Sanctuary (12 page)

And Mordecai—Satan incarnate—was forced to rely on sinners—pagans, men of strong drink like Doc Benjamin and blasphemers like Mary Dickens.

The Reverend would win this time. A tremor ran through Timpkins' body with the thought. He would stand before them, their faces upturned toward him and the fear of God in their eyes. And the Reverend Eli Timpkins would assume his rightful place, once and for all.

Nine

The spring sun lay on the land like a benediction, and Mary Dickens reveled in it. She was sitting on a pile of river rock, a lectern old as earth and new as the promise of the garden for the people laboring there.

Peas and radishes had been planted the first week of May, the people following cotton string and the preacher's directions across the tilled soil to leave straight, green rows.

The youngest of the village children were grazing through the peas now, like deer browsing through a river bottom. Most of the peas had been picked and canned, steam rising from boiling water on cool spring mornings. The jars were stored in village shacks and for the first time in most of the villagers' lives, they had food set aside for the future. They took great pride in that.

The garden had become the focal point of the village; the people pulled away from the dump to weed or to watch the children, or simply to bask in a common sense of proprietorship.

And now the older children were perched around Mary, picking through coverless primers too worn for the school on the hill, treasures for children who had never touched, or been touched by, books.

The school had been under way since the close of the regular session, and Mary loved the time she spent with these quiet people. As she had expected, Judd was bright, picking up the rudiments of reading and arithmetic almost too easily. He had become the unofficial “second teacher” of the outdoor school, helping the children translate Cree thoughts into English and English into the written word.

Judd's grandmother had abandoned her rocker in favor of a stump near the river rocks school. She sat there in the early-morning hours, cloudy eyes watching the children of the village learn the white man's scratching, watching her grandson pull words from the primer's pages and throughts from the other children. For the first time in Judd's memory, he could see the hint of a smile flit occasionally across her face as the shadow of a cloud skips across the prairie in summer.

Judd and the preacher had built sturdy pens of chicken wire and rough-cut lumber to house the rabbits and chickens the preacher seemed to have plucked from thin air.

And as the peas lost their pods and the radishes their roots, the people cut the plants and fed them to the rabbits, taking care to leave the peas' nitrogen-rich roots in the ground.

Chicken eggs, warmed by the stove and lying like seeds on a blanket, incubated in the Old Hawk home, children stopping each day to turn them and to listen for the pecking of chicks trying to free themselves from the shells.

Jack Ten Horses had stopped his nightly trips to the alleys behind Sanctuary bars; instead he plunged into the management of the garden, directing others where to weed and where to till.

Ten Horses and the preacher had engineered a ditch to carry water to the garden from a small creek that ran just west of the dump, and he and some of the other men had spent the past week bent over shovels and picks, carving the ditch from the sandy soil of the river bottom.

Ten Horses had become one with the people again, and for the first time in his adult life he felt that he was doing something worthy of a man. Connie Old Hawk's appendectomy had cured him of the rancor he felt toward the villagers, and the villagers turned to him for leadership as naturally as their ancestors had turned to his great-grandfather in times long past.

He was leaner now, and long-muscled, the hard work having stripped away the ashes of long nights spent in the company of a bottle of whiskey and bad deeds.

Doc made weekly trips to the village, leaving with a renewed spring to his step and a dozen eggs or a fresh rabbit in return for his care.

And as the people of the village pulled together in the magic of that warm Montana spring, the preacher pulled gradually away. More and more he deferred questions to Ten Horses and to Judd. More and more he sat by himself on the hill where Judd had seen him praying that morning after the dance, shedding his coat as though to absorb the sun, the time, the land, and the people through the pores of his skin.

Still, even on mornings like this when it seemed that the earth was lit with nothing less than the warmth of God's smile, Judd's mind skipped from the book in his lap to a cloud of thick oily smoke boiling from burning flesh at the slaughterhouse. It hung over the village like a portent.

