Bachelor's Puzzle (35 page)

“We just have some business with him.” The man scowled. “But whether we’re the law or not, you better be telling me the truth. He’s a scoundrel that don’t deserve protecting.”

“Ha!” Ada barked gamely. “The last thing I want to do is protect that no-good charlatan.If I could help you, I would. You are welcome to him.”

The man studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Maybe she had overdone it, but then, what she said was true, wasn’t it? She didn’t care what happened to that fraud.

Without even a word of thanks, the three riders wheeled around their mounts and rode away.

Ada’s knees suddenly felt weak, and she swayed on her feet. Ellie put a steadying arm around her.

“Are you all right, Mama?”

“Those are bad men,” Ada breathed.

“And they are looking for Zack,” Ellie said tremulously.

Ada wanted to comfort her daughter, but perhaps it was best for Ellie to see what kind of man this Zack was, to be involved with that sort of men. She had always told her children, “You are judged by the company you keep.” Then again, those men certainly were not friends of Zack’s.If they were his enemies, what did that say about him?

Beau Cutter didn’t know if he should believe the woman or not. Yet after what he’d heard about Hartley from some fellows in St. Helens, he could see no reason why she would protect him. Then again, women were strange creatures.

“Let’s go into town and ask around,” he told his companions.

“Town? You mean back to St. Helens?” asked one.

“No. This town, or what there is of it.” Someone in St. Helens had directed him to the Newcomb place as the best place to get information on Hartley, so Cutter had gone directly there. Now he rode back to the town, which consisted of a post office and a few houses.

There was no one in the post office, so Cutter went to the adjacent store where a woman was working behind the counter and two men were looking at a display of hunting knives.

Cutter tipped his hat at the female clerk. He knew that in these small villages you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said congenially.

“What can I do for you?” asked the woman, a middle-aged farmwife who probably kept the store for her husband.

“I’m looking for this man.” Cutter took another handbill from his pocket. He’d left the last one with the Newcomb woman.

The woman nodded. “Yeah, he was here. L eft over a week ago.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

Cutter could tell he wouldn’t get more from the woman and was about to fold up the handbill and replace it in his pocket when one of the customers spoke up.

“Hey, I think I seen that fellow.” He turned to his companion. “Bill, didn’t we meet him up at Samuel’s camp?”

Bill moved closer and peered at the handbill. “Sure, that was him.”

“When was that?” Cutter asked.

“Well,” said the first man, “we first saw him six, seven days ago, worked with him a few days, then me and Bill quit. You ever work a lumber camp?It’s blistering work, that is!”

“We figured there ought to be an easier way to make money,” put in Bill.

Cutter frowned. What would Hartley be doing in a lumber camp? Was he foolish enough to have stuck around these parts after what he did to the folks here? Could be these lumberjacks were mistaken. But thus far Hartley had never done the expected, so why should he start now?

THIRTY

Zack had not traveled more than twenty miles from Main-town. After making his confession to Calvin, he had headed toward Astoria. There he could get a boat and fairly quickly be long gone from Maintown, the Newcombs, and everyone else. Though his situation had not improved from when he had first left Portland, except that now he had a better horse and a little money from his pay at the sawmill, he knew going any other direction was foolish.

But he had ridden less than a mile from the Newcomb farm when he realized he couldn’t leave this place, not forever. Only as he was forced to flee town did he know just how much the last couple of months had meant to him. Maybe if he faced everyone and confessed his misdeeds, they would forgive him and accept him back, not as their minister, of course, but just as a neighbor. For the first time in his life he could see himself settled down in one place, perhaps working a small farm, raising children with a wife.

The appeal of this dream made him rein in his horse and head north instead of west. He could get work for a while in a lumber camp—not the one Boyd worked at but one he’d heard of near Veronia, where he wouldn’t know anyone. He’d give the folks in Maintown time to cool off and then he could return. Why shouldn’t they accept him back? He hadn’t done too badly toward them. He’d given some of them good counsel. He’d gotten the Baxter brothers back to church; he’d consoled the Cook family.

