Crying Blood - An Alafair Tucker Mystery Read online

  They left town, heading south just as the sun crowned the horizon. It was a cold, cloudless morning, good for traveling. Alafair was bundled up to her eyes in a duster, boots, gloves, and a stiff-brimmed, felt hat secured to her head with a wool scarf. Shaw couldn’t help but smile as they rattled out of town over Boynton’s red brick streets, Alafair bolt upright in the seat next to Scott, hanging on to the door frame for dear life. When she got home this evening she was going to be wind-blown, gritty, bumped, and jostled to within an inch of her life. She always has been up for an adventure, he thought.

  And she was out of the way.

  He turned his buckboard in the opposite direction out of town, toward home. Before he reached the turnoff that led west, he steered the team up the long driveway of his parents’ two story, dove-grey farmhouse.

  His mother was in the dining room. She was sitting at the big mahogany table with several other ladies of a certain age, all eating biscuits and honey and chattering like birds. He beckoned to her from the parlor door and she rose to meet him in the foyer, drawing the stained glass French doors closed behind her.

  He snatched his hat off and pressed it to his chest. “Sorry to bother you, Ma.”

  “I’m always glad to see you, sugar. Today’s my Bible study breakfast but we ain’t quite got started yet. Come on in and have a bite. Say howdy to the ladies.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to forego that pleasure today, ma’am. I was just wanting to have a word with Papa.”

  Sally’s expression sharpened. “He’s not here, son. Does this have something to do with that poor child who got murdered out to your place?”

  “It does.”

  “Honey, he’s not back from Okmulgee yet.”

  Shaw looked startled. “He’s not?”

  “Well, no. After he got home from your place yesterday morning and told me what happened, he said that Scott wouldn’t have time to be thinking about his piddling problem. I went straight over to your house to help Alafair for a spell, but your Papa told me that he had business in Okmulgee that couldn’t wait and lit out. I figured he’d determined to either go to the law in Okmulgee or have it out with Doolan directly. Said he’d be back in a day or two. What’s going on, Shaw?”

  “I haven’t seen him since that morning. Scott said he was acting funny before he left, talking about him and Hawkins and Doolan being in the Army. Seems odd he’d take off like that.”

  “It’s an odd situation, son, the business with Doolan and the business out at Hawkins’ old place both happening at once. It probably got him to reminiscing. As for him going after Doolan when he did, I expect that since Papa didn’t know who the boy was he didn’t figure there was anything he could do to help you. And he didn’t want to pester Scott with his troubles.”

  Shaw looked doubtful, but he said, “That’s more than likely it. Well, I guess I’ll just wait ’til he gets home to talk to him, then. You go on back to your guests, Mama. I’ll see you later.”

  Sally hesitated, considering whether to probe further. She knew her son well enough to realize that this murder of a young person right under his nose would be eating at him terribly. But she also knew that platitudes weren’t going to help him. At the moment that was all she could offer. Best to let him be. She squeezed his arm. “Me and Papa will come out to see you after he gets back from Okmulgee.”

  He gave her a pale smile. “I’d like that.”

  She left him in the foyer, and he turned to leave. He was just raising his hat to his head when his eye lit on the oval portrait of his mother and stepfather, hanging beside the front door. He knew the picture well. They were sitting side by side staring at the camera, both looking slightly amused by the whole thing. His mother was dressed in the black, high-necked, mutton-sleeved dress that she had worn for every dressy occasion he could remember, until it literally fell apart on her. Peter was looking sharp in a three-piece suit, celluloid collar, and a cravat with a pearl tie pin. His hair was combed straight back, shiny with pomade. The portrait was made over a dozen years before, but even then Peter’s thick mane was white as snow.

  Shaw looked down at the floor, feeling slightly ill. It absolutely could not be. Even if Peter was the white-haired man Crying Blood was looking for, he was not the boy’s murderer. But ever since this nightmare began Shaw had had an uncomfortable suspicion that Peter McBride knew more about what was happening than he let on.

  He set his hat firmly on his head. He couldn’t wait. Not for Peter, not for Scott, not for Barger. He couldn’t say exactly why but he knew this ghost was his to lay down. Alafair was not here to talk sense into him. Now was the time to do it.

  ***

  Shaw drove the buckboard directly into the barn, unhitched and corralled the mules, and saddled his black mare, Hannah. He strapped on his sidearm, slid his rifle into its holster on the saddle and slipped a couple of boxes of cartridges into the saddlebag. A blanket roll, matches, knife, a tarp, Gee Dub’s flashlight, a small tin bucket and spoon. He wrapped some leftover cornbread and a hunk of cheese in some butcher paper, a handful of cracklins, and one of Alafair’s cast iron skillets, a small one with feet, called a spider, especially for cooking over a campfire.

