The Taylor County War (2 page)

“Hum?” Hix sounded distracted.
Those disturbing eyes were focused someplace else, as if mesmerized
by something.

Although he’d known John Hix
for almost a year, Cantrell could honestly say he didn’t really
know the man. “What’s wrong, John?” Cantrell turned to see what had
caught John’s attention in the window. A freight wagon had come to
a stop and two men were climbing down off the high seat. Their
boots thumped the boardwalk and the bell above the barber shop door
jangled.

They were dressed casually: bowler
hats, sack coats and woolen trousers. Neither man looked like they
needed their hair cut or their faces shaved.

Hix’s haunting eyes followed them
in and stopped them in their tracks like a bumper post at the end
of a line.

“Good morning,” one of the men
said.

The spell broke. John Hix took in a
breath and smiled amiably. “Take a seat and I’ll be with you
directly.”

“We’re not here for a haircut,” the
other said. “Just a bit of information.”

The first man smiled. “The local
barber is better than Western Union.”

John Hix cocked his head. “What
sort of information you gents looking for?”

The second fellow, taller than his
friend, had a lean, handsome, sunburned face, and spoke with a
pronounced lisp. “We’re told there’s a fellow here in Wolf Creek
who buys bones.”

“Old bones,” the other added.

“We’re told he pays cash for good
ones.”

Cantrell expelled a breath of
relief when Hix lowered the razor and began casually stroking it on
the leather strop. His eyes didn’t warm any, but his voice was
easy. “The man you want is our head schoolmaster. Name’s Marcus
Sublette.”

“Wonderful,” the taller man said.
“Where might we find him?”

“At the school, of course.” Hix’s
voice held mild sarcasm. “First and Lincoln. Two blocks north, left
at the bakery. What kind of bones you got?”

“I’ll show you.” They all went
outside, Cantrell half shaved and still wearing the striped cape.
The men threw back a canvas cover and Cantrell and Hix leaned
forward. It was a pile of bones, sure enough. To the dentist, they
looked rather unremarkable, other than that some of them were
fairly large. Most were gray and crumbly. A few of them were almost
shiny, having a dark red hue.

“That was a mighty big cow,”
Cantrell observed.

“Yep. About what we figured
. . . at first,” the shorter man said.

“Where’d you find ’em?” Hix fished
amongst the pile, coming up with something like a cat’s claw, only
about five times larger.

The shorter man said, “Henderson
and me are surveying a spur line north of here for the new
railroad. We spied bones sticking up out of the ground. We got to
digging around, and guess what came up?” He lifted a jawbone that
even Samson of old would have had a mighty hard time wielding
against those Philistines. The few teeth still attached were nearly
five inches long.

John Hix whistled. “If that’s a
cow, I’m going to start eating vegetables.”

The men laughed. “Maybe your Mr.
Sublette will know what they are?”

Cantrell dragged a finger along a
reddish leg bone the size of his thigh. It felt like no bone he’d
ever touched. “These are stone.”

“Curious stuff, heh?” Henderson
pulled the canvas back over the pile. “We’ll go see what the
schoolmaster has to say about them.”

Hix said, “Best time is about ten
of the clock when the children are on recess. Or noon. That’s when
him and Miss Sloane take their lunch.”

“We can wait,” Henderson said.

“Thank you sir,” the shorter one
said. “I could do with some breakfast while we wait.”

Cantrell pointed at the building
shouldered up against the barber shop. “Ma’s Cafe is the best place
in town for breakfast.”

They thanked him. As they started
for Ma’s front door, the little barber’s eyes fixed upon the taller
of the two as if measuring the man somehow.

Cantrell wondered briefly about
that until he heard Hix mumble, “Red leg.” Hix was only thinking
about the reddish stone leg bone they’d just seen.

***

Marcus Sublette began class in the
usual manner, even though Miss Sloane had not yet returned from her
early morning meeting with the library committee. As soon as they’d
completed the pledge to the flag and an opening prayer, Mary
Stevens’ hand shot up in the air.

“Yes, Miss Stevens?”

She stood at the side of her desk.
“Mr. Sublette, how come Miss Sloane isn’t here?”

