Blacl Falcon 7 more shivery than shivaree

 

7...more shivery than shivaree

 

Luke stayed on to pass on advice on keeping warm, and stocking up, helping the sheriff and the banker to haul hay from the prairie.

“I declare I’m that hot with this work, I’m going to strip off a layer or two,” laughed Sam. “Talk about making hay while the sun shines! It’s been glorious for the last few days, and I’m downright itchy from the heat.”

“Sam...” Luke was uneasy. “Don’t strip off. It’s too still and heavy. I think we should be getting back to town. Ben, will you humour me?” he asked Banker Spence, with whom he was now on first name terms.

“You learned lore from Indians, Luke-lad; if you want to get back, I’ll not gainsay you,” said Ben Spence.

Sam gave Luke a quick look, and the jest on his lips died. Luke was scratching inside his collar, and staring to the north. There were riffles of wind across the furthest grasses.

“Get on the wagon,” said Luke. “Now!”

The horses were not unwilling to get moving, and Luke drove them at a pace. A family coming out with an air of jollity looked at the deputy marshal’s grim face.

“Turn around,” said Luke. “Bad weather is coming; never mind disappointing the little ones, better disappointed than dead.”

The farmer glanced at Sam.

“Do as he says,” said Sam.

The man turned his team to the cries and entreaties of his young family.

“I ain’t arguing with Sam Stubbins,” he said. “We’ll picnic in the yard.”

Luke heaved a sigh of relief.

The wind had a howl in it which was familiar to him as they hit the town street, and the sting of sleet and hail slashed their faces as he pulled into the stable yard which served both the Spence and Stubbins house.

“Go reassure your wives; I’ll unload the hay and see to the horses,” shouted Luke above the sudden roar of the storm.  On Luke’s suggestion, rough covered ways with hurdles had been made from stables to each house.

He rubbed down the horses, sweating in fear of the storm as much as the oppressive heat preceding it, and watered and fed them.

Then he put on his duster, took a rope, and popped his head in to Sam’s house.

“I’m going to go fetch the Reverend,” he said. “I don’t like to think of him alone in this; nobody’s getting to church tomorrow, anyway.”

He took his arapniks as well, putting a spike on the end of one to whip forward to catch into houses across alleys, as the whirling whiteness blanked out vision and confused the senses. By this means he made his way along the street towards the church and the vicar’s shanty next to it.

The vicar was not in his shanty.

Luke paused long enough to throw the man’s clothes into a satchel, overcoat bundled over it, grab his quilt from the bed to thrust under his duster, and went to the church.

Here he found the vicar in the porch, blue in the face, teeth chattering.  Luke hauled him back into the church and rubbed his hands, wrapping him in the quilt, and pulling out his overcoat.

“I w... was hot,” stuttered Hill.

“Yes, the deceptive heat before a storm,” said Luke. “I think you’ll do; keep that quilt around you under your coat, hold onto my shoulders, and for pity’s sake, don’t let go.”  He genuflected to the altar, crossing himself. “Lord, give me the strength to get him back to Ruth and Ben’s,” he murmured. His words were smothered by the howling blizzard, but Luke had every faith that God heard them.

And then they went out into it, Luke with one arm around Hill, half carrying the man, whose light shoes slipped on the slick sidewalks.  At each alley, Luke looped the rope around the nearest hitching bar, venturing forwards and casting with his spiked arapnik. In one alley he stumbled over something on the ground, and when he investigated, it turned out to be Frank, the boy of all work in the saloon.

“I’m not going back to the saloon,” shouted Luke to Reverend Hill. “Get him on my shoulder; if he’s alive we can see to him at Spence’s, if not, we can lay him out decently.”

Hill nodded numbly and helped boost the boy onto Luke’s shoulders. They made it to the next sidewalk, Luke jerking the other rope clear, and tottered on.

One more alley. The arapnik grazed and fell off the stone of the bank; Luke tossed it forward, hard, and it stuck in the sidewalk.  Past the rough stone of the bank... plank under his fingers... door post... door. Luke hammered on the front door of the banker’s house with all his remaining strength and all but fell in the door when Ruth opened it. She gasped.

“Hot baths for Mr. Hill and Frank,” said Luke. “And hot drinks.”

“And you,” said Ruth.

“I’ll do, with a hot drink,” said Luke. “Gotta see to Frank.”

The boy was in a bad way, but Luke stripped him and rubbed his hands and feet ruthlessly, getting feeling back in his own hands as he did so, stamping to get his feet warm. He knew Frank was going to make it when the boy cried out in pain at the returning feeling.  And Ruth had the washing tub filled with water, to lower him into it. The boy cried again, which might have been the water on the numberless bruises on his body.

