Kathleen Kent - The Outcasts

Once he’d gained the ledge, Nate flattened himself next to Deerling, who used the glasses to watch the approaching horses. They were still more than a half a mile distant, traveling north, but Nate could make out four men on horseback driving the herd of about twenty horses at a fast walk. The outcropping where the two men lay was in shadow, but the valley was now torched with clear light.

Deerling said, “They’ll switch course to the runoff.” He passed the glasses to Nate, who watched the herd soon being driven to the creek.

As the horses waded into the water, their heads bent to drink, Deerling asked, “What do you make it?”

“Between a hundred, hundred fifty yards from the base road.”

“And we’re two hundred yards up?”

“Maybe less.”

Deerling removed his hat and carefully raised himself to a one-kneed position, then sighted down the side scope of the Whitworth. He adjusted it and gave Nate the rifle to shoulder. “In a minute, one of those bucks is likely to cross the stream to our side. Take a look.”

One of the riders broke off from the group and splashed through the stream, scanning the rise. Through the scope, Nate could clearly see the pearl-white buttons on the man’s shirt. After a moment, the rider turned his horse around and sat loose in the saddle, his back to the cliff.

“I don’t have a fork for the barrel,” Deerling said. “So you’ll have to hold firm for the kick.”

Nate pulled his eye away from the scope and peered sharply at Deerling.

“You only get one shot, so make it count.”

“They don’t see us, there’s no cause to shoot.”

Deerling sat back on his haunches and stabbed a finger toward the herd. “All of those horses are branded. When you joined the force, it should have been explained to you that a horse thief is a man just waiting to be dead. Now take the shot.”

“Christ Almighty. They’re not a danger to us—”

Deerling put his face close to Nate’s. “I’m not telling you again. When that gun goes off, and he goes down, the rest will scatter with the horses. You miss, and they’re likely to regroup and kill us on our descent. Fire the weapon.”

Nate sighted down the scope and watched as the rider kicked his horse forward and the three men on the far side of the stream began waving the herd into motion again. His finger slipped inside the trigger guard and curled around the trigger, but an instinct as strong as breathing made him pause.

The rider had crossed the stream, and Nate lowered the gun. “I’m not shooting a man in the back, horse thief or no.”

Deerling pulled the Whitworth from Nate’s hands. “You just failed your first test.” He stood up, and with the rifle shouldered and carefully aimed, he whistled through his teeth, as if he were calling in a field hand. The rider yanked the reins, wheeling the horse about, and Deerling fired. Following the shattering boom of the Whitworth, the man was thrown backwards into the water, a red mist scattering where his head had been moments before. Several rifle shots from Dr. Tom were discharged from the summit above them, the bullets tearing clods out of the streambed.

The three remaining riders flagged the horses into a panicked run, and they raced north again up the valley, leaving the body in the shallow current. Deerling turned and began climbing towards the top of the road.

Nate sat on the ledge watching the distant body floating in the stream. The riderless horse had stampeded away with the herd, and a turkey vulture circled in ever-tightening spirals in the warming updrafts. By the time he had gathered up the two rifles and started back up the mesa, the sun had come to shine on its western face and he didn’t know if the two rangers had waited for him or if he would breast the hill and find himself alone.

The Waller family sat facing Lucinda as though they had been elaborately posed for a theatrical performance or daguerreotype. Euphrastus Waller was a large, somber man dressed in a dark woolen suit with a black silken tie drooping beneath his chin. His ample haunches looked to be uncomfortably planted in an ornate, tufted chair, and Lucinda suspected, from the way his coat stretched across his chest, that he was wearing a corset.

His wife, Sephronia, sat to his left on a low bench. Her hair was in a tight knot at the nape of the neck, her scalp an unblemished white through the exactly centered part. Her dress was also of silk, although the hem was frayed, and she had voluminous petticoats under the skirts, the likes of which had not been seen since the fall of Atlanta. The daughter, Lavada, sat in an even lower chair to his right.

Good God, Lucinda thought. The girl’s wearing gloves.

Next to Lavada, close to a window, was the Wallers’ son, Elam. He sat motionless in a wheeled, cane-backed chair, his face towards the light, his half-open eyes focused on nothing. Lucinda must have looked overly long in his direction, as Lavada offered, “Brother has had a hard life.”

“My son…” Euphrastus began. His voice trailed away and he cleared his throat.

“Our son was wounded at the Battle of Vicksburg,” Sephronia said pointedly. “He has been in a decline.”

“It was a siege,” Euphrastus corrected. He glanced briefly at his wife, and she blushed under his scrutiny and looked down at her hands.

“Ah,” Lucinda said, focusing on the wall above their heads. It was a small parlor, but it had high ceilings, and the maroon-and-green-striped wallpaper gave the room extra height so that she felt a momentary sense of dizziness, as though the floor were falling away from her chair. To counter the effect, she moved her gaze to the mantel behind Euphrastus and saw perched there a stuffed and mounted owl with amber glass eyes.

Euphrastus said, “I suppose that, as it was dark when you arrived last night, you will be eager to see the school.”

Sephronia nodded, as if it were a startling, momentous observation. Lucinda was uncertain whether or not this was her cue to leave, so she nodded as well, and waited.

He continued, “And to the subjects being taught?”

“As I wrote in my letter,” Lucinda said, “reading and penmanship, mathematics, geography—”

“From what map?” Euphrastus muttered.

“And, of course, the natural sciences.”

Sephronia’s head came up. “Miss Carter, are not all sciences natural?” She smiled at her own cleverness, and Lavada stifled a laugh behind one gloved hand.

“And elocution, Miss Carter?” Lavada asked.

She handed Lucinda a slender volume engraved with the title The American Speaker. Lucinda opened the cover to the table of contents and read the first two entries: “Religion Never to Be Treated with Levity” and “The Folly of Misspending Time.”

Euphrastus stood abruptly. “I think we should show Miss Carter where she will be teaching.”

He led Lucinda down the front-porch steps and onto the path away from the house, and she could see what had been hidden in the dark: a whitewashed two-story house, hastily built, with the wash already peeling.

Behind them, the two women pushed the wheeled chair down a ramp, Elam seemingly insensitive to the world around him.

Euphrastus gestured to the north and the south of the path as they walked, naming the homesteads and farms. Behind them, to the west, ran Middle Bayou, with live oak and magnolia growing in abundance, and crape myrtles newly planted for color.

He told her that he was growing cotton and planned to plant cane for a sugar mill.

She allowed him to take her elbow as she stepped over a deep rut in the path, observing that he was mindless of the women struggling with the wheeled chair. She let his eyes linger over her naked fingers.