The Deegans
The Deegans
(Thanks to my beta, Terri Derr)
“Settle down.” Betsy Deegan gave her sons a mother’s evil eye and hefted the heavy cooking pot onto the wagon bed next to them. They stopped wrestling long enough to move their feet. She couldn’t take much more of this. She was tired and still hurting from the rough love Joel had given her two nights before. It wasn’t her fault he’d lost another job and they were on the road again. One minute she’s helping with wash day, and the next the foreman’s hollering and she’s packing up the wagon for the third time in six months. She’d leave Joel if it weren’t for the boys. How do you feed and clothe two young ‘uns without a man?
“We’re bored.” Carl whined, giving his brother a shove.
Betsy threw a bedroll at them. “Put that with the others and stop bellyaching. Your pa’s checking the trail. He’ll be back soon.” Unless he’d taken off and left them. God help them if he did; the further west they went the fewer choices she had. The woman in the store in Carterville had said there were hardly any white folks on the other side of the canyon; they all spoke Spanish. The rancher they’d met at Sutter’s Fort was white though. When he offered Joel a job, he spoke English, but he didn’t say he was almost the only one at his ranch who did. No, sirree, he did not.
She should’ve known it was too good to be true. They’d only just been kicked off the other place, and everyone at the fort was talking about why. It stood to reason the fella had heard the chin wagging if she had. Them old biddies wouldn’t shut their gobs when he came around a corner. He’d have to be desperate or plum crazy to take on a sidewinder like Joel, no references and a family to boot.
Now what? The boys had stopped prodding each other and were staring into a gap between her spinning wheel and the driver’s seat. “What you looking at?”
She walked along the side of the wagon and peered down. A fly was newly caught in a web. The spider was out of its hiding place, stalking its supper. The boys were glued.
Well, that should keep them quiet for a while. Now she came to think about it, maybe she was worrying too much. Joel was a fair flannel mouth when not liquored up. Maybe he convinced that fella the stories about him were all hogwash. Steers go missing for lots of reasons. Besides, a place is a place. “Stay here while I fetch water.”
The family had stopped at the foot of a gully running off Devil’s Canyon, just before the trail wound through badlands. The rancher had told him there was a spring a little way up the gully. “Make a good campsite and you’ll cross the badlands before nightfall the next day if you overnight there instead of Carterville. Get to the ranch a day earlier.”
What he hadn’t said was the path to the spring was narrow and too rough to take the wagon.
“We’ll make camp under these trees. You boys fetch firewood while your ma goes for water. I’ll see to the animals.” Full of bright ideas, Joel. She could have seen to the horse and mule. He could have carried the heavy buckets. Everything is easy if you don’t have to do the hard work.
The buckets were empty again now, and the canteens needed filling. Betsy would send the boys up the track if she could trust them to come straight back, but they were always wandering off. Never pay me no mind.
I work my fingers red raw for them boys and their good for nothing pa; keep them clean, clothed, and fed, and what thanks do I get? Carl and Billy looked like butter wouldn’t melt, but they never lifted a finger to help unless threatened with a whopping. Never stuck at anything long even then. Their pa in the making, and that’s a fact.
“I hear him. I hear him.” Carl jumped up from the sack of rice he was sitting on.
Billy did the same, and Betsy frowned. Like a freaking shadow that ‘un. She knew she wasn’t as fond of her second son as a mother should be. It was probably because he came too soon after his brother; she was already having second thoughts about their pa when Billy arrived. Still, I suppose they’ll always have each other’s backs. Pity there’s not one good brain between them.
Sure enough, Joel Deegan rounded the bend on the flea-bitten nag he’d bought with the last of his wages from an earlier job in Nevada. Why he needed a horse as well as the mule, Betsy would never know. She figured it just made him feel big to own a saddle horse. Never mind his family were living off rice and beans.
Joel dismounted quickly. “Here.” He thrust the reins into her hand. “Tie him up out of sight of the road, and stay low. There’s a rider coming.”
Betsy had a bad feeling. “What you planning to do?”
“Easy pickings. On his own.” Deegan pulled his rifle out from its scabbard. “Good horse by the way he’s riding. Might get that too if it don’t run off.”
“But he ain’t just going to give you his money and his horse, Joel. Even if you knock him out, he’ll come after you later. Report you to the law.”
“Ain’t no law in these parts.”
That was true, but men took the law into their own hands because of it or hired someone to do it for them. Horse stealing was a hanging offence, and they didn’t know who that fella was. “Ain’t we got enough trouble?”
“Stop bellyaching. There won’t be no one coming after us once I’m done.” Joel loaded his rifle.
“No, Joel, you can’t.” Betsy tried to stop him going. She wasn’t a bible basher, but she didn’t hold with killing. “He might have young ‘uns.”