  He pulled a clean, white, muslin, draw-string bag out of the bottom drawer of the sideboard, filled it with a couple of scoops of coarse salt and took it with him to the smokehouse. He picked a fatty piece of barely smoked pork loin, sawed off a hunk and put it into the bag of salt along with several rashers of bacon. He locked the smokehouse door behind him and walked back to the barn, where he mounted up and rode out to the pasture to find Kurt.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The day was bright and cool with a whisper of breeze out of the north. Not a cloud marred the blue November sky. The road was dry but not too dusty, since it had been recently graded and oiled for some distance outside of Boynton. The first three miles of the trip were fast and smooth and Alafair was thinking that automobile travel was a mighty pleasant way to go. As they got further from town she modified her opinion. The country highway was worn into deep ruts by heavily laden wagons and trucks and pocked with potholes of every imaginable size, shape, and depth. Scott had to slow down to a crawl to get over the bumps and ridges he couldn’t avoid by driving around them, sometimes with two wheels on the road and two in a weedy ditch or on the brushy shoulder.

  Eufaula was less than twenty-five miles south and a bit east of Boynton as the crow flies. But no crow ever flew the zig-zag route Scott and Alafair had to drive in order to get from where they were to where they wanted to be. They were able to drive pretty much straight south for ten miles or so and make good time, too, if you didn’t count those three miles between Boynton and Council Hill where the road dwindled down to nothing more than two bare dirt wagon wheel gouges in the middle of what looked like a wide footpath. Things improved between Council Hill and Hitchita, except for the fact that now the road was leading them west. But Scott assured Alafair that once they got to Hitchita they would be able to pick up a fair route straight east to Checotah, then a really good road due south into Eufaula.

  Alafair had ridden in automobiles before, but always in town. She had certainly never done any cross-country travel in one. It was interesting, she thought, even if somewhat frightening. Especially when they came upon a straight and relatively smooth stretch of road and Scott accelerated to a heart-pounding twenty-five, even thirty, miles an hour. As bumpy as it sometimes was, she found that she was enjoying her auto trip much more than she would have if they had been making this long trip in a horse-drawn conveyance.

  The Model T performed like a champion. They only had one flat tire on the way down, just outside of Hitchita. Scott pulled off the road and rummaged around in the back of the auto, mumbling to himself and making a lot of clanking noises. Alafair sat where she was, staring straight ahead and trying not to think about the fact that they were currently stranded in a vast, rolling, brushy, tree-strewn wilderness in the middle of she-knew-not-where.

/>   Eventually the mumbling and rattling stopped and the auto began to jostle. Her curiosity got the better of her. She opened the door and stepped out to see the sheriff squatting next to the passenger-side back tire, cramming a pile of thick wood blocks under the frame.

  She was briefly distracted by how good it felt to stand up and stretched until her spine cracked. She made a circuit around the Ford, stamping the blood back into her feet and legs, enjoying the clean, fresh breeze in her face. When she made it back around to Scott he was wrestling off the tire cover to expose the inner tube. For a moment the two of them regarded the pathetic state of the deflated piece of black rubber tubing sagging from the wheel. Alafair suffered a sudden flashback to the past week and all the hours she had spent stuffing meat into miles of sausage casing.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?” she asked.

  He pointed to the little pile of tools and equipment he had amassed at his side. “You can hand me that pump. ”

  He took it from her, attached the hose to the valve stem, stood and began pumping vigorously. He chatted as he pumped. “I didn’t see what we run over that poked a hole in us, did you? I hope I can find this puncture and patch it easy. I only brung three extra tubes with me. That’s all Jack had on him and I didn’t have time to stock up on any more beforehand.” He stopped and listened for a hiss. When none was forthcoming, he retrieved a canteen from his accoutrements, wet down the half-inflated tube and squatted down to closely eyeball the offending tire.

  “There it is!” He pointed to a couple of innocuous-looking bubbles on the rubber surface. Alafair took one of the square rubber patches from the package and helped Scott apply the adhesive and position it over the puncture. When he was satisfied that there were no more leaks, Scott shook a handful of talcum powder from the can into his palm and began to spread a thin coat over the deflated tube. He smacked his hands together, raising a cloud of talc, before he seized the air pump and began fully inflating the tube.

  Alafair leaned up against a fence post and watched the up-and-down motion of his arms for a long moment. “Why’d you agree to let me come along?”

  Scott glanced up at her. “Why’d you want to come?”

  “Because of that boy,” she said. “I feel bad about that boy. He was somebody’s child. It could be that you’ll find his mama today and break her heart. But what if there ain’t no mama nor daddy or no one at all? Every hurt child deserves to be cared for and every dead one deserves to be mourned. I want to do the best I can for him, even now that it’s too late.”

  Scott didn’t look up again. “I had the same thought.” He unscrewed the hose from the tire valve and checked the wing-bolts to make sure they were tight before he added. “Besides, maybe I’ll find his mama, like you said. And if you was there, that’d be nice for her.”

  After he had manhandled the cover back over the tube and gotten his equipment stowed away, they climbed back into the car and pulled out onto the road. The whole enterprise had taken less than twenty minutes.

  They mostly made small talk as they drove east. Alafair laughed at Scott’s description of his wife Hattie’s hissy-fit when she found out their youngest had eaten every morsel of the applesauce cake she had made for the church pot-luck on Wednesday night. Alafair relayed her husband’s mix of delight and dismay that he had just sold four young mules to the Farmers’ Co-op and had to have them trained and broken to harness by the beginning of the year.

