our builders finished yesterday and they have done a lovely job, and we can sleep secure now. So we did. We fed the cats and went back to bed for a lie-in.
4 Don’t Poke the Bear, part 2
Luke made his way, as directed over his meal, to the schoolhouse.
He was sorry to make the children suffer fear for longer than they had to; but saving the banker’s life was more important.
Three men hovered near the schoolhouse. Luke emerged from the shadows with his finger to his lips.
“Fathers?” he asked.
The men nodded.
“The schoolmarm has been screaming; I think that man hurt her real bad,” said one.
Luke looked at him.
“And if he got her with child?”
“She should die first,” said one of the others.
“I... I dunno,” said the one he had spoken to.
“Can’t have a schoolmarm with a child, can you?” said the third.
“Your town and its folk really are disgusting,” said Luke. “What if it was your sister in there, trying to do her best for the children by letting the bastard take her instead of killing the little ones?”
“My sister would know better than to let him,” said one.
“Considering the grown men in this town let him shoot your banker, where were you in the letting him do that stakes?”
“He wouldn’t threaten a woman with a weapon,” said one. “Men don’t.”
“You stupid, naive fool,” said Luke. “What part of holding her and the children hostage does not imply killing her or the kids if you try to rush him?”
They dropped their eyes.
“Well, if you can stay quiet and out of the way, I’ll fetch your children out, and you can see them all home,” said Luke. “They will be traumatised, probably will have soiled themselves, and they’ll have nightmares for a long while.”
“Why didn’t you come before?” asked one, truculently.
“Because your fool sheriff locked me up without ascertaining the facts of who I am,” said Luke. “And yes, I could have come straight here, and shot it out with Cathcart.”
“Why didn’t you?” demanded the truculent one.
“Because I am hoping to bring your children out alive, you stupid bastard.”
The man bunched his fists.
“Nobody calls me a....”
Luke laid him out.
“Do any of the rest of you want to risk your children’s lives?” he asked with heavy sarcasm.
The others subsided. Luke sneered; and without further ado, vanished into the shadows.
The school house was a little bigger than the average claim shanty, with a window each side. As there was a lamp burning inside, Luke slithered round to the eastern side, and took the risk of a glance within, stood at the side of the window. The four children still there sat at their desks in motionless horror. The schoolmistress, hardly more than a child herself, lay unmoving on the floor, her skirts pushed up and bloodied. The man sat on the desk at the front, sneering at the hapless children. There was a ceiling to the room. No apparent trapdoor.
Luke slid round to the entrance, sliding in with silent care. This led to a cloakroom, and here a ladder led to a trapdoor. Luke went up it, and into the roof space, used as storage. He replaced the trap and made his way past the chimney where the tortoise stove’s pipe led.
There were shorter pieces of plank around the chimney hole. And gaps, blocked with small chocks of wood.
Luke gently drew out the chocks, one at a time, holding two together where they wedged each other in.
He could see Cathcart.
Lying on his belly, his gun at an unnatural feeling angle, it would be the shot of his life.
He breathed slowly, evenly, and then, with his lungs full, took up the slack on the trigger, letting his breath out as he carefully, gently, pulled the trigger.
The roar was deafening in the confined space, and he rapidly recocked the trigger for a second shot.
It was not necessary.
The red cloud which had bloomed where the single shot went from earhole to earhole was enough to tell him that he had pulled off the shot of his life.
No more need for finesse; Luke kicked the planks out from where they were lightly tacked to the beams of the ceiling, and dropped down.
“Get out of here; your fathers are waiting for you,” he said to the three boys and a girl who were too stunned yet to scream.
They fled into the cloakroom.
Luke checked that Cathcart was dead.
Then he went to the young school mistress.
“Ma’am, do you have anyone at home to whom to take you?” he asked.
“N... no,” said the girl.
“Then I’ll take you somewhere you will be safe,” said Luke, effortlessly picking her up in his arms.
He went the back route to the banker’s house and knocked on the door. Mrs. Spence opened it, and gasped.
“He raped her,” he said. “She’s hardly conscious; will you care for her? Those morons of parents – the few who dared wait near the schoolhouse – were self-righteous about how she should have died before letting herself be violated, the fatuous idiots.”
“Bring her upstairs,” said Mrs. Spence. “We have no children; Ben and I will adopt her and any child that results from this. We’ll be leaving this town and taking our own money with us when Ben is well enough to move. You aren’t the only one badly treated, we’ve only fared well, because we are wealthy, but not a soul came to Ben’s aid.”
“I wish you luck,” said Luke. “Stay in your house. Do not go out for any reason. I aim to make sure your townsfolk remember me for a long, long time, and learn that there is a good reason why you never poke a bear. It may save other innocent folks passing through from trouble.”
Mrs. Spence looked into the cold sea-green eyes, and shuddered. He had been all warmth to her.
“Take care,” she said.
