Crying Blood - An Alafair Tucker Mystery Read online

  “Behave!” he spat. He drew his pistol and pressed the barrel against Crying Blood’s cheek. “I could kill you right now and stuff your carcass down a fox hole and nobody’d ever find you again.”

  Alafair was less concerned with Crying Blood’s welfare than with Shaw’s state of mind. His fury caused her to take a step back. “Shaw,” she began, before a keening whine cut her short. “Mercy me! Is that Crook? Did the villain shoot him?’

  The dog’s plight drew Shaw’s attention. “No, looks like he kicked him, or walloped him somehow and busted his leg pretty bad. Kurt, train that shotgun on this yahoo and don’t let him twitch a toe.” Kurt stepped forward and raised the shotgun, quiet and purposeful, and motioned for the Indian to move back. Crying Blood blinked at him and shook his head, trying to clear it. He got his feet under him and managed to step away.

  Shaw knelt back down to attend to the wounded dog and removed his bandana from his back pocket. Shaw continued to talk to Alafair in an undertone as he gently bound the dog’s leg, aided by the already dimming stream of light from the Eveready. “He said he’s after a white-haired man who put those bones in the ground, and he followed me home so I’d lead him to this fellow.”

  “White-haired man?”

  He cast a malevolent glance in the Indian’s direction. “I don’t know who. I’m guessing some old man killed whoever we found buried in the woods and this crazy Indian has got it into his head that I know something about it.”

  Alafair addressed the young man. “You know who the dead man is, and you think my husband can lead you to his killer?” The boy said nothing, so she tried a different tack. “What’s your name, son?”

  Shaw answered for him. “He called himself Crying Blood, Alafair. Don’t be talking to him. He’s right round the bend, whoever he is.” He picked up the dog as carefully as he could and stood.

  Alafair stroked Crook’s silky ear. “Oh, poor old Crook. Poor old boy,” she crooned. “I know it hurts.”

  “You got him covered, Kurt?” Shaw asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Bring him along. Alafair, you go first.”

  Kurt gave his captive a violent shove in the direction of the house. “Walk.”

  Crying Blood did as he was told. He was still unsteady on his feet, but Kurt had no sympathy. He planted his foot on the seat of the boy’s pants and kicked him forward. Crying Blood staggered but didn’t fall. He threw a poisonous look over his shoulder.

  “Go on,” Shaw urged. “Make a break for it. I wish you would.”

  “Let’s send Charlie into town to get Scott right now,” Alafair urged as they picked their way through the woods.

  “No, wait until morning.”

  She could tell by his tone that Shaw had already determined what he was going to do. In fact, she knew him well enough that she could tell by his stride, the way he cradled the dog, the crackle of electricity in the air surrounding him, that no matter what he had decided there was no use arguing with him now.

  She accepted the situation with a certain fatalism. “I hope you aren’t planning to shoot him for hurting your dog and stealing a hunk of fatback.”

  Her question caused him a twist of irony and he emitted a humorless laugh. He spoke into the darkness, loud enough for Crying Blood to hear. “If I was going to shoot him, it’d be for scaring the liver out of me.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  When they cleared the woods and approached the barn, Kurt made Crying Blood clasp his hands behind his head and seized the back of his shirt to guide him toward the barn, all the while keeping the shotgun aimed carefully at the back of the Indian’s head.

  Shaw traded burdens with Alafair, taking her rifle and giving her the wounded dog. He followed Kurt and their prisoner to the barn, leaving Alafair to go to the house and deal with the their many progeny, who were all standing together in a a roiling mob just outside the back door of the house. They descended on her like a swarm of bees as she approached, buzzing with questions. Martha had raised a lantern in one hand, the better to assess what was happening. The light illuminated the faces of Alafair’s three eldest, Martha, Mary, and Alice, standing shoulder to shoulder and eyeing their mother with concern while the younger ones fussed over the dog.

  Mary, in the middle, was holding Grace in her arms. “Looks like y’all got him.”

