you understand?”

  Colonel Shamus O’Brien winced. “Luther, you think every woman is a whore until she proves otherwise, usually to your disappointment.”

  “Shawn, how seriously do you take Silas Creeds’ threats?” Samuel, Shawn’s oldest brother, looked at him in earnest.

  “He’s a killer, Sam,” Shawn said. “I take anything he says seriously and so should you.”

  “Damn, I should’ve plugged him when I had the chance,” Ironside whined.

  “If it’s not him, it will be somebody else,” Shawn said. “Zebulon Moss wants his woman back and he’ll kill to get her.”

  “Why?” Samuel asked. “I mean, she’s a pretty woman, even with the scar an’ all, but if what I’ve heard about Moss is correct, he’s rich enough to get any woman he wants.”

  “How do you know, Sam?” Patrick, Shawn’s brother, asked.

  “You mean about Moss?”

  “Yeah. How do you know he’s rich?”

  “He owns half of Santa Fe. I heard that the last time I was up that way, and there are some who reckon ol’ Zeb got his start in the bank robbing profession. Of course they don’t say it out loud. Silas Creeds is just one of the thugs he hired to keep his business interests running smoothly.”

  “You mean his saloons?” Shamus asked.

  “Saloons, opium, prostitution, the protection racket, you name it. Zeb’s got a dirty finger in a lot of pies.”

  “Enough about Moss,” Shawn said. “We’re supposed to be talking about Julia Davenport.”

  “Hell, get rid of her, I say,” Ironside said. “We don’t want a whore teaching our kids. God knows what she’ll tell them.”

  “Luther,” Shamus said, “may I remind you that when you served in my regiment in the war you ran a few rackets of your own, including, but not limited to, selling rotgut whiskey to the new recruits and acquiring fancy women for their officers. And if memory serves me correctly, you and the quartermaster regularly traded coffee and flour to the Rebs for cigars, chewing tobacco, and Confederate scrip and made a tidy profit doing it.”

  Ironside opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel held up a silencing hand. “As for teaching, you taught my sons about whoring, drinking, cussing, gun fighting, and riding fast horses. Readings from Holy Scripture were nota
bly absent from your curriculum, as was righteous instruction on the path to eternal redemption.”

  Satisfied that he’d stated his case in an exemplary fashion, Shamus sat back in his wheelchair. “Now, Luther, no more about who should teach who, please. You are hardly qualified to have any opinions on the matter.”

  Patrick grinned. “I bet you’re sorry you spoke, Luther.”

  Ironside growled something under his breath and Shamus said, “What? What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Ironside said. “I didn’t give my opinion on nothing.”

  “And I should hope not,” Shamus said. “The very idea.”

  “Do you gentlemen mind if I say something?” Samuel’s wife Lorena interrupted.

  “Please do,” Shamus said, scowling at Ironside. “It will be a pleasant change to hear someone talk common sense for a change.”

  “We hired a teacher, not a past,” Lorena pointed out. “As it happens, Julia is an excellent teacher and the children love her. What more can we ask of her?”

  “Hear, hear,” Patrick said.

  “I don’t think it’s for men, including you, Luther, to sit in judgment on her. It was men who used and abused Julia in the past and if you send her packing, you’ll be continuing that abuse, all of you.”

  “Hear, hear,” Patrick said again.

  Shamus looked at him. “Patrick, don’t say that again.” To Lorena he said, “There is a possibility that she could—”

  “Probability,” Shawn interrupted.

  “Bring danger to Dromore. How do you address that, Lorena?”

  “Colonel, you’ve never shied away from danger before.”

  “True, but Miss Davenport is not kin. She’s a stranger to us. But she’s an employee of this ranch and deserves a fair hearing. She’s our schoolteacher and an important part of Dromore, no doubt about that.” Shamus turned to his sons. “Patrick, Samuel, and Shawn, your opinions, please.”

  “What about me?” Ironside said.

  “You’ve already made your feelings known, Luther,” Shamus said.

  “But I’ve changed my mind, Colonel. What Lorena said about us being no better than the men who abused her in the past kinda rang true with me.”

  “A most singular change of mind indeed, Luther,” Lorena said. “But of the greatest moment.” She looked around the study. “Well, what do the brothers O’Brien think?”

  Shawn cast his vote. “I’m for keeping her right here at Dromore.”

  “I agree.” Patrick nodded.

  “That sets fine with me,” Samuel agreed.

  “Colonel?” Lorena looked to her father-in-law.

  “I’ll think on this and give you my answer in the morning,” Shamus said. “I will pray to Our Lady of Good Counsel and beg her advice on this matter.”

  “Good. She’s a woman.” Lorena smiled.

  “And the virgin mother of God,” Shamus said.

  Chapter Four

  Gray old Uriah Tweedy came down from the Manzano Mountains astride a buckskin mustang leading a one-eyed Missouri pack mule. He turned in the saddle for a final look at the trail he’d taken.

  “Sleep tight, ol’ Ephraim,” he yelled. “I’ll be back in the spring.”

  Now that the bears were hibernating in their deep dens there would be no more hunting until they woke in spring sunshine and once again roamed the wild lands.

  As the snow swirled around him and the wind sighed cold, Tweedy dreamed of a soft bed with sheets and blankets and a bright patchwork quilt to keep the winter gloom at bay. And eggs. Sunnyside up. Fried in butter with thick slices of sourdough bread on the side and more butter, sweet and yellow as corn silk.

  But when he camped that night, Tweedy’s supper was as it had been for the past six months, bear meat and bacon so old the fat was sloughing off the lean, and little enough of that.