“I will,” said Luke. His eyes laughed at her. “I’m not going to hurt anyone, but I might scare a few,” he said.
She was comforted; and his eyes were as warm as they had been when he worked on her husband, who was awake, and had drunk a cup of milk coffee, complaining about invalid pap.
“They have no bank worth the name in Eastbend,” said Luke. “Only the wire office, with a Brooker 202.”
“It’s a good safe,” said Mrs. Spence. “Thank you; I’m sure Ben will be glad to consider it, if you rate the place.”
“There’s going to be some more homesteaders there soon,” said Luke. “And the sheriff is a good man. I think you’ll like it.”
“My husband wants to say goodbye to you,” said Mrs. Spence, taking Luke to see her husband.
“Lad... I owe you my life, I think,” said Banker Spence.
“I am glad I have the skills,” said Luke. “I killed the man who shot you. No fair fight; I don’t believe in giving a killer like him a fair fight, not with kiddies’ lives at stake. I’m glad to shake the hand of the man who killed ‘Mad-Dog’ Cathcart.”
“I guess, I just fired without thinking when he demanded that I open the safe,” said Spence. “I’ll not forget you.”
“Reckon I might even come back to visit Eastbend,” said Luke. “Oh, and if your sheriff claims to have taken down Cathcart, he’s lying; I killed him. Single shot through the ear. But I’ve a mind to frighten your sheriff a bit as his face is undamaged.”
“I am not about to complain about any fear you put into that worthless fellow,” said Spence.
“Well, if you’re up to it, look out of the street window, first thing, and watch the show,” said Luke. “It’s going to be noisy. I’m not going to get the bounty on that fellow, that I know, so I’m going to have my fun instead.”
oOoOo
Luke broke into the general store.
He left money for what he took. With an inventory and prices.
Then he went back to the schoolhouse with Blackwind, loading Cathcart’s body onto the horse, and brought it back into town.
The sheriff’s office was in darkness now, but Luke could see, with eyes that had got used to the dark, that the sheriff was on the sofa, asleep.
He tied the body of Cathcart onto the hitching rail outside, and put sticks down the sleeves of his jacket to hold his arms out stiff in front of him; and tied the man’s own six shooters into his hands.
He jammed the man’s Stetson onto his head. The bullet hole had taken out a good bit of skull, but it was to the side.
Luke grinned at his handiwork. It would be the first thing the sheriff would see in the morning.
Luke had a busy night. The amount of red pigment he could muster to put into paint was not really enough to paint the town red as such, but he could make a mess of the fresh golden planks of new places, and grey weathered planks of old places. The stables were easy enough to break into, and he spread dung over every doorstep – except the banker and his bank. Dung from middens too, which he spread liberally on the sidewalk. Next, he laid the firecrackers, with gunpowder trails between them, all along the street; and as the sky lightened, he used the pasteboard to make tubes, cut with slits, and set a light to the match of the first before mounting up to ride away. Blackwind’s ears flicked at the sound of the first howler rocket.
“Never mind, old boy,” said Luke. The second howler went off. Luke was well out of sight before the fourth went off, and the sizzling fuse carried its little spark of mischief and destruction from one firecracker to the next until it was out of town, where the pile of dynamite detonated in the hole he had dug.
The inference was plain.
I could have killed and blown all of you up.
The paint could have been your blood.
Don’t poke the bear.
He had left his parents’ address for the Spences, and he hoped he would hear about it later.
oOoOo
Ruth Spence sat with her husband, Ben in the front room upstairs.
“He’s tied up that fellow as though shooting,” said Ben.
“Jim Blake did not treat him well,” said Ruth.
They jumped at the first howling rocket. By the fourth, they had worked out that it was harmless. Ruth jumped at the sounds of detonations.
“He said it would be noisy,” muttered Ben.
The sheriff had woken and his howl was audible as he grabbed his shotgun to fire through the window at the still figure of Cathcart’s corpse, stiff with rigor mortis. The detonations continued, and from their higher window, the Spences saw Blake, the Sheriff, scuttle out of the back door, still in petticoats, and go for his horse, to ride away from town.
“He’s painted the town red,” said Ruth.
“Can you blame him?” said Ben, grimly. “Not one of them came to stand with me. That poor child he raped had no support. I say, sooner we leave, the better.”
The dynamite went off at this moment, and the town rocked.
“I’d say he made his point very well,” said Ruth. “Ben, if he stole from the store, will you make it good, so there’s no question that there is anything to blame him for?”
“I will, and I’ll ask Eli Forbes if there’s anything outstanding,” said Ben. “But I wouldn’t mind betting the boy is out of pocket for his joke and paid for everything.”
It might be said that Sam Stubbins was later told the whole, and found it very amusing indeed, having liked Luke, and disliked Jim Blake.
He especially liked hearing that there was a notice pinned on the sheriff’s office door.
It said simply,
“Don’t poke the bear.”
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