“Let go, woman.” Joel backhanded her, hard. She stumbled and fell to her knees against the stirrups. The horse skittered backwards, a hoof narrowly missing her hand. “You boys stay with the wagon.”
Bastard. Betsy brushed off the dust and dabbed her bleeding cheek with her handkerchief as Joel climbed up the rocky hillside to the ridge. The boys watched her with big brown eyes. God knows what they were thinking. Their pa beating up on her sure didn’t make them any easier to handle.
“You heard, stay here.”
She picked up the empty canteens and limped off into the scrub, tying the horse to a bush on the way. It only took a few minutes to reach the spring, but it was uphill all the way. She had just stoppered the second canteen when the first shots rang out. Trudging back down the track she scanned the hillside. She couldn’t see Joel, but oh lor—the boys were just going over the top. She started running, slipping on loose gravel and tearing her dress on sagebrush as she ran down towards the wagon. All the time, shots ringing out.
She tossed the canteens into the wagon box and started scrambling up the steep slope to where she’d last seen the boys.
“Dang skirt.” She hitched it higher and kept on climbing.
The shooting stopped before she got to the top. Maybe it was all over. Maybe the stranger was dead. Weren’t murder. She’d heard two guns shooting. The stranger had shot at Joel first; that’s what they’d say if anyone asked. Self-defence, it was. Lord, please let those boys be all right.
Then another shot rang out. Fighting against a stitch, she covered the last few yards to the ridge just as Carl and Billy came over it. Grabbing her around the middle, they bowled her backwards into a creosote bush.
“Come out. I won’t hurt you.” An unfamiliar voice echoed through the canyon.
The boys fell to their knees and held onto her even tighter.
“What happened?” Betsy whispered urgently, but the boys didn’t answer. They just buried their faces in her skirts.
She pushed them away from her. “Carl, where’s your Pa?”
“He ain’t moving.” Carl snivelled, wiping his nose with his sleeve. Betsy looked frantically between him and Billy. The younger boy nodded.
Oh, dear God, what am I going to do. Is Joel dead?
“Can you hear me? Come out. I’ll help you.”
Oh, no, no, no. They couldn’t do that. Joel had tried to kill the man. Nothing in Betsy’s life had taught her to believe anything beyond the Old Testament. They had to hide. Looking around she saw some dense bush, and she shoved the boys towards it. “Now lie still. Not one word, you hear, or the devil will eat your innards.”
One on each side of her, they put their heads down not a moment too soon. Through the thicket she glimpsed the stranger searching around the foot of the hill, looking for them. Jee-roosalem! He was big. He wore a gun belt, and he was carrying a rifle—Joel’s rifle. She could see the D carved in the stock.
The stranger spotted the wagon. He went up and examined it and the mule. Then she saw him go into the bushes; he must have seen the horse. From her hiding place, Betsy watched him come out again and scan the hillside once more. Carl squirmed, and she pressed his head into the dirt.
“I know you’re there. Come out. I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Betsy put one finger to her lips. Billy’s saucer-like eyes threatened to overflow, but both boys stayed quiet.
After what seemed like an age of straining to hear and not hearing anything, she risked lifting her head a little, just in time to see the stranger kick at a stone, curse, and stride out of sight.
A few minutes later he was back dragging Joel’s body. He hauled it up onto the wagon bed, and covered it with canvas.
“Last chance.” Hands on hips, the man squinted upwards and Betsy ducked.
The scrunch of boots told her when he started to move away, and then everything went quiet.
Several heartbeats later, she heard the sound of hooves riding north towards Carterville. Taking a deep breath, she looked up, but stayed real still until she was absolutely sure he was gone.
She waited a full half hour, maybe more, in case it was a trick and he came back. Then, telling Carl and Billy to stay put, she went down to the wagon. She found the rifle slipped in beside Joel. He’d been shot in the chest. Dead, sure enough.
Moving the cooking pot and one of the rocks the man had used to weigh down the canvas, she checked Joel’s pockets and found his billfold. There was no money in it, but it was still there. She might be able to get a few cents for it. The horse, saddle, mule, rifle and wagon would all be worth something if she could get to Sutter’s Fort, but maybe that wasn’t the best idea. The stranger was heading north east. He’d go through Carterville, and he was bound to tell someone about the ambush. What if he blames me too? She’d get less for everything in the smaller settlements on the other side of the badlands, but it might be safer.
They’d have to keep going the way they’d planned. She could tell the fella who’d offered Joel the job that the horse had spooked and Joel was dead. Maybe she could cook or clean for him; anything until she could work out what to do next. She was a laundress by trade, if you could call it that. Least ways she’d been working in a laundry when she’d met Joel Deegan.