His mind bounced back to it with a persistence that worried him, and the wind whispered across the nape of his neck like an omen as he helped his grandmother back to their shack.

The clamber of hooves across the step outside jerked Judd into full consciousness. He had been lying in a half sleep—that time when the subconscious and the conscious meet—not certain if the sound of cows bawling outside was real or imagined.

From the first time he stepped up that hill to the slaughterhouse and the abuse Jasper and the others heaped upon him, Judd had dreamed of cattle. But they didn't bawl as the cattle were bawling outside, because the cattle in his dreams had no tongues—or hides or guts or legs. They lay stripped in pens, watching Jasper and his knife, waiting for Judd to trade a quarter for their hearts and livers, watching him with wonder in their eyes as he carried bits and pieces of them downhill to the people.

The door rattled. Dream cattle didn't bump into doors. But what were cattle doing in the village? He could hear, too, the whistle and whoop of drovers.

Judd climbed from beneath his covers. His grandmother was already at the door, peering outside through the single pane of cracked glass. But her eyes were too cloudy to put anything but vague shapes to the sounds, black against black.

Judd fumbled around the table for matches. He lit one and touched the flame to the wick of an old brass railroad lantern he had found bent and discarded by the track. A globe of yellow light limped into the room. Judd carried the light to the door and tried to step outside, but a passing steer brushed him back into the shack. He stood there, peering through the feeble light at a scene he didn't comprehend.

A river of bellowing, horn-clicking cattle was flowing through the little village. The herd was tightly packed, and occasionally an animal bumped into a shack or stumbled against something left lying on the ground, but the missteps were nothing more than ripples in a stream. The animals moved on as relentlessly as the Milk in flood.

And on the outside of the herd, Judd could hear men on horseback. Some spoke in whispers to the cattle, as though they were divulging secrets to a friend; others yelled “yip, yip, yip” and spurred their horses as they cut off animals attempting to escape the crush flowing through the village.

All were intent on moving the animals and nothing else. They seemed oblivious to the dark faces—painted in shadow, soft light, and fear—that were framed against open doors. They seemed oblivious, impervious, inhuman—dark messengers from dark places bent on a task too evil for mortals to comprehend.

The people in the village shrank back into the shadows, too horrified to close their doors to the scene outside, too frightened to call out, to draw the attention of these dark strangers.

And still the cattle moved past until suddenly they were gone, disappearing up the hill toward the slaughterhouse, the only sign of their passing faint sounds from the hill and dust hanging in the early-morning air.

The people stepped out into silence, stumbling as their feet reached ground torn by the passing of hundreds of hooves. They stood there until the message passed from their feet to their minds.

Judd murmured “the garden,” and a wave of keening, lonesome and cold as a winter gale, swept through the group. The lights bobbed away from the village then, backtracking the cattle until they seemed faint stars lying low on the horizon, winking against the predawn blackness, blackest time of all.

Judd sneaked up the back stairs of the hotel, flinching whenever a step protested under his weight. If he were caught, he would be branded thief and thrown in jail. But he had no choice, so he inched up the stairs and down the hallway, every nerve tingling, every sense singing warnings. When he rapped at the door, the sound seemed to boom through the building.

“Preacher,” he whispered. “Preacher, please open the door.”

Judd heard the scuff of a chair inside and a moment later, the door opened. The preacher was fully dressed and shaved, even though it was still dark outside, minutes yet before false dawn.

Judd spoke in a rush. “Jack Ten Horses has been hurt bad, real bad. He tried to stop some men from driving cattle through the garden, and they ran the cattle over him, too.”

“It's all gone. All of it, and Jack, he's—I think he's going to die. He's hurt something awful, preacher.”

“Get Doc. I reserved a wagon for early this morning. Take him down to the camp, and I'll meet you there with the wagon.”

Judd nodded and sprang for the door. He paused there for a moment, waiting for the preacher. “Why did you rent the wagon?”

“Thought we might need it today at the garden. Guess I was right.”

