Wraiths of the Broken Land (23 page)

Chapter IV
The Family Agenda

Sitting on the wagon bench, Brent Plugford caressed Yvette’s chill forehead. The falling sun was a brilliant gold scalp above the northwestern hills, and in the oblique light, the gaunt woman’s face looked like a skull covered with wax.

Resolved, the cowboy turned around and looked at his trailing siblings. “Ride up here ‘longside me.”

“Okay,” responded Dolores.

“Comin’,” said Stevie.

Brent carried Yvette inside the canopy and felt as if it were a small sick calf that he bore instead of an adult human being. He knelt upon the wagon bed, laid his sister beside the patriarch, put cotton into her ears, kissed her forehead, slid the black trunk to the opposite end of the wagon and walked forward.

Dolores and Stevie were riding beside the driver’s bench when Brent returned.

“How’re you doin?” The youngest Plugford pointed to the cowboy’s bandaged head.

“Fine.”

Dolores inquired, “How’s she doin’?”

“Seems better—hasn’t kicked in a while. And she ate some stew a little while back and kept most of it.”

“Good.”

A chubby hand that belonged to Patch Up squeezed Brent’s shoulder.

The nascent Mr. Plugford said to his siblings, “I got somethin’ to say to you both, but I want you to hear me out full before you get hot at me. I made a decision neither of you is gonna like, but it’s the right one.”

Dolores, perplexed by the preamble, stared.

“If this is about the goddamn captive,” Stevie grumbled, “you can roast.” The young man’s reaction was not unexpected.

Brent looked over at Patch Up. Nodding, the negro put the bulb of his whip into the socket, grabbed his rifle and disappeared into the wagon bed. The cowboy informed his brother and sister, “He’s guardin’ the trunk until there’s some unity with us.”

“What the hell’re you boys talkin’ ‘bout?” asked Dolores.

Brent looked at his sister. “You girls got took because of Yvette’s husband. We know it certain true.”

Dolores was shocked. “How? Why?”

“We’ll get to the details later,” the cowboy said, “but it’s his fault, all of what happened. And he don’t deny it either.”

Dolores’s eyes filled with fury.

Brent continued, “We brung him with us to use for a barter, or in case he remembered somethin’ important, but he was double useless.”

Dolores’s eyes widened. “Samuel’s here?”

“He’s here. And I want him dead. Stevie sure does and Pa tried to kill him six times, but we stopped him. Killin’ Samuel C. Upfield IV’s the right thing to do and nobody knows that more than you. But you’ve seen how Yvette is.”

Dolores hissed, “This ain’t up to her!” Her wrath was a physical force inherited directly from her father.

“I say it is,” stated Brent.

Stevie growled, “Roast in Hell you dumb sodomite.”

The sky, grass and trees disappeared from Brent’s view, and his skin tingled. “I already whipped you once this trip for that sort of talk.”

“It’s true goddamnit! That’s why you couldn’t be no husband to that Janie Dill. I’d wager you never even put your pecker in a—”

Dolores slapped Stevie. “Shut your dumb mouth! That ain’t what we’re talkin’ about here.”

Brent doubted that he was a sodomite, but he had not fornicated with a woman since he was a teenager (and he had been drunk during those endeavors), and he knew that he was atypical. He did not desire sexual relations with women or men, and he wondered why such shuddering assignations so thoroughly preoccupied the cowboys with whom he rode—men who chose to live in the saddle and explore the great landscape, free from the constraints of little wives and tiny towns.

“You can’t hit me,” complained Stevie, as if he were a petulant child.

“Talk ‘bout Brent like that and I will,” threatened Dolores. “I promise you.”

“Goddamn.” Stevie rubbed the scarlet handprint emblazoned upon his face. “You hit hard.” He shook his head. “Like everybody in this family.”

“Let’s finish the discussion,” said Brent

Dolores and Stevie looked up.

“Whenever Yvette’s awake,” the cowboy resumed, “she asks for him. Again and again. ‘Why isn’t Samuel here?’ and ‘Where is my husband?’ kind of stuff.”

“Then we should sink him in a pond and not tell her what happened,” suggested Stevie.

“No.” Brent shook his head. “Yvette had a whole other life with Samuel out there in San Francisco—away from the Plugfords—and it’s clear visible that him and God are what matter to her the most. That’s a certain fact. And I wouldn’t want us to kill one of the two things she cares ‘bout.” He watched his siblings for a moment and added, “You all know what can happen when a hurt person ain’t got nothin’ left in the world.”

