The Drop Edge of Yonder - An Alafair Tucker Mystery Read online

  She couldn’t leave him, now, not with the scavengers coming out and him lying there all dead and stretched out under the oak. She settled herself on the ground next to her uncle’s body, to keep him safe until help came.

  ***

  Mary sat by herself in the dark for what seemed to her a long time before she heard a horse galloping up the road toward the clearing. The moon had not yet risen, so she could not tell whether the man who guided his horse off the road toward her was coming to help her or not. She hunkered down in the tall grass a yard or two from Bill’s cold form, unwilling to reveal herself, until the rider halted in the middle of the clearing and called, “Laura!”

  Mary stood up. “Mr. Ross. Over here.”

  “Laura?” Calvin Ross repeated. Mary could just see his head turn toward the sound of her voice.

  “It’s Mary Tucker, Mr. Ross, just under the oak tree, here. Can you see me?”

  Calvin swung down out of the saddle and took a few steps toward her. “Mary?” he ventured. “Where is Laura? Where are Laura and Bill? Your sister came riding up to the house like old Nick hisself was after her and said somebody was shooting at you here at the big oak. I come as fast as I could. Where is Laura? Are y’all all right?”

  Mary started to cry again. “Laura’s gone, Mr. Ross. I don’t know where Laura is, but Uncle Bill is shot dead.”

  Calvin stiffened. “Shot.”

  “Ruth rode to get help but I must have got grazed. By the time I came to, Uncle Bill was dead and Laura was gone. I think whoever did it took her, Mr. Ross. There’s a trail through the grass there that leads off into the woods. I think she must have fought him.”

  Calvin said nothing. He asked her no questions, offered no speculation or comfort. He mounted his horse, pulled his shotgun from its holster on his saddle, and headed off into the woods, leaving the weeping young woman standing alone in the dark.

  Chances may have been slim that Calvin would find Laura by plunging into the dark woods by himself, but Mary was not surprised that he did it. There was nothing he could do to help Bill, now, and every minute that passed, the trail to his daughter grew colder. Mary settled back down on the ground, waiting for Ruth to come with the sheriff.

  ***

  Calvin’s hoofbeats faded into silence, and the crickets joined the chorus of cicadas as the night deepened. Mary wished she had some light, and she felt some anxiety that a big cat might catch the smell of blood, but she wasn’t particularly afraid to sit there on the ground in the dark next to a dead body. Even if the spirits of the dead wandered the earth, like her half-Cherokee grandmother believed, Uncle Bill would never hurt her. He had been her favorite uncle, after all. He was by far the youngest of her aunts and uncles, only a couple of years older than Mary herself. He had always been patient with all his many young nieces and nephews, and the best fun to be around. She had often played duets with him, he on the mandolin, she on the fiddle. She reached out and put her hand on his back. She could feel through his shirt that he was cold, and lifeless as a stone. Once, she remembered, he had held still for a quarter of an hour while she and her sisters had counted his freckles…

  “Miss Mary!”

  A man’s voice saying her name caused Mary to start and jump to her feet. The sudden movement caused her aching head to spin and her vision to blur, and she reeled, clutching at the trunk of the oak tree to keep from falling. Someone grasped her arm, and she shrieked and tried to jerk away.

  “Miss Mary, Miss Mary,” the man said again. His voice was familiar. He seemed familiar altogether, hovering over her, holding her arm gently. She stopped struggling, suddenly aware that he was trying to help her. She blinked and her vision cleared enough to recognize her would-be rescuer.

  “Kurt,” she managed.

  Kurt Lukenbach was one of her father’s hired men, a German immigrant and an expert horse trainer and smith. He was an enormously tall young man with clear blue eyes and light brown hair. A scar, white against the tan of his face, ran down his left cheek from the corner of his eye to his jaw, but rather than mar his looks, it was rather rakish. As long as Mary had known him, Kurt had been exceptionally quiet and reticent, but Mary was quite fond of him even so. When Mary’s father Shaw Tucker had hired him more than a year earlier, his English was barely understandable, and she had enjoyed helping him firm up his grip on the language.