Judd nodded, but he was looking at the preacher from the corner of his eyes as they hurried down the hall to Doc's room.

Dawn had just cracked the eastern horizon as Judd and Doc rushed down the hill toward the village. Neither had spoken on the walk from the hotel, each occupied with his own thoughts. They could see the people now, gathered around what appeared to be a pile of clothing dumped and forgotten on the northern edge of the garden.

Doc's breath left him in one long sigh, and a plume of vapor chased it into the chilly morning air. As they neared the group, it parted. Ten Horses, or what was left of him, lay in a heap at the end of the passage, and Doc knelt beside the stricken man.

Ten Horses was a mass of injuries. It seemed that every steer passing through the village that morning had stepped on him. Deep, ugly bruises and cuts marked his skin and thin trickles of blood ran unabated from his nose and the corner of his mouth. His left arm lay at an odd angle, and Doc knew it was broken. A bent right leg and labored breathing indicated more broken bones.

But Doc was worried most about what else those hooves might have done to Ten Horses. The young man appeared to be cold, in shock undoubtedly, and a ruptured spleen or kidney or liver might be hemorrhaging into the abdominal cavity. Too, one of the hooves might have struck deep into his chest and bruised his heart.

Doc sighed and leaned back from his preliminary examination just in time to hear the clop of hooves and the rattle and creak of a wagon as the preacher pulled up.

Doc looked up and shook his head, and the preacher climbed down.

The preacher knelt beside Ten Horses and took his head in his hands. Ten Horses' eyes opened, and a murmur ran through the crowd. His voice was little more than a whisper.

“Cattle in garden … tried to stop them … Jasper ran over me with his horse. All I remember.”

“You sure it was Jasper?” Mordecai asked.

“I could hear him laugh. I will never forget his laughter. Even now, I hear it in my dreams.” His eyes closed then, and his head slipped to one side.

One of the women in the crowd began to keen, the sound cutting through the morning like ice crystals borne on a north wind, but the preacher held up his hand.

“He's not dead,” he said in Cree, looking around the group, his eyes settling on Judd. “Spread those blankets in the back of the wagon.

“And you,” he added, pointing at the three nearest men. “You all help me load him. We must be very, very careful. He is near to death. You'll have to come with Doc and me to the surgery to help us carry him inside.

“Judd, you go get Sheriff Timothy. Tell him to meet us at the surgery. Tell him he doesn't have time for his morning cup of coffee.”

The crowd broke apart as the men fled to their tasks.

Sheriff Timothy scuttled sideways, crablike, through the door of the surgery, a habit he had acquired to accommodate the width and bulk of his shoulders. He was short and squat, built like a block with no break in the line between his chest and hips. His face was round as a full moon and underlined with a chin that could split granite. When he spoke, his voice rolled out like the rumble of thunder.

“The boy,” he said, his neck inclining stiffly toward Judd, “says you had some trouble.”

“Jack had some trouble,” the preacher replied, nodding at the table.

“Jack
is
trouble,” Timothy said, with no hint of a smile.

The sheriff walked over to the table and watched Doc strip off Ten Horses' clothing, his fingers probing the extent of the man's injuries.

Timothy shook his head. “Holy Mother of Mary. Somebody did one hell of a job on him. Can't say even
he
had that coming.”

“They walked a herd of cattle over him. Can't say anyone has that coming to him,” the preacher growled, his voice dropping to meet the sheriff's.

Doc was talking now, describing Ten Horses' injuries to set them straight in his mind. “Left arm broken, both the radius and the ulna. Almost at right angles. Have to set that right away, and the left leg. Lucky there. It's the fibula, and that won't lay him up so long.”

Doc stepped back from the table, straightening and stretching his back. He turned to look at the preacher. “The bones will heal. Should have full use of them, at least until arthritis settles in, but there's nothing we can do about that. The bruises will heal, too.”

“But Jesus, this man must be in pain!”

Doc rubbed his face in his hands, cupping his chin in his palms.