Kathleen Kent - The Outcasts

Dr. Tom rocked back a bit on his heels and squinted up at the younger man in a calculating way. Nate looked over the ranger’s shoulder, trying to keep the prisoner in his sights. Maynard was throwing fistfuls of dirt, pebbles, anything at hand, towards Deerling, who had hunkered down at a safe distance and was holding up what looked to be a large shotgun shell.

“You have family?” Dr. Tom asked.

“Yes. A wife and daughter.” Nate could hear Deerling speaking in a mostly one-sided discourse with Maynard, the exact words indistinct, but the tone reasonable, comforting even.

“What are their names?”

“Their names?” Nate looked uncomprehending at this line of questioning. “Beth and Mattie, not that it applies to any goddamn thing goin’ on here.”

Maynard had stopped throwing things and had taken up pleading.

“You love your family, your wife and daughter?”

“Hell, yes, I love my family.” Nate backed away a few steps. His confusion was beginning to make him angry. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

Dr. Tom gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “Maynard here kills women. All of ’em whores. But, still, each of ’em started out as someone’s sister. Or daughter.” He gave Nate a few moments to absorb this fact, and then tapped him on the arm again. “Come on. Let’s walk a bit.”

Nate turned one last time towards Maynard, who was now holding his head in his hands, listening—or not—to Deerling, who talked on and on. He remembered Maynard’s hands holding his coffee cup, the nails bitten down to the quick and stained with something dark. Maybe dirt, maybe not.

He followed Dr. Tom away from the camp and to a slight drop-off by a dried-up streambed, where they stood at the edge, their backs to the sun. Dr. Tom took out a pocket rag and swiped it around his neck. He gestured towards Nate’s legs. “You break one a while back?”

“No.” Nate crossed his arms, easing his weight from one foot to another. “Horse fell on me. Broke my hip.”

“Hurts, don’t it?” Dr. Tom smiled. He tugged on his mustache thoughtfully and said, “Old Maynard’s got a choice to make, something the poor bastard’s probably never had before in his life.”

“You think he didn’t have a choice, killin’ those women?”

“Well, no. Your average killer, yes. He’s got a choice. But Maynard”—Dr. Tom tapped his head—“Maynard is beset by the demon of by-God-have-to-do-it-and-don’t-know-why. You find ’em every once in a while. I don’t think he ever liked the killing part one bit.” He dragged the rag around his neck again and hunkered down. To Nate, it looked like he was simply enjoying the view.

Nate stood studying his hands for a bit, considering, and then dismissing, the idea that this was all some elaborately staged rite of passage, like pulling the short hairs on the last boy out of his bedroll. He decided it was not. “Goddamn it,” he muttered.

Dr. Tom said, sympathizing, “A hell of a first day.”

“What’s his choice?” Nate finally asked, lifting his chin back toward the camp.

“The big bite. Or something else, something less pleasant.”

Nate thought about the shell Deerling had shown Maynard and about the impact of the blast that a 70-grain cartridge used in a .50-caliber shotgun would make. What the “something less pleasant” would be, he couldn’t imagine. “You said the prisoner wasn’t going to be shot.”

“He’s not.” Dr. Tom spat between his teeth and watched some buzzards circling high up.

Regardless, Nate strained his ears for some sounds of a struggle back at the camp, bracing himself for the concussion of a shotgun fired off. He wondered what the hell he would say to Drake when it came time to bring what was left of Maynard back into town. He had only just been sworn in a week ago and didn’t think his word on the matter would be taken for much.

“I guess you never heard of a big bite before?” Dr. Tom asked. “Buffalo hunters on the south plains started carrying ’em a few years back. The hunter empties out a cartridge and fills it with cyanide. If he gets close to being taken by Indians, he nestles it between his teeth and bites down. It’s pretty fast.” Dr. Tom batted at the gnats beginning to swarm around his face. “At least, it’s faster than watching your own tender bits cut off by Kiowa.”

“Is that what’ll happen to him if he refuses to take the cyanide?”

“Oh, I think not,” Dr. Tom said. He stood up stiffly, brushed off the seat of his pants, and straightened his hat, as though a train, long awaited, had just pulled into the station. “The big bite’s a hell of a lot faster than doin’ the hurdy-gurdy at the end of a rope. And anyway, if Maynard cooperates, George will make sure Maynard’s kin get the reward that would otherwise go to some latecomer. I think he’ll see reason.”

“What’s it goin’ to look like when we bring him back to town?”

“I imagine it’ll look like what it is.”

“Which is…?”

“Self-inflicted mortality.”

“What about the trial? You think no one’s gonna ask questions?”

Dr. Tom sighed as though Nate had posed a delicate philosophical question. “The honest truth is, no one is gonna give a damn, except maybe the judge if he makes the trip for nothing.” He stood for a while watching Nate shaking his head. “If it makes you feel any better, we could say that you come upon us after Maynard passed on.”

“You want to add more lies to a killing?”

“Don’t take this personal, son.”

“Hell, it’s all personal.”

“I see you feel that.” Dr. Tom squinted against the light and crossed his arms, regarding the toes of his boots. He shifted once, and then raised his eyes to Nate’s. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but there was nothing menacing in his face. “Maynard Collie is a done deal. He slaughtered a few pitiful whores, and most people wouldn’t even bother to dig a hole to bury him in. But McGill, see. McGill is still alive and full of malice. You think you know what McGill has done, shooting near a dozen men in the past few years, but you don’t know the half of it. We’ve been following him and his men for over twelve months. We lost him for a short while, but we got the scent again. And you can take it to the bank that this is personal to us. Now, you can ride away back to Franklin right now and tell Drake whatever the hell you want to, but me and George need to finish this up, get him back, and head for Houston.”

Dr. Tom adjusted his hat and began walking to the camp. “I think it’s been time enough.”

Nate followed him back, almost expecting to see the prisoner still pleading with Deerling, his hands filled with rocks and dirt. But when he got close he saw Maynard lying on the ground, the leg irons removed, his stocking feet splayed and unmoving. His eyes were open, and a frothy ribbon of spittle rolled down one cheek.

“Well…” Dr. Tom said, looking at the motionless form.

Deerling, tightening the cinch on his horse, looked over his shoulder at Nate. Then he turned to Dr. Tom and asked, “Is he comin’ to Houston?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Tom answered. He picked up a blanket to cover the body. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Nate, peering at Maynard, was surprised to feel nothing even close to outrage, more of a wilting pity than anything else.

“Just tell me one thing. He done this with his own hand?” Nate asked.

Deerling kneed his horse briskly in the belly and pulled the cinch tighter. “I talked. He listened. He saw the sense in not dragging out the inevitable.” He tugged a few times at the stirrup and then walked to stand at the remains of the fire.

Looking at Maynard’s diminished form now under the blanket, Nate wondered if the prisoner had put out the last of the coals like Dr. Tom had told him to do before swallowing the poison. He believed, almost knew as a certainty, that this was the closest thing to a recounting of the events that he was going to get for a good while, maybe ever.