The Lynching of Louie Sam (23 page)

“We could get a message to Governor Newell,” I go on. “We could write him a letter and tell him who the leaders of the posse were.”

“Aye,” he says, “but let's not fool ourselves. These are murderers. It's a dangerous business.”

“Not if there's enough of us.”

We've reached the edge of town. This is where Father should be stopping the wagon so that I can hop off and get to school, but he seems to have forgotten all about that, and I am not about to remind him.

“Perhaps I should pay Mr. Stevens a visit,” he says.

The Stevenses' sawmill is right on our way, but Father reins Mae and Ulysses to a halt. He hasn't forgotten, after all.

“Off to school with ye,” he tells me.

I jump down and he slaps the reins, calling to Mae and Ulysses to quicken their pace, like he can't wait to talk to Mr. Stevens. I'm heartened by the prospect of finding like-minded souls to band together in defiance of Bill Osterman and Dave Harkness.

I
CAN HEAR
M
ISS
C
ARMICHAEL
giving the morning lesson in mathematics to the senior class as I slip into the schoolhouse. She is not pleased with me for being late. I make my apologies and take my seat. Half listening to the lesson, I glance around the room at the seniors, boys and girls I've grown up with, wondering how many of their folks besides Abigail's might side with us. Tom Breckenridge's pa I know for sure stands with the posse leaders. There's Walter Hopkins, whose father, Bert, at the hotel keeps warning me to keep my mouth shut—so it's a fair bet that Mr. Hopkins won't be opening his own mouth any time soon. Kitty Pratt's father was the one who struck Louie Sam in the head with his rifle butt. Under ordinary circumstances, Mr. Pratt is a nice man, good with a story and with the fiddle. Maybe he looks back on that night with regret. Maybe secretly he's one of us.

By noon the day has turned warm. Miss Carmichael makes us take our lunch buckets outside into the sunshine. I see Kitty with Abigail, so I go over to them. They're sitting on a bench with Mary Hecht, who considers herself the queen bee even though she's skinny and plain-looking compared to Abigail.

“Why were you late this morning?” Abigail asks.

“I had some business to attend to,” I tell her.

“You're making yourself sound awful important, George,” remarks Mary.

“You certainly are,” agrees Kitty, pulling a blond braid through her fingers. “What kind of business would that be?”

All three of them are staring at me waiting for an answer. If it were just Abigail and Kitty, I'd tell them. But Mary I'm not so sure of. I remember seeing her pa that night, one of the pack. I have no idea where Mr. Hecht might stand.

“Cat got your tongue?” snips Mary.

“Stop teasing him, Mary,” Abigail tells her, getting up.

She takes me by my good arm and leads me away from them.

“You got to be more careful,” Abigail tells me, keeping her voice low.

“They don't know what kind of business I'm talking about.”

“George, everybody knows what kind of business! Walter Hopkins has been going around saying you went to the hotel yesterday to spill the beans to that detective.”

I look over to Walter. He's standing at the edge of the schoolyard with Tom and Pete. Pete's at least a hand taller than either of the other boys. He lets out a big laugh at something Tom is saying.

“But I didn't talk to the detective,” I tell Abigail. “He left town.”

“It doesn't matter whether you talked to him or not. The damage is done.”

“What damage?”

She purses her lips like she's afraid to say. She gives a nervous look over to where Kitty and Mary are watching us.

“We're not giving up,” I tell her. “My father wants to call a meeting of the like-minded. We're going to send a letter to Governor Newell, telling him who the leaders of the posse were.”

She gets a frightened look.

“Are you crazy?” she whispers.

“My father's going to talk to your father about it,” I tell her. “We'll be okay if we stick together. Strength in numbers.”

“You told your pa about the rifle, didn't you?” she says, still whispering. “You promised to keep that secret!”

“All I told him was that your pa sides with us,” I tell her. She's making me mad. I want her to be better than this. I want her to do what's right. “What's the use in thinking the lynching was wrong if we're not prepared to stand up and say so?”

She seems a little ashamed of herself at that. But she's jumpy as a cat, glancing around at Mary and Kitty, and over to Tom Breckenridge like she doesn't want to be seen talking to me. I calm down and try for her sake to appear like we're speaking normally and not arguing.

“Do you think Kitty's pa might agree with us? Or Mary's?” I say. “Can you ask them to tell their folks about the letter?”

“I can't ask Mary,” she replies. “She's so stuck on Tom Breckenridge she agrees with every fool thing he says. Kitty … maybe.”

“It's the right thing to do,” I tell her.

“You don't have to be so high and mighty about it, George,” she shoots back.

She's got some of her old spit back. For some reason that makes me smile. And then she's smiling back at me. We bend our heads together so people will think we're having sweet talk, when in fact we spend the remaining minutes of the lunch hour discussing who else might be persuaded to pass the message on to their parents. Ellen Wallace's father rode at the back of the posse—maybe that was because he had doubts about being there. Donny Erskine's pa wasn't there at all, due to his cow calving that night. But maybe that was just an excuse. Abigail says she'll talk to them, that it's safer for everybody if they're seen talking to her instead of me.

When we head back into the schoolroom after lunch, I get the feeling that Tom Breckenridge is keeping his eye on me.

A
T HOME IN THE EVENING
, once the younger children are in bed, Father says that Mr. Stevens agrees that something has to be done. He and Mrs. Stevens are willing to hold the meeting at their place, so including Mam that makes four voting citizens prepared to stand up and tell the truth. Mrs. Stevens believes Mrs. Thompson may be persuaded to join us, as well as Dr. Thompson.

“It can't hurt to have the town doctor on our side,” says Mam, though something in her voice says she has no more forgiven him than I have.