“Get your feet in there, too, reverend,” said Luke. “Get them warm gently.”

“Dear me, I was not prepared at all,” said Hill.

“Didn’t matter. You were in the house of One who is always prepared,” said Luke. “So, I knew where to look.”

“Bless you for coming looking,” said Hill.

“Had to be done,” said Luke.

They all repaired to the log cabin for the duration of the storm; Ruth and Lucy shared the bed in the little bedroom, and made up beds for the men and boy in the main room, which were rolled up during the day.

Having rested, Luke made his way to the Saloon to tell the Barkeep that Frank was alive; and listened to the diatribe about how the useless boy couldn’t do anything right.

Luke shrugged, and returned to the warmth of the log cabin.

“Reckon you might have a boy of all work,” he said. “He wasn’t much missed.”

“You saw the bruises on him,” said Ruth.

“Danged if I know why I took the risk of telling them he was alive,” said Luke, angrily.

“Because you’re a good man,” said Ruth. “Poor boy, he’s not clever, nor especially able, but he’s willing enough, if you only have a little patience with him.”

“I understand it was a difficult birth,” said Sam. “Slow to be born. It happens.”

 

oOoOo

 

The storm howled over Sunday and Monday. The cabin was small, but snug, the gaps well plugged with bark and mud. The partition between the rooms was plank, build around the stove, the back of which was by the bed. The windows had thick curtains made of blankets, and it was no point opening them during the storm as the greyness outside was somehow worse than darkness. Sam had driven over to Redtown to collect Lucy’s things not long after the Spences had come to Eastbend, and had come to blows with the man of the couple with whom she lodged, who had been about to sell them, since Lucy had not remained the three months she had contracted to do, although she had paid in advance. This included a nearly finished nine-piece quilt in log cabin style which Lucy had been piecing, and which she finished in time to be married. Sam had brought over the plaited rug he had had in his office, which his mother had made, to make a gay hearthrug, and Ruth and Lucy sat plaiting from Ruth’s ragbag to make more. Many people would have called it cramped; but Luke was used to the dark, smoky asi of the Cherokee, and was glad of a place to rest his bones whilst the storm tried to shake them loose from his body, for such it felt like. He was grateful for the warmth, and the light, and the company.

Once they had eaten an evening meal, seated on the floor as there were no furnishings as yet, they conserved the light by opening the stove and using the light of the fire, telling stories, singing songs, discussing matters in the newspaper, which everyone had read three times each. Except Frank, who had trouble reading. Luke told the tale of his parents’ romance, also in a deep winter in the Crimea, when his father had kidnapped his mother, one of the Nightingale nurses, in desperation for his wounded men. He and his men had been in revolt against the Russians, and though they had spent some time as British forces, they had never fitted, and had decided to make a new start in America.

Sam, in his thirties, had been a bugle boy in the Rebel army, and when he discovered that Luke knew how to do the Rebel Yell, they did it when the wind was especially boisterous, to frighten it. Ruth and Lucy were torn between amusement and horror, and the parson smiled gently and tolerantly.

“Noise ain’t always as scary as quiet voices,” volunteered Frank. “When Mr. Carson say, ‘Come here, boy,’ in that quiet hissy voice, I knows the beating is going to be bad. I wish the storm would last forever so I don’t never have to go back.” He sniffed and Ruth caught his hand and shoved a handkerchief in it before he could wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve.

“You aren’t going back to him,” said Ruth. “You’re going to help me in the kitchen and with the horses.”

“Cor, Missus Ruth, if I worked for you f’rever I’d think I’d died and gorn to heaven,” said Frank.

 

 

Tuesday morning woke Luke by the quality of the sound.

Or rather, the absence of sound. He got up and peeled back a corner of curtain, breathing on the window to melt the ice.

Outside it was sunny, and the snow had been scoured away by the wind as if it had never been there.

Being first up, Luke fed the fire, then emptied the utensils into the slop buckets kept in the lean-to and took them along to the stable to empty into the drain there. The men had fashioned a crude ‘throne’ to sit over the drain by fitting a seat in an old barrel, but overnight nobody wanted to go far from the house, even with the covered way to the barn.  He fed and watered the horses, and curried them with enthusiasm, which the storm leached from a man. He was singing his falcon song as he went back into the house, as Ruth bustled about preparing for breakfast, and the men grumbled into wakefulness and went to take a trip to the outhouse.

“I was thinking I should push on,” said Luke.  “There may not be many more days before getting home becomes impossible.”