  Alafair nodded and raised her voice to be heard over the hubbub. “Daddy and Kurt caught our pork thief. He’s just a hungry youngster, so no need to be scared. Crook went to bite him and got kicked. Looks like he has a broken leg, but he’ll be all right. Fronie, back up. You’re crowding him, here.” She walked up the back steps with the children in orbit around her, talking all the while. “Y’all should have gone ahead and eaten supper. It’s dark already and you children need to get to bed. Mary and Alice, go on and feed the young ones. Alice, if Walter’s going to come get you soon, you’d better get some food into you. Here, Charlie, you take care of Crook. Martha, you can help him with a poultice and splint, can’t you? Make him a bed here on the porch. I’m going out to the barn and see how Daddy and Kurt are doing with their prisoner.”

  ***

  Kurt hauled Crying Blood into the barn and threw him into an empty stall.

  Shaw leaned his rifle against the wall and lit a couple of kerosene lanterns before he took a lariat from its hook. “Son,” he said to Kurt, “you keep that shotgun pointed right between this fellow’s eyes and don’t take your eye off him for a second.” He entered the stall, careful not to block Kurt’s line of sight, and pushed the Indian to the ground. He knelt down and tied the young man’s hands to the slats in the stall gate. Crying Blood grunted involuntarily when Shaw gave the knots around his wrists a final vindictive tug before standing up.

  For a long moment, they assessed one another. Shaw was breathing heavily, from emotion rather than exertion. The young Indian’s jaw was red and one of his eyes was swelling, but he was calm. He cast a glance at the tall man with the funny accent who was aiming the 12-gauge at him, gimlet eyed. He decided not to make any sudden moves.

  Crying Blood spoke first. “Who are you?”

  Shaw was so taken aback at the question that he nearly choked. “Who am I, you birdbrain? Who the blazes are you?”

  Before the boy could answer, Alafair sailed into the barn with a bucket of warm water in one hand and bandages and a small, square, blue glass bottle in the other. She took in the situation at a glance. Shaw was right on the edge. “I told the children you caught our haint.” Her tone was calm, almost conversational. “Looks like you roughed him up a mite, too. Kurt, put that gun down. He can’t do any harm trussed up like that.” She set the bucket down and put a gentle hand on Shaw’s arm before lowering herself to her knees in front of the captive.

  She dipped a cloth in the warm water and began cleaning the cut under Crying Blood’s eye.

  “When’s the last time you ate, child?” She asked the question in her best motherly voice.

  Shaw emitted a noise that may have been akin to a laugh. Trust Alafair to try and diffuse the tension, even if the last thing he wanted to be was reasonable. Her presence did calm him, however, and he felt his shoulders relax. He motioned to Kurt to do as she asked.

  Crying Blood was regarding her as though she were a creature from another planet. He didn’t answer her question.

  Shaw hunkered down next to his wife. “He asked me who I was, if you can believe it. Now, why do you expect some crazy Muscogee boy who dresses like Tecumseh himself is stalking somebody he doesn’t even know?”

  “Maybe he thought you were whoever he’s looking for,” Alafair speculated as she dabbed. “And now he gets a look at you he sees that he’s wrong.”

  Shaw’s mouth quirked as he considered this. “Well, Alafair, a little while back, as he was poking me in the neck with a rifle, he mentioned that he was looking for a white-haired man and I don’t expect I fit that description.”

  A look of annoyance flashed in Crying Blood’s eyes, as t
hough he suspected he was being toyed with and didn’t appreciate it.

  Alafair draped the bloodied rag over the side of the bucket and pulled the cork out of the small bottle. She poured a bit of reddish liquid from the bottle onto a square of white cotton. “This is iodine, son,” she warned. “It’s going to sting,”

  Crying Blood yelped and jerked away when she touched his cut lip with the iodine and Alafair grabbed his jaw to hold him steady as she doctored. The boy’s discomfort gave Shaw perverse satisfaction. Some small retribution for the discomfort Crying Blood had given him. He sat back in the straw and crossed his legs.

  Now that he had calmed down some, Shaw was sorry that he had pounded on the kid. But he couldn’t take it back. When he spoke again, Shaw’s voice had lost its rage. “You’ve been giving me fits, boy, ever since I come back from Oktaha.”

