Destined to Die (4 page)

WILL Gershel nodded for Barnaby Gold to enter the house and the black-clad youngster complied with the tacit instruction. Stepped into a square hallway as neat and clean as might be expected from the well-kept exterior of the building.

‘Pot of coffee, Martha,’ Gershel said as he came in behind. And paused out of habit to wipe his boots on the threshold mat.

The woman, her shock giving way to anxious curiosity, seemed pleased to be offered an escape from the situation. And turned to go through the further of two doors on the right.

‘Parlour’s first on the left, son. Go on in and sit yourself down.’ He raised his voice. ‘Girl, come on in the house! Have Mrs Gershel see to where you said you been hurt! Jesse, put the horses in the barn!’

The parlour was perhaps twice as large as that at the Engel homestead. The furniture was of the same plain design and construction, but there was more of it. Rugs on the floor, some pictures on the walls and various ornaments were scattered about. Some good quality china was displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet.

Gold sat down on one of the fan-backed Windsor chairs at the long central table. Gershel sat
at the other end of the table, placed the gun-belt down in front of him.

‘Me and Jesse was just in from the fields for coffee, son. So it’ll be right up. Don’t usually have it in the parlour.’

‘Is it all right to smoke, sir?’

‘Only allowed in the parlour after supper. Not from these parts, are you?’

‘Fairfax, down in the south-east section of the territory for eight years. New York before that.’

‘Us Tennessee folks been settled in this neighbourhood for fifteen years. Most of us. Began to move out soon as we knew war was sure to come.’

Two sets of feminine footfalls sounded in the hallway.

‘You go into mine and Mr Gershel’s bedroom, Joanne. Be with you in a moment’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The woman entered the parlour carrying a wooden tray on which stood a coffee pot, cream jug, sugar bowl and two cups in saucers. And was embarrassed by a quizzical look from her
husband when she set the tray down on the table.

‘I just get the best stuff out natural when there’s company, Will.’

‘Just pour, Martha.’

‘As it comes, lady,’ Gold said in response to her tacit query.

She filled both cups with black coffee and placed each before a man. Then said, as she went to the door: ‘Well, you’re talkin’ to this young man as if he’s an ordinary visitor.’

‘Just reckon it’ll be better if all the interested parties are present when I hear what happened.’

She paused in the doorway. ‘And what about poor Virgil and Mary-Ann?’

‘Ain’t no doubt but they’re dead?’ Gershel raised his eyebrows to Gold.

‘And half-buried, sir.’

Martha could not quite control a gasp.

‘Then there ain’t nothin’ we can do to help the Engels, Martha.’

She left, her footfalls rapped on the polished floor of the hallway. Then a door closed.

‘Somethin’ you should know, son.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t set no store by what Jesse said about the Engels bein’ gunshot to death. I saw it the same way. You carryin’ these irons.’

He prodded the gun-belt.

Barnaby Gold clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Then both men sipped their coffee. While a fly buzzed angrily and kept banging against the closed window, seeking escape.

‘What you doin’ hereabouts?’

‘Passing through.’

‘We don’t usually get your type around here. Up in Bacall sometimes, maybe.’

‘My type?’

Another prod at the gun-belt. ‘Man who carries this kind of rig, I’d say he knows how to use the irons.’

‘I’m learning, sir.’

Jesse Gershel had made a lot of noise in taking the wagon and horses around to the rear of the house. Now he clumped in loudly through the rear door. His footfalls sounded sullen, which was how his acned face looked when he entered the parlour.

‘You want coffee, you’ll have to bring a cup, boy.’

‘I don’t want coffee, Pa! I want to know what he done to Joanne Engel!’

He glared his hostility at Gold, then dropped into a padded rocker to one side of the fireplace. And clasped the arms so tightly his knuckles showed white.

The bedroom door across the hall opened and Will Gershel started. ‘Reckon we’re goin’ to find that out...’