  “I meet Mr. Ross on the road,” Kurt was saying to her. “I just was walking home from town when I hear that something has happened here in the clearing. Lieber Gott, Miss Mary, you are hurt! Sit down here…” He paused, and Mary felt his body stiffen as she leaned against him for support. He had seen Bill.

  He didn’t ask her anything. He urged her around to the other side of the tree trunk and sat her down on the ground. Then he pulled a bandanna from his back pocket and pressed it against her wound.

  She became aware that she could hear the sounds of several men on horseback riding toward them from the road. She could hear them talking as they grew near, and she could identify the voices of her father’s cousin, Sheriff Scott Tucker, and his deputy Trent Calder. Her vision was too blurry and the dusk too deep for her to identify the first horseman to crash through the brush, but Kurt murmured, “Micah.” Another of Shaw Tucker’s horse trainers, another friend of Mary’s. By ones and twos, half a dozen or so other men followed him in quick succession. Ruth was not with the group, as far as Mary could see, but she was surprised to hear the voice of her grandfather, Bill’s father, Peter McBride.

  The sheriff must have stopped by Grandpapa Peter’s farm for reinforcements. Mary recognized two of the men who were carrying torches as Grandpapa’s hired hands. Her heart curdled. Cousin Scott had no idea what he was leading Grandpapa into.

  The horsemen rode into the clearing and spread out, calling for Bill, and Laura, and for Mary, but there was such a lump in her throat that Mary couldn’t reply, try as she might. It was Kurt who stood up and called to the sheriff.

  Sheriff Scott Tucker drew a breath to call out to the others, but hesitated when he realized what he was seeing by the light of the torch that his deputy was holding. The look that crossed his face caused Mary to sob, and Scott dismounted quickly and knelt down beside her. Kurt deferentially moved away.

  Scott felt Mary’s face and head. He pulled the bandanna away from her temple so he could inspect the oozing wound. “Who shot you, Mary?”

  Still unable to speak, she shook her head, and Scott enfolded her in an embrace. While she cried, the sheriff reached out one hand and tentatively examined the hideous wound at the back of Bill’s head. He looked up at Trent, who wordlessly remounted his horse and rode across the meadow to inform Peter McBride.

  “Mary, honey,” Scott said, “listen to me, now. I sent Ruth on home to get your daddy. Your daddy will be here directly, honey, and then you can go home. Can you stop crying and tell me what happened? Who shot Bill, baby girl? Where is Laura? Do you know who done this?”

  With a giant effort of will, Mary swallowed the lump in her throat. She pushed away from Scott and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t know, Cousin Scott. I tried to see who was shooting but a bullet knocked me cold before I could see anything. All I know is that it came from over there. Then when I came around I found Uncle Bill shot. I don’t know where Laura is. Her daddy rode through here a while ago. I don’t know how long. I’ve lost track of time. But he tore off looking for her. Then Kurt showed up and helped me.” To her own surprise, she began to weep yet again. She would have thought that she had shed every tear she possibly could.

  Scott hugged her and patted her back soothingly. “All right, sugar, all right. We’ll talk later. Listen, I think I hear your daddy coming right now.”

  But all Mary heard was her grandfather, across the meadow, make a sound so full of grief that it sent chills up her spine.

  Chapter Two

  Do you remember the Fourth of July, Mama, when we all went to the party in town and had ice cream and watermelon, hot
dogs and pie, and watched the parade? The Veterans band played on the bandstand and we all sat around on folding chairs and listened to them. Remember how happy everybody was, how Daddy and his brothers and the boys all set off firecrackers and laughed and teased? Bill and Laura were there, too, and the Turner boys, Art and Johnny. And Trent Calder, Kurt and Micah, Aunt Josie’s girls Maxine and Reginia, and all of Cousin Scott’s boys. Everybody for miles around was in town. It was a happy day!

  I wonder if that memory came to me in the field just because it was so nice? Even though I hadn’t yet realized what had happened to Bill, maybe I knew in my soul that I was about to be grieved something awful.

  ***

  Alafair Tucker banished her husband, Shaw, to sleep in the parlor with the boys, and spent the night sitting next to their big double bed, where she had secured Mary. She watched all through the night, keeping the nightmares away from her daughter through sheer will. She leaned across the bed and stroked Mary’s forehead at any sign of distress, and sang to her softly, the same song she had sung to all her children when they were little and in need of comfort.