“I know.” Dolores contained her fury.

Stevie slapped his pommel. “That bastard should be killed slow with rocks like we said we would do.”

“I want him dead and you want him dead,” Brent responded, “but I’m askin’ you to think beyond yourself.”

“Go roast.”

“What I’m talkin’ ‘bout,” Brent continued, “ain’t justice or what we want, but allowin’ Yvette to keep her husband if she wants him. She’s dwindled, and we can’t take anything away from her.”

Dolores lowered her face. “So you just wanna let Samuel go free?” Her voice was a distant whisper.

“No. He wrote out a letter sayin’ how it all happened—in case we killed him or traded him over—and he wrote it true correct. I’m gonna give that to Yvette and tell her to read it and know what he done, because that has to be clear—this ain’t somethin’ to put under the bed. And after she knows what occurred, I’ll tell her she can decide what happens to him.”

“I want to read that letter myself.” Dolores squeezed the horn of her sidesaddle as if she wanted to strangle it. “And I want to tell her exactly what I think should happen to him.”

“That’s fair,” opined Brent.

“I was raped the same as her. And our daddy is dead.” Dolores pulled upon her reins, and her palfrey cantered away from the men.

Brent looked at his kid brother. “You accept it goin’ this way?”

Stevie spat. “I don’t.”

Patch Up emerged from the canopy, holding a repeater rifle. “Stevie.”

“What?”

“Listen to your brother.” Patch Up tapped the stock of his gun upon Brent’s shoulder. “He’s the man of the family and knows how to run things.”

“I ain’t listenin’ to him or to you. Samuel’s gettin’ executed like he deserves.”

Patch Up flung his trigger-guard forward, and a cartridge clicked into the chamber.

“You ain’t shootin’ me,” said Stevie.

“I will if you go against your whole family.” Patch Up’s voice was flat and grave. “I’ll go for a leg.”

“I got guns too.”

Stevie snapped reins and applied spurs.

“Stevie!” shouted Brent. “Don’t you—”

Furious, the young man cut in front of the wagon, rode up a green hill that was thirty yards to the west and pulled his pump-action shotgun from its sheath. The scalp of the sun sat beneath the hooves of his silhouetted colt like an infernal emergence.

“He can’t be this stupid,” Brent said to Patch Up.

“He’s been on his way for a while.”

“I hope there’s no liquor in him.”

“Listen!” Stevie pumped his shotgun, and a spent shell flew into the air, buzzing like an insect. “Give over Samuel or I’ll come get him!”

Brent did not know whether or not his brother was bluffing.

Yvette’s dog began to bark.

A black shadow interposed itself between Stevie and the wagon. “Don’t interfere with—”

Long Clay jerked the shotgun from Stevie’s hands and flung it to the ground.

“I was just tryin’ to get Samuel,” defended the young man.

“You were going to charge your family with a scattergun,” stated the gunfighter.

“We need to execute him. He’s the reason it all happened.”

“The only thing we need to do,” Long Clay coolly replied, “is prepare for the next engagement.”

“You don’t want no revenge?”

“Revenge is a fool’s obsession.” The gunfighter tugged the reins of his black mare and turned away.

Embarrassed and angry, Stevie remarked, “Seems like you don’t care what happened to Pa none at all. I thought you were partners.”

Long Clay pistol-whipped Stevie. The young man yelled, dipped in his saddle and clutched his broken nose.

“I’m done coddling you,” said the gunfighter. “You’ve got a tally with one mark.”

“No.” Stevie’s eyes widened with apprehension. “No!”

Brent was stunned by the declaration. The tally was how Long Clay and John Lawrence Plugford had disciplined unruly posse members long ago—each and every mark guaranteed a broken limb once the job came to its conclusion. Grimacing, the cowboy recalled the story of a fellow who had garnered eight marks and had each leg and arm broken twice to cover the deficit.

“You can’t do that to me!” cried Stevie. “You don’t got the authority!”

“Now you have two marks.”

“Close your stupid mouth!” yelled Brent.

The young man lowered his gaze, wiped blood from beneath his broken nose and spat pink. A moment later, Long Clay rode back to the horses that he had abandoned prior to his intercession.

Stevie clambered from his saddle, reclaimed his pump-action shotgun, and looked at the spotted colt. “He gave me a goddamn tally.” The beast flashed a tail, dismissively. “Two goddamn marks.”