“There may be others, too,” I tell them. “Abigail is spreading the word.”

“If we're to succeed,” says Father, drawing on his pipe, “we must act swiftly and discreetly. We can't be sure of who we can trust.”

The meeting has been set for tomorrow evening. Mam insists that Agnes and Joe be invited, too, but Father thinks it would be a mistake to invite the Indians. He says it's one thing to right a wrong that's been done to one of them, but quite another to start treating them like they have equal say with the settlers. As Indians, Agnes and Joe aren't voting citizens, anyway. John pipes up that he agrees with Mam about the Hamptons, but Father tells him to shush.

So we have a plan. Tomorrow night the right-thinking people of the Nooksack Valley will gather to sign a letter to Governor Newell asking that he order the arrest of Bill Osterman, Dave Harkness, Bill Moultray, Robert Breckenridge, and Bert Hopkins on the charge of leading the lynch mob that unlawfully hung Louie Sam.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I
WAKE UP
T
HURSDAY MORNING
with my nerves on edge. I wish we could have the meeting right now instead of waiting for tonight. With all the enemies that homesteaders are used to facing, from wild animals to wild savages, it's a bad feeling to know that your worst enemies are right here among you, the very people you used to rely on to help stave off all those other enemies. And it's frightening to know that Bill Osterman and Dave Harkness are the sorts that won't think twice about taking somebody else's life if it'll make their own lives safer, richer, or more comfortable. In my view, the pair of them are double murderers. First they killed Mr. Bell, then they killed Louie Sam. Who pulled the trigger or yanked the rope tight isn't the point. The point is that those two men wanted the other two dead, and dead is how they managed to leave them.

Father seems in a fine mood when he heads out to the fields with John to start seeding the barley. He's like his old self, his own man again at last. But Mam must be rattled like me, because she snaps at little Teddy to hush when he cries from his cradle while she's trying to make breakfast. That's the first time I've heard Mam say a harsh word to the baby, so grateful has she been that he's found his lungs and his appetite. Gypsy starts barking at something out in the yard, making us jumpier still. Then there comes a knock at the door. We all feel uneasy at that knock. Who could be coming to visit with the sun barely up?

“It's probably Agnes. Let her in, George,” says Mam, wiping her hands on her apron.

When I pull open the door, to my surprise there's nobody there. Then I notice a horse hitched to the post—Mr. Bell's horse, the one that Pete and I rode when we followed the lynch mob north. A crazy thought comes into my head, that maybe Mr. Bell's ghost rode the horse here as a sign to show us we're doing the right thing, avenging his murder. When I step outside, I see just how foolish a notion that is. Mrs. Bell is standing a few paces off, admiring a dogwood bush that's started to blossom. She's wearing the getup I saw her in when I mistook her for a man a couple of weeks ago, outside the Nooksack Hotel—a wide-rimmed hat and an oilskin coat. She gives me a broad smile.

“George!” she says. “Just the fella I'm looking to see.”

Mam comes outside. So shocked is she at the sight of Annette Bell on her stoop that she just stares at her saying nothing. The lack of welcome doesn't seem to trouble Mrs. Bell.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gillies,” she says. “Fine morning, isn't it?”

“Yes, very fine,” says Mam.

Her words are polite enough, but Mam's expression has gone cold and she makes no mention of inviting Mrs. Bell inside for a cup of tea and some breakfast, as she would any other passerby. If Mam's alarm bells are going off the way mine are, she's thinking it's an evil omen for Mrs. Bell to be showing up here now, what with the discussions we've been having about her and her dead husband.

“You're a long way from home, Mrs. Bell. What brings you this way so early?” asks Mam.

“I've come to see your George,” she answers.

“What would you be wanting with my boy?”

Mam isn't sounding the least bit polite now. In fact, she sounds downright unfriendly. Mrs. Bell smiles, unperturbed.

“A word, is all. George is almost a grown man, Mrs. Gillies. Surely he needn't ask for his ma's permission to speak with the mother of one of his friends.”

“Jimmy isn't my friend,” I tell her.

It comes out ruder than I intended. Mrs. Bell gives me a look. She almost seems hurt.

“I meant Pete,” she replies. My face must look quizzical, because she adds, “Didn't Pete tell you? Mr. Harkness and I are to be married, as soon as all this unpleasantness settles down. So you see, I will soon be Pete's mother as well as Jimmy's.”

Mam seems not to know what to say to that, nor do I. It's hard to know which is more scandalous—her living in sin with Mr. Harkness, or her marrying him so quick upon the murder of her other husband.

“George,” says she, not waiting for us to find our tongues, “will you walk down toward the creek with me?”

Mam gives me a look that tells me not to go with her, but Mrs. Bell has put me on the spot saying that a man wouldn't let his mam tell him what to do. Besides, she seems all gentle and nice this morning. She starts down the path to our mill, and I follow her. She waits until we're well clear of the house before she starts talking.

“People are saying, George, that you overheard something you shouldn't have when you spent the night at my house this past Sunday.”

So that's what this is about. My mind is working fast. Other than Pete, Sheriff Leckie is the only one I told about that. Which one of them spilled the beans? My panic must show, because she rests her hand on the cast on my broken arm to calm me.

“I like you, George. That's why I've come here. To save you from yourself.”

“I don't understand,” I say.

“Sometimes young men think they're being noble, when what they're really being is pig-headed. No good can come from going around spreading rumors about your neighbors, folks you might wind up living beside and doing business with for the rest of your life.”

I have no idea what to say to that, but she doesn't seem to expect an answer. We've reached the mill house. She looks around and smiles at the pretty scene of the millpond. The water is smooth and calm and birds are chirping. She breathes in the fresh morning air.