‘You animal!’ Martha snarled as she appeared on the threshold of the parlour, her cheeks pale and her lips quivering. ‘What kind of man are you to do that to a mere child?’

She was holding something in both hands. A piece of fabric, pink and white in colour. Baraaby Gold shifted his gaze away from Jesse, who looked as anguished as his mother, and recognised what it was Martha was holding. Before she displayed it by extending it forward and allowing it to unfurl. The tattered remains of the gingham dress that Joanne had donned after changing from her nightgown. But instead of just the one tear, it now had many. From neckline to waist at the front, from hem to waist at the side, some lesser damage at the back and one sleeve almost ripped off.

‘It had to be while I was washing up in her parents’ bedroom,’ Gold said.

‘I’ll tell you when it’s time to have your say,’ Will Gershel growled, and punctuated the words with the click of the hammer being thumbed back on the wood-butted Peacemaker.

Gold merely glanced at the man holding one of his own guns on him. Then returned his attention to the doorway, where Joanne had moved up, head bowed and hands clasped in front of her, beside Martha.

‘The poor child had the presence of mind to put this back on under a fresh dress, Will.’

‘She hurt like she said?’

His wife tossed the ruined dress on to a small table just inside the doorway and nodded. Was embarrassed again as she looked between Will and Jesse.

‘We ain’t drinkin’ in no bar, woman! Ain’t none of us goin’ to get evil pleasure from what you say.’

Martha stared at the fly that was still attempting vainly to penetrate the window. ‘Bruises here and here. And here. Scratches here and here. Some blood down here that isn’t from any cut. Even teeth marks here.’

She used just one hand to indicate on her own fine body where the marks showed on the adolescent flesh of Joanne Engel. First both shoulders and buttocks. Then the breasts. Next the thighs. Finally low down on the belly, from one hip to the other.

‘Kill him, Pa, kill him!’ Jesse groaned tearfully.

‘He hurt me real bad, Mr Gershel,’ the girl added, head still bowed. ‘But not for that. He has to pay for what he done to my mommy and daddy. He shot them down in cold blood. Then he done these things to me while they was dead in the next room.’

Barnaby Gold ignored Jesse and Joanne. To hold Will Gershel’s steady gaze. His hands lay on the tabletop, thumbs hooked beneath it. Ready to hurl it upwards at the merest hint that the man holding the gun was about to squeeze the trigger.

‘Ain’t no sense in my Martha makin’ all that up, son.’

‘No point in me bringing the girl here if I’d—’

‘Why you done that is why I didn’t allow Jesse to blast you full of shot.’

Gershel nodded twice as he said this, then looked across at his son. Barnaby Gold loosened his grip on the edge of the table but left his hands there. Also looked toward Jesse and could still not be totally certain he was the young man who rode away from the Engel homestead in such a hurry. The rider had not been wearing a bib apron and a CSA forage cap.

‘It was the first time you ever stayed away from home all night, boy.’

‘Will!’ Martha snapped, angry and anxious. Jesse swallowed hard. ‘Like I already told you, Pa! I was drinking in the Riverside Hotel! The people there will tell you I was! I had one or two more than I should’ve. Ridin’ home, I felt sick to my stomach. Stopped to rest and just fell asleep.’

Gershel was looking back at Gold again and now he nodded. ‘You told me, boy. And now the stranger here has heard you. Knows you claim there are folks in town can back up that you was drinkin’ in the hotel till late. You wanna tell your version now, son?’

Gold did so and Gershel looked away from him only once - to glance at his wife when the young man at the other end of the table took out a cheroot and lit it. But the houseproud Martha did not break her concentration on what was being said. Gold left the cheroot tin open on the table and dropped the dead match and then ash into its lid.

‘I didn’t!’ Joanne cried from the doorway beside Martha Gershel as soon as Gold was finished. ‘I didn’t say that about Jesse! When he’d hurt me that way he started to ask me things!
About if I had a boy and all! I told him me and Jesse was kinda walking out! He asked me where Jesse lived and I told him! He said he didn’t want to leave me home with my dead folks! He said he’d bring me here! But that I wasn’t to say what happened! To say that mommy and daddy hadn’t come home! Only after he’d gone was I to tell you what really happened, Mr Gershel! If I said anything while he was still here, he’d kill me! And you and Mrs Gershel and Jesse, too!’