  He was glad that Alafair was here. No young thing could resist her peculiar magic and Crying Blood seemed to be no exception. His eyes never left her face as she washed the war paint off his cheeks in a businesslike manner. She cast Shaw a glance as she dropped the wash cloth back into the bucket.

  “Honey, his hands are turning blue.” Her tone was intimate, a comment just between the two of them. “Surely it wouldn’t hurt anything if he was tied with his hands lower than his head.”

  Shaw didn’t reply. He wasn’t in the mood to be charitable. It took a moment of internal struggle before Shaw overcame enough of his pique to admit that she was probably right. Alafair moved to the side as he carefully loosed one of the Indian’s hands and retied it to a lower slat, then did the same with the other.

  As he tied he spoke to the boy, low, like he would to an animal. “You’re the one skulking around our camp the other night. I recognize them moccasins. What were you doing out in the big middle of lonesome?”

  The boy’s only response was a stubborn stare. But years of fatherhood had taught Shaw a thing or two about how to deal with a sulky teen. “I can’t figure out how you managed to get around three hunting dogs and sashay around the camp as free as you please.”

  The stony expression gave way to a self satisfied smirk. “A hunk of squirrel and a kind word. Them dogs was easy to charm.”

  Alafair could tell that the boy was relieved to have his hands readjusted by the way his body relaxed. “But not when you presumed to skulk around here.”

  “That yeller dog set them off.” He hesitated and cast a rueful glance at Alafair. “I’m sorry I hurt that hound. He’d of had me for sure, elsewise.”

  “Why did you take it into your head to follow me home?” Shaw asked.

  “I don’t care nothing about you. I want the white-haired haint.”

  “Maybe we can help you find him,” Alafair said.

  His suspicious mien said that he didn’t believe her for a minute.

  She tried another tack. “Why don’t you tell us the whole story, youngster?”

  Both Shaw and Alafair recognized Crying Blood’s look of disdain for the hopeless ignorance of his elders. They had seen it on their own children. Alafair was tempted to laugh.

  Shaw was tempted to slap the expression off his face. He restrained himself with an effort. “I don’t have the littlest notion what you think you’re about!”

  Alafair could tell by Shaw’s rising volume that his frustration at this back and forth was about to get the better of him. She placed a discreet hand on his thigh. “Leave it for a little bit, Shaw. Why don’t you come up to the house with me and have a bite to eat? Kurt will watch him, won’t you, Kurt?”

  Kurt had been watching the proceedings with intense interest from the open stall gate, his stringy frame slouched against the slats. He had traded the 12-gauge for Shaw’s .22 Winchester, which was cradled in the crook of his arm. He directed his answer to Shaw. “Yes, sir, I can, Mister Tucker. He won’t go nowhere while I am looking on him.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “I been trying for a year to find that farm where y’all was hunting. Ira only took me out there the once and I couldn’t remember much about where it was or how we got there. But I knew I had to find it again.”

  The boy was stuffing his mouth with cornbread and stew as he spoke, which made it hard for Alafair to understand him. A diet of stolen fatback and whatever field critters he could snare had obviously left Crying Blood on the edge of starvation. He was not a bad-looking boy, she thought, though small and undernourished. He had the cheekbones and black hair of a Creek, but otherwise, he looked more White than Indian with round, grey-green eyes and a long-nosed, narrow face. His cheeks were still round with youth. Alafair lowered her estimate of his age to not more than sixteen, and not a very well-grown sixteen at that. In his old-fashioned Creek garb he looked more like a boy playing at dress-up than any kind of a threat.

  His swollen lip and rapidly purpling shiner didn’t seem to bother him much. Neither did the fact that Shaw had shackled him to the wall with a length of chain, some old handcuffs, and a couple of pieces of harness leather. He was managing to shovel in the stew in spite of a limited range of motion and a sore mouth. The stew seemed to have loosened his tongue as well.

  Alafair was sitting on an upturned crate at the far end of the stall, close to the open gate, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, watching the boy demolish his meal and asking what she hoped were innocuous but leading questions. She wanted to have a closer look at that eye, but Shaw had forbidden her from getting too close to him now that he had some use of his hands. She could feel Shaw standing behind her, his body heat, his suspicion, his curiosity. He had his rifle at his side, she knew, cautious as always. They had sent Kurt to bed.