Yet he knew he didn’t deserve to be accepted by them, that any good he had done had been thoroughly offset by his lies. If he returned, it would have to be in utter humility. He would have no problem with that, either. And even if they rejected him, he still knew he had to face these folks. He had to look each one in the eye and apologize for what he had done. Slithering away like the snake he was did not sit well with him. Maybe living in William Locklin’s boots had done him some good. The old Zack would have had no qualms about hightailing it out of town one step ahead of the law.

But this new fellow wanted to be a better man.

Nevertheless, practicality told him he best wait until the folks simmered down and he could return without fear of being strung up by his toes. Two days later he rode into Thomas Samuel’s lumber camp and got hired. And it wasn’t long afterward that he began to lose his resolve. For one thing he remembered the missing money. They might forgive him for the lies, but one hundred and fifty dollars was a small fortune. They could not forgive that. If he returned, he would doubtless be prosecuted and jailed.

Zack was put to work with a crew building a skid road, which would be used to move cut logs from the forest to the river. Oxen would haul the logs on the skid road to the water, where they would await the first big rain of the year, usually in November, to be carried by water to the nearest seaport.

At the end of his first day of work he went to the mess hall for supper. Among the fifty men gathered who worked the camp at various jobs, Zack saw a familiar face.

“Hey, Reverend!” called Tommy Donnelly.

For a brief moment Zack considered ignoring the call. But the last thing he wanted was for attention to be drawn to him, and it certainly would be if the men thought he was a minister. Tommy was about to call out again, so Zack waved back and hurried over to the boy.

“Hi, Tommy,” Zack said.

“What you doing here, Rev—”

Zack cut in, “Tommy,I ’d appreciate it if you not call me”— he pitched his voice lower—“Reverend.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll explain it to you later, okay?”

“What’ll I call you, then?”

“Zack.”

“But ain’t your name—?”

“I’ll tell you later.”I n the din of fifty men hunkering down for a meal, Zack could have conversed easily enough without being heard, but he was suddenly nervous. Maybe there were more men here who knew him. Some lumberjacks had come to his services, now that he thought about it. He looked all around but didn’t see any other familiar faces.

After supper he and Tommy went outside to talk. The August night was warm, lit by a full moon, the fragrance of cut wood strong in the air. They hitched themselves up on the edge of the wood retaining wall that bordered a slope of wooded land at the back of the bunkhouse.

Knowing that Tommy was a bit slow in grasping things, Zack began as directly as he could. “Tommy,I was just pretending to be a minister. My reason for doing so is a long story, but mainly I just needed to hide out for a while.”

“Was it a joke or something?”

“No, not at all. There were some men pursuing me, and I didn’t think they would ever find me if I was a minister, using a different name and all.”

Tommy rubbed his chin, nodding as if he really understood.

Maybe he did.I t wasn’t such a complex story when boiled down like that.

“But you preached sermons, and you buried folks. I . . . well,I was looking on, hidden in the woods, when you buried my pa.” A hint of anguish flickered across the boy’s brow; then he brightened. “It was a fine service, too. You done a good job.

You sure you ain’t no real minister?”

“Everyone thought you were long gone,” Zack commented. He was just as curious about Tommy’s story as the boy was about his.

“I weren’t never exactly sure my pa was dead till I saw the funeral.I couldn’t leave before I was sure.”

“Why, Tommy?”

“If he weren’t dead and I left, who’d be there to protect my ma?” Tommy said matter-of-factly.

Zack’s stomach tightened. Was it true, then? Tommy killed his father on purpose? Afraid to ask that direct question, Zack tried to skirt the issue. “Did your father hurt your mother, too?”

“Not while he had me around.”

“Is that why you never left before now?”

“I figured my pa had to beat on someone—someone weaker than him.If not me, then surely it’d be my ma.”

Zack had always wondered why Tommy had stuck it out under such deplorable conditions for so long. Now he had to question his own actions when he had left home so young. Had his departure merely opened his mother up to take his stepfather’s abuse. He had never considered that until now.