She blurted out the denials so fast that many of the words ran together. And she was breathless at the end of it. Sagged against Martha, who encircled her shoulders with a supporting and comforting arm.

Will Gershel listened to her stoically without looking at her, his eyes and the gun still concentrating on Barnaby Gold - who revealed no facial response to what the girl was saying.

‘Like you to stub out that cheroot, son. And put your arms down at your sides. Jesse, you go out to the barn and bring enough rope to tie the stranger to his chair.’

‘What you goin’ to do, Will?’ Martha asked fearfully.

‘Get some help, woman. The killin’ of Virgil and Mary-Ann and what’s been done to the girl, it’s too big for us to handle alone.’

Jesse was already on his way to do his father’s bidding. Joanne tried to meet his eyes as he went past her, but he pointedly avoided this. Gold continued to smoke.

‘You goin’ to take him to Sheriff Polk?’

Gershel grunted and scowled. ‘You know that ain’t our way, woman! This is country trouble. No business of Floyd Polk.’

Once out of the house, Jesse must have run to the barn and back again. There was a triumphant smile on his face until he came by his mother and Joanne to re-enter the parlour.

‘You want to take a leak or anythin’?’ Gershel asked.

‘No.’

‘All right. Now you best do what I told you.’ He got up from his chair and moved along the side of the table. ‘Or I’ll put a bullet in a kneecap. Hear tell that’s real painful.’

Martha gasped.

Barnaby Gold crushed out the cheroot and dropped his arms to his sides. ‘Okay. Just wish you believed me as much as I believe you.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE rope was coiled four times around his chest and arms to hold him to the back of the chair and three times around his thighs and the seat.

Jesse did this, breathing hard as if it required a great deal of effort, while Martha took Joanne back to the bedroom, insisting she should rest.

Will watched in silence and, after Gold was secured in the chair, slotted the Peacemaker back in the holster and took the gun-belt off the table.

Then: ‘Be back in three or maybe four hours at the most, stranger. Reckon you’re goin’ to get mighty uncomfortable, but we don’t have anywhere on the place to just lock you in. Where you couldn’t get out of. Ain’t no use tellin’ you not to worry. Can just say other folks will give you as fair a hear in’ as I have.’

Barnaby Gold clicked his tongue.

Gershel shook his head, puzzled. ‘You’re a strange one and no mistake, son.’

‘It’s been said before.’

‘Let’s go, Pa’

‘One thing, Mr Gershel.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Appreciate it if you’d see he took proper care of my horse.’

Gershel nodded and started for the door, carrying the gun-belt.

‘It ain’t your horse I got anythin’ against!’ Jesse snarled.

‘Don’t kick a man when he’s down, boy!’ his father said with equal anger.

‘That’s when it’s easiest to do,’ Gold murmured as the man and boy went into the hallway, out of earshot.

The term ‘strange one’ and many similar expressions had been used about Barnaby Gold ever since childhood. At free school in New York City. During the six years he worked with his father in the funeral parlour there, and then in the small town of Fairfax and the neighbouring larger community of Standing.

Strange because he was like no other child or young man of his age that those he came into contact with had ever met. An outsider who appeared to enjoy only his own company, always seemed to be detached from his surroundings, even in a crowd. A personality so solitary that he
gave the impression of being aloof. Which acted to irritate certain people who were not prepared to accept such a misfit in their society.

At school there had been fights. Totally one-sided for a long time, while Barnaby Gold took his unwarranted punishment - convinced he was not good at juvenile brawling. Until one winter’s night with his mother recently dead and his father drunk, he responded to an impulse to retaliate. Lashed out at those parts of his opponent’s body where he could remember being hurt the most.