“Miss Sloane had an important
library committee meeting to attend to this morning.”

They chatted a bit about the new
library, and then it was time to get down to work.

“When we have completed our morning
tasks, after first recess,” Marcus told them, “I have a few
interesting exhibits that we shall examine.”

The exhibits were the three
dinosaur skulls he had yet to reveal. They were from fairly common
extinct varieties of lizards. Two of them, a lystrosaurus and an
amphibamus, he’d borrowed earlier this summer while visiting his
college professor back in Pennsylvania. Professor Cope was not in
the habit of lending out specimens to just anyone, and Marcus felt
privileged that the famous paleontologist would entrust them to
him.

The third skull was one he himself
had collected on Mr. Breedlove’s ranch, the T-Bar-B. It was a fine
pterosaur specimen, but alas, one belonging to a species recently
described and named . . . named by none other than that
scoundrel, Professor Marsh.

Marcus frowned at the unkind
thought. In truth, he’d never met Professor Marsh. The problem was,
both Marsh and Cope were arch competitors in a very small field,
and because Professor Cope had been his instructor at Haverford
College, Marcus had been compelled to take sides.

Sighing, he looked at the small
skull in his hand. Someday he hoped to discover a new species all
his own, one he alone would be entitled to name, thereby assuring
his perch upon a limb of the young tree called paleontology.

A small rustling at the back of the
classroom pulled him from his reverie. In the last row, Obie was
leaning toward Frank, and Ethan was craning his neck in an obvious
attempt to catch a glimpse of something. Marcus felt his brow
furrow. He cleared his throat and stood from his desk.

The boys went ramrod straight in
their chairs.

“You three have solved the ciphers
already?” He pointed at the mathematical equations on the
blackboard, then strode to the last row. “It appears you three have
discovered something more interesting than arithmetic. I shall like
to hear of it.”

No one spoke. Marcus glimpsed Frank
sliding something into his pocket. He extended his hand to the
boy.

Frank grimaced and placed a shiny
little pistol upon his palm. “I was just showin’ them it.”

“A Remington Model 95. It’s a very
handsome pocket pistol, Mr. Miller. I can see why you were
distracted.”

Frank gave a lopsided smile. “My
grandpa gave it to me. Says since I’m the man of the house now, I
gotta keep Ma safe. He’s gonna give me Pa’s army revolver when I
get a little bigger.”

Marcus’s ire faded at the gleam in
the boy’s eyes. If only he could find some way to stir up Frank’s
interest in his school work like that. Obie and Ethan, too, for
that matter. All three boys lived for the day when they would walk
out the schoolhouse door for the last time and really become the
man of the house. Marcus understood the urgency, recalling his own
youth.

“It’s an important responsibility
your grandfather has put upon your shoulders, Mr. Miller. An
honorable one to be sure, but school hours are for studying and
learning, not whispering amongst your chums.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, back to your tasks.
I’ll just hold onto this for a while. You may retrieve it after
class.”

***

Miss Cora Sloane returned from her
meeting at 9:45, entering the schoolhouse through the back door so
as not to disturb class. Marcus heard the door close softly, and
then the tap of her shoes crossing the floor. A moment later Miss
Sloane entered the classroom and removed her hat, placing it
carefully upon a peg. She went to her desk, her handbag making a
resounding thump on its top.

She smiled at him and formed silent
words. “Thank you.” And then her eyes fell upon the little pistol
on his desk, and crinkled at the corners. “Surely they were not
that naughty,” she whispered.

“Angels, every one,” he replied
quietly.

She inclined her head at Frank
Miller in the corner and lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“Well,” he smiled, “almost every
one.”

Later, when he and Miss Sloane were
at their desks eating lunch, Marcus told her about the incident.
Most of the children were outside playing. Wilma Kitteridge and
Martha Seward remained at their desks, chatting and giggling as
they unhurriedly picked food out of their pails.

“…the next thing I knew, he’d
pulled the gun out to show off to the other boys. I’m just holding
on to it until school lets out.”

