After and Again (18 page)

  Zack pulled the mop bucket and mop out of the closet in the kitchen and cleaned the blood off of the fireplace hearth and the wood floor adjacent to it. After that he cleaned out the bathtub.

  He was getting tired but wanted to pack food and have it ready so that he could leave at first light. He put the biscuits that Miranda had baked that morning, the meat from the smokehouse and some dried fruit and preserves in the saddlebags. He wasn’t hungry but ate a little of the ham and some of the cherries that were in a bowl on the kitchen table.

  He awoke on the sofa in the great room with the first light of day peeking in through the windows. Max was lying in front of the sofa and Zack reached his hand down and silently stroked the wolf’s thick coat. Max allowed himself to be petted; I guess were friends now, Zack thought.

  Zack put a pot of coffee on the stove and then added a small amount to his food bundle as well. He took a small piece of charred wood from the firebox before re-igniting it. He guessed that Tal and everyone—thankfully including his mother, would return before Dalia and Jonus. So after sharpening the small piece of charcoal he wrote the following note on the inside of the top half of his pistol box.

Dear everyone,

Toby, Miranda, and Heath have been killed by Trask.

He was alive, but I don’t know how. He took Emily, I am going to look for her with Max. 

I buried the Martins in the cemetery but they need stones and I had no words, maybe Tal can say something. Holly took my  pistol and rifle and map to the time-rip, she was not herself.   The Goodmans went too.

I borrowed another rifle from Toby, I think it was Heath’s, and some food andcoffee. Please take care of my mom.

Zack.

  Zack deliberated for a moment and then chose to attach his note to the rear door. He put a chair under the knob of the front door to assure that anyone coming to the house would have to use the rear one.

  After quickly drinking a cup of coffee, Zack went to the back with Max padding behind him, and whistled for Grace. The mare came at once and he began saddling her and packing on his supplies.

 
Zack was not a tracker, and assumed that Trask would stay on the north/south road at least as far as Auburn. After that it was anyone’s guess and Zack had no idea where or what The Crack even was. Another problem was that he also had no idea how many men Trask had with him. He was going to assume that it was a small party, but he really couldn’t be sure.

  He opened the door to the room that Emily had been using, again feeling like a trespasser, and saw what he wanted at once. Hung on a hook in the corner was the light blue scarf that Emily wore when she worked in the garden with Dalia. Zack put the scarf up to his face smelling, the clean-sweat smell of Emily, and was overcome with heartsickness so strong that he nearly collapsed. He hardened himself instead, and strode out of the room.

  “Here Max, here boy,” he said to the wolf, squatting down and holding out Emily’s scarf. Max walked up and gave the scarf a sniff and then looked up at Zack expectantly, wagging his tail. “We have to find her Max, okay?” Max continued staring at Zack with that same expectant look. “Well, I don’t know if you understand or not, but let’s get going anyway.” He gave the wolf a small portion of meat, then mounted Grace and took a long look at the beloved Martin house. It was one hour after sunrise.

16

  Frank Olsen caught up with Desmond Trask and Robert Taylor at the same pond where Zack had stopped to water Grace weeks before. “Where’s Cap?” Taylor asked, taking the reigns of the two empty horses from Frank.

  “There was a man hiding in a closet that we missed before,” Frank said, dismounting, and sounding winded.

  “He stabbed Cap in the throat and killed him, almost killed me too!” he said, looking past Taylor to where Trask was standing looking speculatively at him.

  “That’s quite a little gash he gave you,” Trask said, moving forward and standing in front of him.

  “Yes sir, but I took him in the chest after he slashed me,” Frank said eagerly. “He never knew what hit him.”

  “Is that so?” said Trask thoughtfully. “How was it that he got the jump on a fighter like Cap Young and was killed by a runt like you?” he asked, looking Frank up and down.

  “Well, see, Cap opened the closet an’ I was standing behind him, he uhh, stuck Cap, and then turned and slashed at me, but I was already ready see, and I stabbed him right through the ribs,” Frank answered, smiling nervously. Trask was silent for a long moment before speaking;

  “Well then! Cap got what he deserved didn’t he.” Trask said, clapping Olsen on the back. “Taylor, get that bitch back on her horse and let’s get moving….Oh, Olsen, the man in the closet… someone you knew?”

  “Umm, no, well yea, he was a ranch hand…. Hemphill or something.”

  Emily Hodgkins was terrified. They had put a burlap bag over her head and tied her hands to the saddle horn. The horse was at a run and she was waiting to be thrown, and dragged, hanging from the saddle. She knew that Zack would try and come for her. For a brief moment she had considered that he might just make for the time-rip but discarded the notion almost at once. Zack McQueen
would
come for her. She feared for him though, and at the same time hated herself for selfishly wanting him to hurry. She thought about escape, but didn’t know how she would do it. She wasn’t a hardy rancher’s daughter, or a farmer’s. Her father was a shopkeeper and her mother a seamstress. Emily had never been afraid of work, she just hadn’t done much, outside of occasionally arranging things on shelves. She didn’t consider herself strong or rugged and wouldn’t know the first thing about foraging for food or hunting if she
did
manage to get away. Oh Zack, she thought, please hurry.

Tal Miller read the sign tacked to the back door of the Martin’s house with a sinking heart. He turned to Martha and the others who were all standing shoulder to shoulder behind him on the small landing. Fighting tears, he said, “Toby, Miranda, an’ Heath are all dead.”