  “Why do you expect Shaw didn’t want to come today, Alafair?”

  “Well, like he said, he’s right busy lately and all this to-do on top of the butchering has put him behind.”

  “He was willing enough for you to come.”

  They barely skirted a pothole and Alafair grabbed the door frame to keep her head from bouncing into the convertible roof. “I expect he’ll grill me like a fish when I get home.”

  Scott smiled. “You mean you’re his spy?”

  “I reckon.”

  Scott watched the road for a mile or so while Alafair watched him. She could practically see him arranging his next comment in his head.

  He finally put it to her. “Does Shaw know something about this murder that he ain’t telling me, Alafair?”

  Aha! Her presence on this trip wasn’t entirely due to Scott’s compassion for the bereaved. “You think he’s keeping something from you?”

  “I think he’s been acting mighty odd.”

  For an instant Alafair pondered whether or not to tell Scott about Shaw’s ghost. Scott was family after all, and it wasn’t as though Shaw had done something wrong. If it had been one of the children in question Alafair wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Scott everything. But Shaw was a different story. If he’s not eager for folks to know what he saw, she thought, he must have some reason that makes sense to him. She was far too loyal to try and second-guess him.

  “You’d be acting odd too,” she said, “if some kid followed you home from a hunting trip and then got himself speared to death in your barn.”

  Scott’s mouth twisted, in a grimace or a smile, Alafair couldn’t tell. “You’re right there. I just don’t want him to get into trouble. Especially if there’s something I can do to help.”

  Alafair was touched that he put it like that. “Don’t worry, Scott. You know Shaw. He’d rather eat dirt than not do the right thing. Besides, I’d never let him get into trouble if I could help it.”

  Now Scott did smile. “That’s why God gave us men wives, Alafair, to keep us on the straight and narrow. You just make sure he don’t end up eating dirt.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  When they finally reached the sizable town of Checotah, they stopped for a break. They needed it. It felt to Alafair like God had created a crazy quilt out of the country as they travelled east. Miles of flat, straight road through endless cotton fields and large cattle ranches would give way to long, nerve-wracking climbs and roads that seemed to twist in knots through forested hills. Then just as she would decide that the Ford wasn’t going to make it and they’d never get out of this alive, they would break out into the open, coast down a long incline, and off they’d go, straight as a plumb line through cultivated fields.

  After a cup of coffee and the use of a kind hotelier’s facilities, Scott was able to locate a gasoline pump in front of a livery/blacksmith/garage and top off the Ford’s gas tank, pleased that he was able to forestall the use of the emergency gasoline he had brought along in a large metal can strapped to the car above the tail bumper.

  Immediately past the MK&T switch station they caught the old Ozark Trail south. The country was beautiful, the well kept and well travelled highway cutting through impressive stands of tall hardwood. Occasionally the winter-bare branches almost met over their heads. Smaller, lace-branched redbud trees dotted the sides of the road, reaching for the sunny open spaces unoccupied by their taller neighbors. This must be an eye-popping drive in the spring, Alafair thought.

  “Are we going to go through Oktaha?” Alafair had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the wind and engine noise.

  “No. It’s close, though.” Scott pointed without taking his eyes off the road. “It’s just that way, about five miles due west. This is all Creek Nation allotment land on either side of the highway.”

  The highway opened up, bare, straight, and flat again, just before they crossed the long, iron-girded bridge over the North Fork of the Canadian River. This time of year the river itself was little more than a sluggish red stream that meandered aimlessly down the middle of its wide bed. Alafair craned her neck to see over the bridge’s rails as they crossed. When she looked up on the other side she could see Eufaula in the distance.

  Scott’s plan was to stop at any likely business to ask for directions to Foley Street, but that became unnecessary when they spotted the Foley Hotel occupying pride of place right in the center of Main, marking the corner of its namesake street.

  Past First Street, Foley quickly turned into a tree-lined residential ar
ea. Scott crossed Second Street before pulling up in front of a small, white, clapboard house surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and turned off the engine.

  Neither moved, momentarily overcome by the sudden peace that came with the cessation of the Ford’s noise and vibration.

  Alafair was the first to break the silence. “Law! I feel like I’ve been dragged through a briar patch by the big toe! I hate to think that we have to make that same trip backwards so we can get home!”

  Scott suppressed an urge to yawn. “Well, we’d best get to it.” He reached over the seat back and retrieved a brown leather grip from the floorboard.

  “What you got in there?” Alafair asked. She had spied the grip on the floor when she was fetching tools for Scott to repair the punctured tire.

  He tossed her a glance over his shoulder before he stepped out of the Ford. “Something I hope will help the Reverend clear this mess up for us.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  Gee Dub Tucker had walked about a half a mile from the Boynton train station through town and down the dirt road leading toward home by the time his sisters Martha and Mary pulled up beside him in their buggy. He tossed his duffle in the back, hauled himself up beside Mary on the bench and gave each of them a brief hug, gratified in spite of himself at their expressions of delight at seeing him.

  “I declare, Gee,” Mary said. “We didn’t expect you home for another week at least! If we’d known you meant to come in today, somebody could have met you at the station.”