Marcia Muller: Crucifixion River

I was still upset myself. All that sudden violence-right here in my home! Oh, we’d had incidents before, drummers imbibing too much whiskey, men cheating at cards and getting into fights. But they’d never been anything that Dad couldn’t resolve without any shooting being done. What had happened tonight had been terrible to see. I’d probably have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. If it hadn’t been for James Never Jim Shock, that man Kraft might have shot his wife, too, and maybe Dad, or Mother, or even me. It made me shudder again just thinking about it.

“Missus Kraft?” I said.

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me.

Shaking the way she was, even with the fire, she ought to have a blanket. I hurried to my room, where I stripped away the good heavy woolen one that Mother had ordered for me from a Sears Roebuck catalog last summer. When I came back into the common room, Rachel Kraft hadn’t moved. I wrapped the blanket around her and sat down on the chair to her right. And this time when I spoke her name, she turned her head and looked at me with dull eyes.

“Joe,” she said, “Mister Hoover. He’ll live, won’t he?”

I didn’t know, but I said: “I think so. Missus Devane and my folks…they’re doing all they can.”

“And my husband? He’s dead?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She looked back at the fire. “Don’t be. He deserved to die. You saw and heard what kind of man he was.” After a moment, she added: “A harsh man created by a harsh land. This is no place to make a decent life, especially for a woman.”

I nodded. That was exactly how I felt.

“Mister Hoover and I were going away together,” she said. “I don’t know where, just…away. If he dies…”

“He won’t die.”

“You don’t know that he won’t.”

“I don’t know it, but I believe it. You should, too.”

“You’re so young, so full of optimism. And I’m…”

“Not old,” I said quickly. “Not much older than me.”

“But I’ve lived a much harder life. You don’t have any idea how hard.”

No, I didn’t. But I could imagine. From all the things that man Kraft had said before he shot Mr. Hoover, her life with him must have been awful.

“Regardless of what happens to Joe, I’m going far away from here. I hate the delta. I’ve always hated it.”

“So have I.”

“Then don’t make the mistake I did,” Mrs. Kraft said. “Don’t stay here, don’t linger a moment longer than you have to. Leave before it’s too late.”

As soon as she said that, I thought of James Never Jim Shock. Truth to tell, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I’d first set eyes on him. Such a handsome man. And he wasn’t a mere peddler. He was…well, a sort of happy banjo-playing troubadour who’d traveled far and wide, seen wonderful places, and done all manner of exciting things. A free spirit. And a hero, too, the way he’d saved us all from harm tonight.

Did I dare let him be my way out of here?

He seemed as taken with me as I was with him. He’d called me a beautiful woman, and the touch of his hand on mine, the hard muscles I’d felt when I hugged his arm-the memory made me all tingly again, my face feel warm. He was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a man, wasn’t he? And he’d be good to me, I was sure of it.

Dad. Mother. The idea of stealing away-they wouldn’t let me go voluntarily, not alone and never with a man I’d only just met-and perhaps never seeing them again made me feel sad. I loved them both and their lives had been difficult since that accident in Chicago when I was a child. Mother was so tired, worn down by years of hard work, and lonely except for my company. Dad worked hard, too, his writing his only escape. It put a hollow feeling in my chest, thinking of what would become of them when I left. But I had to think of myself first, didn’t I? Don’t you always have to think of yourself first when you’re young and trapped?

I glanced over at Mrs. Kraft. She was staring into the flames, her mouth bent down, eyes blank again. No, I wasn’t going to turn out like her-beaten, broken, and, despite what she claimed, probably trapped here in the delta for the rest of her life. She wasn’t a strong woman, not like my mother, not like me. If Joe Hoover didn’t live, she’d be completely alone, with nowhere to go.

I went back to my room, where I lay down on my bed in the dark, pulling the quilt around me. Mrs. Kraft was right. This was no place to make a decent life. I couldn’t linger here; I had to leave before it was too late. The only question was whether I should wait and make my way alone or leave right away with James Never Jim Shock.

I spent most of the long night sprawled in one of the overstuffed chairs near the hearth. Now and then I dozed, but I was too keyed up to sleep. Mostly I tended to the fire, listened to the wind and rain, and let my thoughts wander.

The shootings had put me on edge. Sudden violence always has that effect on me, whether I’m directly involved or not. I’d shot two men in my time, been fired upon by them and by two others, drawn sidearm and rifle on half a dozen more, and I was weary of gunplay. Weary, too, of drunken fools like Luke Kraft and cold-blooded types like James Shock. No simple peddler, Shock. I’d seen his breed before: sly, deadly connivers hiding behind bright smiles and drummers’ casual patter. Kraft wasn’t the first man he’d killed with that hideout weapon of his; the swift draw, the dead-aim bullet placed squarely between the rancher’s eyes at forty paces, proved that. He was a dangerous man, capable of any act to feather his nest, and he knew that I knew it. Knew what I was, just as I knew what he was. He’d been as watchful of me as I’d been of him since we’d had our conversation out in the barn.

Be more to my liking if I was here after Shock instead of Harold P. Baxter, alias T.J. Murdock. Shock was the sort I’d always enjoyed tracking down and yaffling-a proper match for my skills and my dislike of criminals. Murdock, on the other hand, seemed to be a decent family man. Likable. Intelligent. Nonviolent. His only sin was an incident eight years ago in Chicago, unavoidable and accidental by all accounts except one. If any man other than Patrick Bellright had been affected, Murdock and and his wife and daughter wouldn’t have had to flee for their lives, or to spend eight years hiding in a California backwater like this one.

Yes, and if any man other than Patrick Bellright had been affected, I wouldn’t be here ready and willing to tear their patchwork lives to shreds for a $10,000 reward.

Pure luck that I’d found him. Murdock might’ve lived the rest of his life at Twelve-Mile Crossing if Bellright hadn’t employed the Pinkerton agency; if I hadn’t been transferred from the Chicago to the San Francisco office; if I hadn’t had a penchant for back-checking old, unsolved cases; if Murdock hadn’t risked publishing sketches in San Francisco newspapers and magazines and I hadn’t spotted the similarities to Harold P. Baxter’s writings for the Chicago Sentinel . Circumstances had conspired against him, and in my favor. Bellright’s favor, too. Patrick Bellright-financier and philanthropist, with a deserved reputation as a hater and seeker of vengeance and brass-balled son of a bitch.

There wasn’t much doubt what he’d do when I brought Harold P. Baxter back to Chicago to face him. He’d pay me my blood money and dismiss me, and a short time later Baxter would either turn up dead in a trumped-up accident or disappear never to be heard from again. An eye for an eye, that was Bellright’s philosophy. Hell, he was capable of killing Baxter himself and laughing while he did it.