  Grace was running at a good pace, not anywhere near what she could do, but Max couldn’t keep up with her when she was at top speed. The wolf however, was still amazingly fast, and had run ten miles flat before appearing to need a rest. They had stopped once before they reached the north/south road and again an hour later. Now they were resting in the shade by the pond that Zack had stopped at before. When they had first arrived, Max had scrambled around sniffing the dirt while he growled menacingly. Zack guessed it more likely that he was smelling Trask, than it having anything to do with Emily’s scarf.

  Sitting under the tree gave him a chance to start thinking about how all of this might unfold. He knew that he had simply been lucky when he freed his mom, Emily, and the other women. In fact, he was well aware that were it not for Toby and Tal, and the rest, that he would certainly be dead and most or all of the women recaptured. Everyone was calling him a hero and other extraordinary things but the truth was, in Zacks mind, that he was really just a teen; more than a boy, but less than a man.

  He didn’t think that there was much of a chance of overtaking them, so making any sort of a plan was difficult. He would just have to follow until they stopped long enough somewhere or arrived at their destination. He couldn’t even understand why they’d come all the way back anyway. Miranda had said that Trask wanted to find him. Did he really ride all of the way back to the Martin’s for revenge? And why take Emily? She did say that her and Lacy and the two younger girls were being saved for someone. The thought made him angry all over again. He stood. “C’mom Max, let’s go.”

   Zack set camp at the very same spot on the little stream that he had last time. He once again had crayfish for dinner, catching quite a few more this time around and giving some to Max. Apparently it wasn’t enough because the wolf disappeared out into the grassland shortly after and returned some time later with a jackrabbit. Zack stopped brushing Grace and looked over at the wolf. “Bring enough for both of us next time why don’t  you.”

  He didn’t risk a real campfire and had only burned a small one long enough to cook the crayfish. After dark he watched for the glow of a campfire ahead but saw none.

  Zack couldn’t breathe, he struggled up from sleep and found Max’ fur pressed up against his face. “Jeez,” he said, sitting up quickly and pushing the wolf. “Trying to smother me you big galoot?” It wasn’t yet dawn but he wanted to get a move on at first light. He made another small fire in the hole that he had dug the previous night and heated some water for coffee. He gave Max a chunk of the brisket and even took a couple of bites himself. Boy, could Toby smoke meat, he thought with a small smile.

  Trask had stopped the group for four hours to rest the horses and then continued on in the dark. He wanted to get back to the camp as quickly as possible before men started disappearing. Some he had been with for awhile, others were like Olsen; men that they had pressed into service. With him and Grayson both gone he couldn’t trust things to hold together. Also, he had an uneasy feeling, he wondered about the whelp. The girl had been pretty convincing; prepared to die even….still….

  It was dawn and they had just started up the foothills; he expected to clear the summit and be heading down the other side that evening. With luck, they could be eating some of that dandy’s beef stew in Auburn by the following night.

17

  Martha Miller had cried as much as she would allow herself, both for the Martin’s, and for her husband’s decision. She was packing food for Tal while he readied one of the Martin’s horses. Thankfully, unlike his own stables, someone had let the stock out of the Martin’s barn before they burned it.

  She moved about the kitchen deliberately, keeping her mind on the task at hand. Molly Renfew helped her silently, grateful to be doing something. The air in the house was heavy with sadness.

  Tal had ridden out to the Sanderson ranch directly after reading Zack’s note. He broke the news to Dalia Martin whose first reaction was disbelief, the second hysterics. Mary King had given her some valerian root mixed with brandy that calmed her some. Jonus hitched up the wagon and Dalia had sat quietly sobbing on the ride back to the Martin’s.

  “This is gonna stop, an’ stop NOW!” Tal Miller shouted, raging through the Martin’s rear yard with Martha and Jonus right behind. Martha Miller had not seen her husband in such a state since before the boys were born. He had never shared his previous occupation with the people of Payne’s Station, not even Toby Martin and Theo Olsen, although both men had been curious from time to time but were too polite to ask. As far as most were concerned he had always been a stableman.

  When Tal Miller was young, he had been a traveling prizefighter; had in fact met Martha down south in a town called Brownsville. He had traveled around and would wager himself against the meanest, toughest man that the town he was in had to offer. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty three, Tal had never lost a fight.

  Tal was as gentle a man as they come, but there was something that came into his eyes when he was about to fight another man. Most men saw it and were beaten by it before the fight even commenced. It ended one night in a place called Princeton, when Tal beat the other man so badly that he almost died. He never fought again. Fighting was never enough to keep him and Martha fed, there simply weren’t enough towns, or people to fight. So he had learned to work tack in between, and eventually landed in Payne’s Station.

  Martha hadn’t seen that certain look in Tal’s eyes in twenty-five years… Until now.

  I’ll catch up to the boy, an’ him and I are gonna set some things right,” Tal said, brandishing the twelve-gauge shotgun that he had taken (with Dalia’s blessing) from Toby’s gun cabinet.

  “What about Martha and your boys Tal?” Jonus asked, watching the other man pack the horse.

  “Martha don’t like it, but she understands, an’ the boys will understand later….no matter the outcome. I ain’t gonna leave that boy to his own a second time Jonus, an’ don’t look at me like that, I know I said he’s a man, and he is….sorta. He got the sand and the smarts but not the experience. ‘sides, these men are bloodthirsty and it’ll take more ‘n one man to slap that taste from their mouths.”

  “They burned two towns that we know of to the ground and killed nearly everyone in ‘em, Tal. You and Zack are as good as dead if you tangle with ‘em. Now I respect if you want to go and help Zack get Emily, and maybe kill that man who done the Martin’s but anything after that is pure foolishness.