A dark blue blanket covered over the magenta vault. The motley horses that pulled the wagon were weary and had grown immune to the negro’s administrative efforts with the whip, but still they plodded onward, through the grasslands, up the inclined terrain, toward the sere land atop which stood a vast mountain wall.

“I’ve descried it,” announced Patch Up, who had one eye to his brass and ivory spyglass.

“Any tenants we gotta evict?” asked Brent.

“None that I can see.” The negro handed the spyglass over to the cowboy. “Peruse the site.”

Brent raised the telescope to his right eye, peered through and saw the sheer and crenulate face of the beige mountain wall.

“Look west,” Patch Up advised, “near the split.”

The cowboy panned the lens to the left, located the defile, and soon discerned a rectangular edifice made out of white stones. “I see it.” Narrow vertical lines that were crenellations for weapons sat upon the fort’s façade, and upon the slanted roof were two small iron chimneys. Adjoining the eastern side of the structure was a cylinder that looked like a well, and to the west were arrayed the mismatched rocks and wooden crosses of a small cemetery.

“This is where it’ll happen,” announced Brent.

“This is it.”

Chapter IV
Family Allowances

Dolores Plugford was carried by her purple-nosed younger brother to the stone bench that stood outside the eastern face of the fort and set down. The sole of her riding boot pressed into the grit, and her shortened left leg dangled. Blood tingled like electricity within the stump.

“Thanks.”

“Mmh.” Stevie departed.

Dolores leaned against the fort and looked up. After eight months of confinement, the open night sky seemed vast and alien—a thing from another person’s childhood. She looked away from the daunting vault and adjusted the folds of her lavender dress. Nearby, dark shapes that were men brought horses into the sunken stable that was located behind the fort.

“Can I help?” inquired the redheaded woman.

“Not just yet.”

Brent carried Yvette and a bedroll into the fort. Patch Up followed, illuminated by an oil lantern that he shielded from the horizon. The amber flame disappeared into the darkness.

Mr. Stromler carried five empty canteens to the well, set them upon the ground and cranked the handle. A thick old rope twined around the turning bar, emitting creaks and dust. Beyond the gentleman, Long Clay walked into the wagon and returned, shouldering a heavy iron box that clanged with each stride.

The moment that Brent emerged from the fort, Dolores seized his right wrist. “Give me the goddamn letter.”

Her brother reached his free hand into the rear pocket of his denim pants and withdrew a folded envelope. “Don’t tear it up, Yvette needs—”

“Quit speechifyin’.”

Brent paused for a moment. “She needs to be able to read it.”

Dolores snatched the missive from the man’s left hand. “You ain’t Pa.” Although she was aware that her anger was misdirected, she was unable to control it.

Her brother squeezed her shoulder affectionately. “Talk to me when you’re done. Please.”

“Okay.”

Brent strode toward the wagon.

“There’s a lantern inside,” remarked Patch Up, as he emerged from the fort. “Let me take you in so that you have some light.”

“I want to read it out here.”

Patch Up looked at his palms. “I can barely see the side that gets to vote.”

“I got used to the dark.”

Saddened by the remark, the negro nodded. “Do you need anything?”

“I’d like a crutch so I can get ‘round on my own and help out.”

“I’ll make you something you can use.” Patch Up kissed her forehead and walked toward the wagon.

Dolores looked down at the missive. One word was written in the exact center of the rectangle.

Yvette

The redheaded woman turned the envelope over, lifted its flap, reached her fingers inside and withdrew a thick letter that was stained brown with old blood.

“Good.”

Dolores unfolded the papers and saw that they were filled with an elaborate and uncommonly beautiful calligraphy. “Pompous fool.” She surveyed the top of the first page.

The Coerced but True Confessions of the Man who was Samuel C. Upfield IV

Ninth Draft

Thirty minutes later, Dolores dropped the last page of the letter to the ground. Her guts boiled with a dire, poisonous hatred for Samuel C. Upfield IV.

“Brent!”

The cowboy hastened from the fort, knelt beside the bench and took his sister’s hands.

Trembling with fury, Dolores said, “We can’t let Yvette forgive him after what he did. We can’t. He’s the reason for it all—one hundred percent.”

Brent squeezed his sister’s hands. “I know.”

“I got raped—I was fucked by hundreds of men and had my foot blasted off and Pa got killed and Yvette’s ruined ‘cause of that dumb weakling!” Dolores shoved her brother away and shouted, “We gotta kill him! You’re my brother, my twin brother, and my closest in the whole world—how can you let him be? How can you allow him after this? How can you!?!”