“Why not wire to your folks that you have winter quarters?” said Sam. “We delayed you here; the least we can do is put you up. I worry about you going off and getting caught in a blizzard.”

“To be honest, so do I,” said Luke. “Which is why I was thinking of going as soon as possible, and hoping that this was a freak, early storm.”

“Which it may very well be,” said Sam. “Who can tell, with the weather!”

“If it was me, I’d not worry, for I could dig in, and live on canned food, but Blackwind would need water and hay,” said Luke.  “I’ll have breakfast, and think about it. And see how the weather smells.”

The sudden shouts and cries in the street, and gunfire made Luke grab his gunbelt and his Winchester, and run outside, followed by Sam on his heels. Horsemen and wagons had come into town, and the men were firing in the air.

Sam strode forward with Luke at his heels.

“What’s all this?” demanded Sam.

“Oh, some of you survived, did you?” said the leader. Luke recognised him as one of the fathers at the schoolhouse, when he had killed Cathcart.

“Why should we not?” said Sam. “What’s your problem?”

“We’ve come to get supplies,” said the leader.

“Well, then, Joe McGoven, I suggest you do it quietly,” said Sam. “Store’s open; queue orderly and have your money ready and there won’t be a problem.”

“You don’t understand, Sam Stubbins,” said McGoven. “We’ve come for stores; them as died in the blizzard won’t care about us takin’ them, and we’ll take what we need, without payin’ and there’s more of us than of you, so you’ll just put up.”

Banker Spence with his rifle joined them, and the vicar.

“Lend me a whip, Luke, lad,” said Hill. “I won’t shoot a man, but I will defend my town.”

Another man drifted to join them.

“If a soft Easterner like Paul Sinclair can stand up to Redtown’s hoodlums, so can I,” he said.

“You! It was you, gunslinger, who whipped my boy!” yelled McGoven pointing at Luke.

“I don’t mind whipping you as well, since you seem to have brought him up so badly,” said Luke. “I’m ecumenical about which of the Ungodly I lay into.”

“You will leave the towsnsfolk of Eastbend alone,” said Sam. “You can buy provisions same as anyone else. If you’ve needs, you should ask for aid, not come as thieves.”

“You bastards! A third of our people are dead! A third! Most of them women and children!  And my son and his friends in too much pain to be much help! And that’s his fault! Give him up and we’ll have a quiet hangin’ an’ then maybe we’ll barter.” He pointed at Luke.

Sam scowled.

“It was I who asked my deputy to help get rid of the proddy little tykes who wanted to rape my wife, and he was kind enough to hurt them, not kill them,” said Sam. “Most lawmen would have shot them down; you should be grateful!”

“They’re dead account o’ him!” said an older man. “My Jed, when he healed, took his best friends to pay their account to that black-clad gunman, and they was lost in the blizzard!”

“Unfortunate, but hardly the fault of anyone but themselves,” said Sam. Luke crossed himself.

“Revenge for being chastised? I cannot see logic in that,” said Luke. “These fellows are out for trouble, Sam, and are looking for an excuse.”

“Aye,” growled Sam. “Queue and pay in the store, or get out of town.”

One of the men rode up. He had a kindled brand in his hand.

“Leave us to do what we are going to do, or we burn the place,” he said.

A single gun cracked, and the head of the brand flew off, landing on the horse’s rump; it reared, neighing its distress. Luke’s gun was back in its holster almost before anyone had registered that he had drawn it.

“I’m sorry about the horse,” said Luke. “Anyone who uses fire will be thrown into any burning building with his legs broken.”

McGoven was the first to draw his gun, followed by Jed Burrows’s father.

Consequently, they fell first.

The townsmen of Redtown were full of overexcitement and cheap whisky; and they did not seem to comprehend that they were being faced out by men who would not hesitate to act. Luke noted that the vicar had no trouble plying an arapnik; his strokes had no elegance, but he was a man inspired.

Ten men fell, shot; five more fled, many with the mark of the whip on them.

“What was their sheriff about, letting them do that!” said Sam, sadly.

“He rode with them,” said Luke, pointing at one of the bodies. “You’d better get a report written and telegraphed in soonest before lies get told.”

“Aye, reckon you’re right about that,” said Sam. “Luke, lad, will you wire your folks when I’ve done? I could do with you here, in case there’s worse trouble.”

Luke sighed inwardly, but nodded.

“I can stable Blackwind with you, if I move on later in the season?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Sam.

Luke nodded.

“I can take care of myself, but if it snows, finding enough hay to travel with won’t be easy,” he said. “And I can take shelter where he can’t.”

It was, at least, a convivial bivouac.