  “Oh, where is my kitty, my little gray kitty?

  Oh, where, oh, where has she gone?

  I’ve looked in the cellar, I’ve looked in the attic,

  And nowhere can kitty be found.

  Kitty, Kitty. Oh, where are you hiding today?

  Kitty, Kitty. Oh, come forth and join in our play.”

  Mary slept the sleep of exhaustion, never moving, even when the rooster crowed in anticipation of dawn. Alafair didn’t stir either, but sat there in her rocker next to the bed instead of generaling her family through the start of the day, as she usually did. Every one of her large brood knew the situation, and Alafair was content that they could competently take up the slack.

  She heard her oldest girl, Martha, slide out of bed before the cockcrow had faded away, and the soft metallic sounds of the kitchen stove being fired told her that Shaw was up and about as well.

  Martha’s nightgowned form appeared in the bedroom door, her dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders. “Mama?” she whispered. “How’s Mary?”

  Alafair turned in her rocker to look at Martha through the dawn gloom. “All right, I think. She’s quiet now. The kids still asleep?”

  Martha nodded. “Ruth’s up, and Daddy and Gee Dub and Charlie. Took Ruth a long time to go to sleep last night, judging by how she tossed and turned. She’s rattled, I expect.”

  “How did Grace do?” The two-year-old usually slept on a cot in her parents’ room.

  “Good. She liked being in there with us. Me and Ruth will get the kids up and dressed and take care of breakfast.”

  “Thank you, honey. I’ll be in directly.”

  Martha had no more turned around to go than Shaw tiptoed into the room. He was still in his nightshirt, his dark hair uncombed and his face unshaven. His hazel eyes looked very dark this morning, uncharacteristically sunken and haunted. He smoothed his droopy black mustache with the back of his fingers and managed a smile for her sake. Alafair rose from her rocking chair and crossed the room to meet him. They reached out and took one another’s hands.

  “How’s she doing?” Shaw kept his voice low.

  “She seemed to get through the night well enough. That graze on her temple ain’t much more than a scratch. She cried a little in her sleep early on, but settled pretty well as the night went on. I’m going to let her sleep.”

  Shaw looked over Alafair’s head at his slumbering daughter. “She had a rough day yesterday.”

  Alafair peered up at him. “How are you?” Shaw had been very fond of his young half-brother, and was shaken by his mother’s and stepfather’s grief, as well.

  Shaw didn’t reply immediately, and Alafair put her hand on his chest to soothe his heart.

  “I’ll do, I guess,” he finally said.

  “It was a terrible thing, Shaw. I feel scared, knowing that some lunatic is abroad. All night, I kept thinking I could see somebody lurking in the shadows just outside the bedroom window, but every time I got up to look closer, all I could see was just the shadow of that lightning-blasted hackberry in the moonlight.”

  Shaw nodded. “This would spook anybody. I just came in here to tell you that I’m heading over to Ma and Papa’s directly. I’m taking Gee Dub with me, but the two hired men will stay close. Already sent Micah over for John Lee,” he said, referring to his son-in-law, who resided on the adjoining farm. “I reckon they can all help with the search for Laura.” He leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “As for the rest of y’all, stay close to the house, now. I took the Remington out of the cabinet and loaded it. I put it up on the rack over the front door, along with a box of shells, in case you need it quick.”

  Alafair nodded. “Martha will have to go to work, but I’ll put the rest of the kids to getting the chores done. Ruth’s here to run the house and Mary can watch Grace. I need to be getting over to your mama’s before noon.”

  Shaw glanced at Mary. “You putting her to work, as well?”

  “Best thing for her. The baby always makes her laugh.”

  “Why, honey, everything makes Mary laugh. She’s always been our laughing girl. How’s she going to laugh again after this?”

  Tears started to Alafair’s eyes when she saw the unshed tears in Shaw’s, and she couldn’t help but embrace him. “Don’t you worry, darlin’. There will be reason to laugh again, if I have to bust down the Pearly Gates to find it.”