  “When was the last time you ate, young’un?” she asked again.

  “A while, I guess,” he admitted, as he sopped up the last of the gravy from the bowl with a hunk of cornbread.

  Shaw almost made a remark about a recent meal of pork, but decided that the boy would probably be more forthcoming without sarcastic remarks from the man who had just beaten him up. He bit his lip and left him to Alafair’s tenderer approach.

  “I guess you’ve been living rough for a spell,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He paused to lick the empty bowl. “I been looking for the white-haired haint for a long time now.”

  “You want some more stew?”

  He shot a glance upward at Shaw before he extended his bowl toward her, eager. “I’d be beholden.”

  She ladled stew out of the covered pail at her side, picked another crumbly piece of cornbread from the basket in her lap, and laid it on top of the bowl. She let him wolf down a few bites before venturing another question. “Who’s Ira?”

  “He was my brother.”

  She didn’t miss the fact that he spoke of his brother in the past tense. “Is Ira dead, honey?”

  Crying Blood didn’t look up from his meal. “They said it was an accident that he fell off his mule and broke his neck. But I saw. Old Billy was a mild critter, but something spooked him and he bucked Ira off. Then a thing with long white hair came out of the bushes. It walked like a man, but it had a face like an evil spirit. That’s how I know he’s a haint. He grabbed Ira up and twisted his neck. Then he disappeared like he was never there. It was night, and rainy, and I was pretty far off. And nobody believes a kid, anyway. But I know what I saw.”

  Alafair and Shaw exchanged a glance. Now we’re getting somewhere. She tried another question. “Why did this fellow kill Ira, do you suppose?”

  Crying Blood’s eyes grew round. “I think he seen us when Ira took me there to that farm. I think he followed us home and waited till he could do Ira in.”

  “But why?” she persisted.

  “Hell, I don’t know—’scuse me—I don’t know for sure.” His spoon hesitated on its way to his mouth and he looked over her head at Shaw. “I hardly remember anything from when I was little. I remember my brother. A couple years ago, he took me to that farm and told me it was ours ’cause we were Muscogee. He said nobody lived
there because there was a haint walked the place. But then after we got home, Ira came to me all scared and told me he’d seen it. That it’d followed us home. He told me it wanted to kill him, and it did. That ghost, he’ll get me, too, if I don’t get him first.”

  Alafair offered yet another piece of cornbread and he took it. “Where is your home?”

  She had hoped that he was on a roll, but that was one inquiry too many. He cast her a glance as he ate but didn’t answer.

  She tried a different question. “How long have you been waiting out there to see your ghost?”

  He considered his answer, then decided there was nothing in it that could give him away. “Just a few days, but I never saw a sign of him. Then a bunch of White folks showed up and commenced to bird hunting.” He had begun by speaking to Alafair, but now he turned his attention to Shaw. “I couldn’t hardly wait for y’all to leave so I could get on with it.”

  Shaw was unable to keep quiet any longer. “Well, then, why did you follow me? Why do you think he’s here, this white-haired man, or haint, or whatever he is?”

  Crying Blood’s gaze swiveled enough to look at him. “I did, ’cause he did. When y’all cooked that rabbit he finally showed up. I heard him. He said your name.”

  Shaw’s brows knit. “He said my…” The sentence died on his lips as he suddenly remembered—a single, icy, sigh of wind, ruffling the remaining dry leaves on the trees, the sound like a voice.

  Shaw.

  “I know he’s here,” said Crying Blood.

  ***

  Alafair and Shaw stood close together just outside the barn door. The sky was overcast, so even though the moon was full it only shone as a round, grey, luminescence in a black sky.

  The empty food pail was slung over Alafair’s forearm, the dishes that Crying Blood had licked clean were in her hands. Shaw cradled his rifle in his arms. He was still wearing his worse-for-wear Stetson pulled down low on his forehead. The brim shadowed his face and made it invisible in the gloom of the night.