  After he ate, Tweedy crouched over a hatful of fire and contented himself with coffee, his pipe, and fond memories of the slender, graceful Hopi woman he’d lived with for nigh on five years. He’d named her Kajika, which in Hopi meant Walks Without Sound. She was half bobcat, half cougar, and all woman, and she’d made his days comfortable and his nights memorable. The Mescaleros had stolen her and though Tweedy searched high and low, he never found her again.

  He sighed and stirred the fire with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks that glowed bright scarlet and then died. It was a hell of a thing to lose a woman like that, a woman who walked without sound.

  He heard a sound. A twig cracked in the snow-flecked darkness and Tweedy stood, his .44-40 Henry in his hands. “Is that you, ol’ Ephraim?” he called out. “You should be abed.”

  Only the creak of the wind and the hush of the falling snow could be heard.

  “Ephraim, have you come for me?” Tweedy said into the night. “Have you counted how many of your kin I’ve shot an’ skun and come for a reckoning?

  “Drop the rifle, old man, or I’ll drill you square.”

  “That ain’t Ephraim,” Tweedy said. “It’s a skunk.”

  “Drop the rifle, I said.” The man’s voice was harsh and commanding, in no mood for conversation. “There’s two Winchesters on you and we don’t miss much.”

  The men came at Tweedy from his right and left, their rifles at the ready.

  Tweedy let go of the Henry and it dropped at his feet. “Surprised you didn’t gun me straight off. Ain’t that the way of trash like you?”

  The man to his right spoke first. “Thought about it, but we need your fire and grub and we don’t much feel like dragging your carcass through the brush in the dark. That’ll keep until mornin’.”

  “Considerate feller,” Tweedy said under his breath.

  Two men stepped into the firelight. They wore ragged mackinaws and jeans and looked as though they were missing their last six meals. Both had the wary, watchful eyes of predators and the Winchesters in their hands were oiled and well cared for.

  “Sit, pops,” the older of the two said. He wore a moth-eaten fur cap, the earflaps tied under his chin, and his feet were bound with rags, as were his companion’s.

  Tweedy reckoned that a man who can’t afford boots was poor indeed. “What do you want from me?”

  “Whatever’s your’n.”

  “I ain’t got much.”

  “Hoss, mule, rifle, shoes on your feet, clothes on your back, we’ll take it all,” the man said. “It’s a sight more’n we got.”

  “Coffee in the pot, boys,” Tweedy said, playing the kindly old-timer. But the man who hunted black bear and grizzly for a living had learned to pay close attention to everything around him, and his pale blue eyes searched for an opening. With riffraff like those two, just a second of time was all he’d need. When Uriah Tweedy put his mind to it, he was a sudden, dangerous man and he’d planted more than a few who’d figured otherwise. He was seventy years old, tough as a trail drive steak, and as enduring as an Apache.

  And he was salty. Too salty to allow a couple of yellow-bellied curs rob him of what was his.

  “What you got in your poke, pops?” The older man nodded to the burlap sack resting against Tweedy’s saddle.

  “Bear meat, sonny,” Tweedy said. “I had bacon, but that’s all gone. Was half rotten anyway.”

  “Then pour us coffee and burn us a couple bear steaks.”

  The younger man was anxious to get on with it. “Joe, I say we gun the old coot. He’s got eyes that have seen more’n their share o’ killing.”

  “Hey, pops, you’re creeping the hell out of my cousin Link,” the man called Joe said. “Now what am I gonna do with you, huh?”

  “No man wants to die,” Tweedy said.

  “Yeah, but I reckon you’ve already lived your three-score-and-ten, old-timer, so you’re long overdue fer dying.” Joe looked at the younger man. “All right, Link, after he cooks for us, I’ll gun him. I never was much of a trail cook myself.” Joe smiled. “That set all right with you, pops?”

  “Do I have, like, any choice in the
matter?” Tweedy asked.

  “Sure you do, pops. You kin get shot in the head or the belly.” Joe grinned. “Life’s just full of choices, ain’t it?”

  “Well, I’m not partial to getting gut shot,” Tweedy told him.

  “Then I’ll put a bullet in your head,” Joe said. “Unless you ruin them steaks, that is.”

  “I’ve got salt in my possibles bag,” Tweedy offered. “You like salt?”

  “Everybody likes salt, you crazy old bastard,” Link snarled. “Get it out and salt that bear meat.”

  Tweedy knuckled his forehead. “Right away, sonny. Just don’t start shootin’ at ol’ Uriah.”

  “Old man’s tetched,” Link said to Joe. “When you kill him, you’ll be doing him a favor.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, cousin.”

  Those were the last words he ever uttered.

  Tweedy picked up the buckskin possibles bag and pretended to root around inside, continuing to play the part of a confused old-timer.

  Then he moved. In one fluid, graceful motion he grabbed a Green River knife from the bottom of the bag and flung it at Joe. The five-inch blade slammed into the man’s throat to the hilt and Joe’s eyes popped wide; he knew he was a dead man.

  Tweedy didn’t hesitate for a second. He threw himself at the Henry rifle Joe had tossed aside and rolled on his back, the gun coming up fast. Link stood paralyzed for an instant, his eyes on his cousin down on hands and knees, gagging blood and phlegm.

  Tweedy needed no more time than that. He fired, cranked the rifle, and fired again, both bullets crashing into the center of Link’s chest. But the young man was game and managed to trigger a despairing shot at Tweedy. Hit high on his left shoulder, Tweedy rolled again and levered the Henry. But he had no need to shoot. Link was down and wasn’t moving.