The rancher hadn’t seemed a bad man. Chewed tobacco, and spat a lot, but he’d offered Joel a job knowing he had a wife and kids. Maybe he’d let Betsy and the boys stay if they worked for their keep. And if he wanted more than the rifle or horse in exchange—Well, Joel’s dead; maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And when I’m sure of no trouble, we can head someplace else, as far from these parts as we can get.
Decision made, she got the shovel out from under the wagon seat, found a natural dip in the ground nearby, and started digging. Carl and Billy came down the hill soon after she got started. Sweat pouring off her, she sent them to find rocks to cover the grave. If she could make the hole deep enough and cover the grave with rocks as well as dirt, hopefully no critter would dig him up again.
She got the boys to help her drag the body off the wagon. They weren’t crying, but they sure weren’t acting normal either. They even helped her roll their pa into the grave without whining.
Afterwards she sat down on the edge of the hole with them and shared hard tack and water from one of the canteens. “You two fetch more firewood. We’ll stay here tonight and go on first thing in the morning.”
After the boys left, she began stripping Joel as best she could. His body was starting to stiffen up, but his boots and belt came away easily. With a bit of wiggling, she managed to get his pants off without tearing them. Nearly new, she should get at least half back what he paid once she’d washed them. His shirt wasn’t worth the effort, what with the blood and the bullet hole. She left it on him.
Ramming the shovel into the pile of dirt next to the grave, she began refilling it. The winter sun was already sinking behind the steep hills to west. Another hour and it would be dusk. Just enough time to finish the burying, make a fire, and set supper to boil before dark.
Betsy didn’t rest again until after she placed the stones on top of the tamped down mound of earth. She stretched her aching back and looked over at the growing heap of firewood. With luck it would see them through the night.
“Carl, stop that and fetch the tomahawk. Empty out the old crate in the back of the wagon and break it up. I want two pieces of wood about this long.” She showed him with her hands.
While Carl did as he was told, again without complaining, Billy continued to gather wood, and Betsy made a fire near the back of the wagon. They would sleep under the canvas tonight on the wagon bed. She wasn’t a good shot, but she could shoot. She’d build up the fire, and if any wild animals came near, she’d fire a shot and scare them off. She’d keep the tomahawk and shovel at hand just in case.
After supper, once she’d got the boys to sleep, she took out the piece of paper Joel carried in his wallet and the pencil stub she carried in her pocket. In the light of the fire, she copied the letters onto one of the pieces of wood Carl had chopped. She used the contents of Joel’s tobacco pouch to burn the letters in. Just DEEGAN, there wasn’t enough room for anything more. Then she tied the two pieces of wood together with twine to make a cross. It looked good. Better than he deserved, but then it wasn’t about what he deserved. A grieving widow would make an effort to bury her man right. Betsy wanted no awkward questions, and she sure didn’t want anyone digging him up and finding a bullet hole.
The next morning, she and the boys paid their respects at the grave before leaving.
“Now you listen,” she said crouching down so she was eye to eye with her sons. “If anyone asks, your pa fell off his horse. There weren’t no stranger, and there weren’t no bushwhacking. The horse spooked, and Pa fell. Hit his head on a rock. You say different, and I’ll tan your hides. You hear me?”
Carl and Billy nodded solemnly.
Betsy turned to the grave. She should say a prayer, but she didn’t know any by heart—except grace and “Thank you for what we’re about to receive” didn’t seem appropriate. Joel hasn’t set foot inside a church since we got hitched anyways. In the end, she simply said, “Say good bye to your pa.”
Carl muttered something. Betsy didn’t hear the words, but Billy giggled.
“Mind your manners.” She cuffed them both over the head. Disrespectful little devils—not a tear shed by either of them. Not that she could blame them. She didn’t cry either. Joel Deegan wasn’t that kind of a man.
Climbing up onto the wagon seat, she released the brake and flicked the reins. The mule pulled the wagon out onto the canyon trail, heading south. The boys sat in the back amongst the supplies and bedding, and the horse followed on behind tied to the backboard.
With the dawn of a new day, as they passed the spot where the boys said Joel had been shot, the future didn’t look too bad. Betsy was of a mind to be optimistic. The rancher wasn’t more than twenty years older than she was, and she didn’t look too bad considering. Women were scarce in these parts. As she recalled he’d been joshing with Joel about wanting a wife to warm his bed. Men’s talk. She hadn’t taken much notice at the time, but now, it seemed like an opportunity. He might not be too disappointed that Joel was gone. Yep, if I play my cards right, we won’t need to move on again too soon. The big stranger who shot Joel Deegan dead might have done her a favour.
Comments
Post a Comment