“That’s most admirable, Tommy,” Zack said with all sincerity.

Tommy shrugged, then said, “Reverend, if you wasn’t a real minister, does that mean my pa wasn’t buried proper, and his soul is floating out there somewhere like a ghost or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, he don’t deserve no better anyway.” For a seventeen-year-old, Tommy’s tone held a man’s share of bitterness.

“Do you want to talk about what happened in the woods?” Zack asked. Maybe it was true that confession was good for the soul. Perhaps it would help ease Tommy’s bitterness if he could talk about that day. Zack hardly realized how naturally he fit back into the role of counselor. Maybe being a minister had indeed rubbed off on him.

“I know folks think I kilt my pa of a purpose.”

“Most are ready to believe it was an accident.”

Tommy shifted uncomfortably. Finally he said, “But it weren’t a accident.I shot him, Reverend—”

“Zack.” Zack didn’t want Tommy to confuse any of this with some spiritual confession.If Tommy wanted to talk as if to a friend, fine, but nothing else.

“Okay, Zack. I shot my pa. That low-down, dirty—” He stopped abruptly, then went on, “Hey, if you ain’t no minister, I can cuss in front of you, can’t I?”

“Yeah, you can, but I get the gist of what you mean,” Zack replied. “Your father pushed you to do what you did, right?”

“He was drunk,” Tommy said. “He was aiming his shotgun at me and then he fired a couple of times—into the air, but still it scared the stuffing outta me ’cause his aim ain’t none too steady when he been drinking. He told me he was gonna make a man of me, not some churchified sissy. He was real mad I had started going to church, you see. I started to run and he run after me, but he tripped over a rock and went down, letting go of the gun.I grabbed the shotgun and aimed it at him. I wanted to scare him like he scared me, but he just laughed at me. Said I didn’t have the guts to shoot him, and he came toward me again. I knew if he got hold of the gun again, he’d kill me for sure. So I fired. I fired two or three times, even after he went down. I just couldn’t stop. When I realized what I had done,I ran.”

“It sounds like self-defense to me, Tommy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It wasn’t murder. A fellow can kill to defend himself. That’s the law.”

“Don’t matter much, does it? My ma probably hates me for what happened.”

“She knows what kind of man your father was,” Zack said. “I don’t think she’d hate you for defending yourself. I do know she is worried sick about you.”

“I don’t want her to feel bad.”

“She’s your mother. She loves you.” Zack had never before regretted what he’d done in leaving his mother. Now he understood as never before how selfish he’d been. His mother had loved him, too, even if she had been too weak to protect him. He had caused her suffering and pain she did not deserve.

“I miss home terribly,” Tommy said woefully. “That’s why I only got this far. I thought maybe I could go back home someday.”

“You and I are a lot alike, Tommy.”

Tommy laughed with a snort. “Me and you? I wish I was like you, Zack. Why, you’re smart, and all the girls like you. You was brave enough to beat up my pa. The folks in Maintown thought real high of you. They just snicker at me.”

“They don’t think highly of me anymore.”

“ ’Cause you faked being a preacher?”

“Because I lied to them and used them. They probably believe I was mocking them and their God.”

“Was you?”

“No,” Zack replied unequivocally. On the contrary he had never respected people more. And as for their God . . . he had never intended mockery. But now he saw that every time he had prayed a prayer and preached a word without meaning it, he had been showing contempt for those very things.I t didn’t matter that in the last few days since leaving town he’d brought back to mind many of the things he had memorized and realized the truth of the words, the words of Reverend Robert E. Markus and of his God. Could he ever make up for what he had done?

“Are you ever going back?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know. What about you?”

“Be easier going back with a friend.”

Zack nodded.

Over the next several days, Zack and Tommy talked a lot about these things.If one’s first impression of Tommy was that he was slow-witted, Zack quickly saw that the boy possessed a great deal of wisdom.

“I don’t think the folks in town would hold a grudge against you,” Tommy said one day. “I think they’d forgive you.”

“How can you say that when many of them were never very nice to you?”