  ***

  The children were dressed and breakfast was well underway when Alafair finally made her way into the kitchen. Ecstatic to see her mother, Grace clambered down from her chair at the table and ran to Alafair with a piece of bacon clutched in her fist. She was followed closely by Charlie-dog, who had always had an affinity for whoever was the youngest in the family, especially if the child was eating bacon. Alafair picked Grace up and automatically wiped the toddler’s face with the tail of her apron. From the stove, Martha cast her mother a glance over her shoulder.

  “Charlie and Blanche are milking,” Martha informed her, before Alafair had completed the morning inventory of her offspring, “and Ruth is in the hen house.”

  Alafair nodded. Ruth was in the hen house, Martha at the stove. The twenty-year-old twins, Alice and Phoebe, both married, were currently fixing breakfast for their own husbands. Seventeen-year-old Gee Dub was in the parlor with his father, cleaning the rifles they had just taken from the locked gun cabinet. Mary was sleeping still. Charlie, age thirteen, and nine-year-old Blanche were milking. Sophronia, eight years old, was setting the table and trying to run herd on Grace, the child who had usurped Sophronia’s position as the youngest of the family.

  Everyone in her family accounted for, Alafair sat down at the table with Grace in her lap and spooned oatmeal into the child’s mouth.

  Shaw appeared at the kitchen door with his hat and coat on, and tall, lanky Gee Dub following on his heels. “Reckon we’re off, darlin’.”

  Alafair looked up at him, surprised. “Aren’t y’all going to eat?”

  “No time, honey. I want to round everybody up and get over to Papa’s before the sun is well up.”

  Alafair leaped to her feet and plopped Grace down in the chair, where the child serenely went on feeding herself oatmeal. “Martha, let’s fix your daddy and the boys some bacon sandwiches they can take with them.”

  “Now, Alafair,” Shaw protested, “we got to get going.”

  “Hush, now.” Alafair flew into action, grabbing a paper-wrapped loaf of bread from the cabinet. “We’ll have you a passel of food before you get the horses saddled.”

  Shaw gave her an amused smile, but didn’t dawdle. “Come on, son,” he said to Gee Dub, and the two of them headed for the front door.

  “You be careful, son,” Alafair called to their backs, and the ever quiet Gee Dub gave her a wave of acknowledgment before they disappeared. Alafair shook her head to herself as she began slicing bread for the bacon Martha w
as frying. “I declare, Martha. Sometimes men don’t think at all. Your grandma surely isn’t going to be in any mood to feed them.”

  “How is Grandma?”

  Alafair shrugged as she buttered the thick slices of bread. “Daddy said she was holding up when he was over there last night. I think she’s trying to be strong for Grandpapa. All your daddy’s brothers and sisters were there, except for Uncle Charles, of course, but him and Lavinia should be here this morning, I expect. Aunt Josie and Aunt Sarah spent the night over there.” She paused. “Did you hear that noise last night? Like somebody howling?”

  Martha didn’t look up from her cooking. “I heard the wind blowing off and on. I was hoping it might bring a rain, cool things off.” She forked out the cooked bacon and added more slices to the hot grease. “I’ll send Charlie into town to tell Mr. Bushyhead I won’t be in to work at the bank today. I’m sure it’s all over town by now, what happened to Uncle Bill.”

  “You sure it would be all right?”

  “I think Mr. Bushyhead would be surprised if I showed up, considering.”

  “Good, then. I’ll feel better with you here to run herd.”

  The conversation was interrupted by the creak of the screen door as it opened to admit Phoebe, whose husband, John Lee, had been recruited by Shaw to join the search party. Alafair put down her bread and went to usher the heavily pregnant young woman to a chair.

  “Beebee!” Grace squealed, always overjoyed to see a new face. She launched herself at her sister’s knees as oatmeal splattered and her spoon clattered to the floor.

  “Did you walk all the way over here?” Alafair was not ordinarily one to cosset a healthy expectant mother, but Phoebe’s face was drawn and her eyes red.

  “Don’t fuss, Mama. The walk is good for me,” Phoebe protested, but she allowed her mother to push a comfy pillow behind her back as she sat down in the kitchen chair. “Oh, Mama, ain’t it awful about Uncle Bill? How’s Grandma and Grandpapa? Have they found poor Laura? How is Mary? Why didn’t somebody come over and tell us last night?”