Cora Sloane shook her head, taking
a bite out of the crusty edge her sandwich. “It seems he’s got an
inordinate interest in weaponry…and little else. It’s a shame,
isn’t it? Frank’s a very bright boy.”

“Yes. I’m at a loss to find a way
to encourage those three boys in their studies.” Marcus bit off a
piece of crunchy dill pickle.

Cora thought a moment, her forehead
forming small washboard furrows. “May I ask you a question, Mr.
Sublette?”

“Certainly.” After so many weeks,
he was surprised she felt the need to ask his permission. But then,
Miss Sloane was a proper woman in every respect. She’d conducted
herself with perfect decorum since coming to Wolf Creek to fill the
position opened by the tragic murder of Miss Haselton.

“What motivated you when you were
their age? Something must have. You did go on to university for a
degree in science.”

That made him think a moment. “I
was very much like these boys, I suppose, although more curious
than most, and always getting into some mischief.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true. I nearly drove my
parents to apoplexy!”

“Yet something impelled you to
pursue a diploma in paleontology.”

“If anything, it was the War.”

Her eyes widened a little. “You
fought?”

“War is glamorous to a young man,
Miss Sloane.” He grimaced. “And it gives him direction — at least
for a season.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Father insisted I further my
education. The last thing I wanted was to be an accountant in a
shipping firm as he was, but to please him, I agreed to a college
near our home in Virginia. The war was my opportunity to flee the
drudgery of books and essays, and a vacuous fraternity.”

“Most enlightening.” She nibbled at
her sandwich beginning on the edge and working round and round
until all that was left was a small circle of bread. “What
happened?”

“I made a discovery — while sitting
in a tree.”

“A tree? That’s an odd place to be,
isn’t it?”

“I was working.”

“Working?”

He smiled at the skepticism in her
voice. “I’d been upon the branch of an immense sycamore tree for
four, five hours. Time loses meaning after a while. I’d been
peering through my telescope watching for movement when something
on a hillside nearby caught my eye. Since I’d not spotted a single
living soul all morning, I climbed down out of the tree to
investigate.”

“What did you find?”

“Bones, Miss Sloane, protruding
from a bank of red Georgia clay. They were unlike any I’d ever
seen, so I dug one out and took it back to camp. No one there had
ever seen anything like it, either.”

“Was it one of your dinosaur
creatures?”

He shrugged. “I’m certain it was,
but I’ll never know, for the next morning we struck our tents.” He
looked at her. “Those old bones sparked something inside me; an
interest I didn’t even know I had. After the war I moved north to
Pennsylvania to finish my education under the tutelage of Professor
Edward Cope.”

A knock brought his head around.
Two men stood outside, peering in through the open door. The taller
one spoke first. “Howdy. I’m Matt Henderson. I take it you’re the
headmaster, Mr. Sublette?”

“I am. How might I help you, Mr.
Henderson?”

“We got us a puzzle, sir,” the
shorter one piped up. “One that might interest you.”

He glanced at Miss Sloane, her
brown eyes wide with curiosity, and then back. “You’re being
cryptic.”

Henderson smiled. “Bones. Out in
the wagon. Heard you might be in the market.”

“Ah.” Marcus instantly abandoned
his half-eaten lunch and stood. “I might be — for the right sort of
bones.”

They went out to the wagon parked
along Lincoln Street. The shorter fellow hopped up on the tailgate
and hauled a dirty tarpaulin to one side.

Marcus picked through the
collection, examining the more interesting ones, casting the less
important bones aside. “These are from several animals. They’re
often found that way, as if jumbled together and deposited by
running water. Most of these are common and recent.”

He found the skull. “This is
unusual.” His heart quickened. “Most unusual.” Calling up a mental
catalogue, he couldn’t place it.

“Worth anything to you?” Henderson
asked.

“Where did you find them?”

“North of here.”

“Breedlove’s place?”

“We’re surveying a spur line for
the railroad.”

Marcus set the skull down trying
not to show his excitement. “Could you show me?”

Henderson slid his partner a glance
and then looked back at him, grinning. “You buy them and I’ll draw
you a map.”

Marcus licked his lower lip. “Can I
pick and choose?”