Chapter 9
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Uriah told Iris about the Kingman�s invitation on his return to their cabin the following evening. He swung himself down from his horse outside the cabin with the washed-through air of a man who has spent his whole day working to the limits of his strength heaving coal from depot stacks up into engine tenders, with his face still caked in places with coal dust, even though he had used the depot horse trough to rid himself of the worst of the dirt. But he threw the cabin door open proudly. He was a man returning from a day turning an honest few bits, and �shine was now a thing of the past.
�Yo� got a kiss fer me, wife?�
Iris waddled over to throw his arms around his neck. She knew her time was growing closer every day, and she needed the protection and affection of her man. Everything was ready for his evening meal: she had already mixed eggs and flour for his griddle cakes, and chopped a big slice of ham ready for the skillet, with a fistful of tomatoes and onions all cut up ready to fry for a side dish. She would serve the cakes a little crisp at the outer edges, just the way he liked them, with a big lump of butter to top them and run down the sides of the stack, and she would sit and watch him eat, and listen to his account of his day before talking of her own work - for there was precious little excitement in milking Daisy and feeding the chickens, let alone tending her vegetable patch.
Uriah talked between mouthfuls, demolishing griddle cakes and chunks of ham in great, gulping bites. He was certain he had not been so hungry in a month of Sundays, for he had ridden out early, after breakfasting well before dawn, and had taken nothing with him but couple of his wife�s biscuits and some cold meat for sustenance.
�Mr. Kingman sez we kin hev the cottage soon as we�re ready.�
Iris frowned a little. �Who�s gonna care for the stock?�
�We�ll put share croppers in.� Uriah spoke with the confidence of a man who has looked at all the angles, and assessed all the possibilities, during his ride home. �Paw�ll find some, yo� kin be sure o� thet. There�s some o� the Hulton folk up over the hill who ain�t got none but a little bitty patch to raise their young �uns. They�d be right satisfied and grateful to come here, you can bet yo�re heart on it.�
Iris thought on his words. She knew the Hultons by sight, from chapel on Sunday mornings, and she knew they must be amongst the poorest folk for miles around, the girls all in dresses and bonnets that had plainly been patched and patched again many and many a time, the boys all pale and skinny and rickety, with arms and legs as thin as spinning wheel spindles. The whole family�s faces were etched with the drawn, grey look of poverty, and they always kept their eyes on the ground as they walked, like horses done near to death by too much labour.
�Yo� recken they�d come?�
�There�s �nuff� corn put by for a twelve-month, now we ain�t shining no more.� Uriah rested his free hand on the table whilst he drained his enamel mug of coffee. �They can send us down a third of what Daisy gives, and we�ll get her freshened, an� she hev a cow, they can milk thet up when it�s ready, or we�ll each get a side of beef next year if it�s a bull calf. We�ll tek a third of their eggs as well, yo� know how much they�ve bin laying. If they let the hens go broody, then they�ll hev plenty more in time, and they can tend your �mater and squash patch an� your �taters, and send us down a basket or two o� them an� all.�
�Yo� recken?� Iris began to smile. Tending a farm was hard toil for a pregnant woman, that was for sure, and she would would be bound to find it harder with a babe at her breast. Uriah could ask the Hultons for a third of their produce, and still allow them enough to fatten up their young into good helpers. She was saddened a little by the thought that she would lose the money she had taken from good Mr. Whiteside for her milk and butter. But Uriah was now a wage-earning man.
�I�se dang sure.�
�Yo�ll go ask yo�re Paw?�
�I�ll speak to him Sunday morning.�
�Yo�re a good man, husband.� Iris reached out to touch his hand, and then pulled herself to her feet, for she still had work to do. But Uriah held on to her.
�I guess this all deserves some celebratin�. He was pulling at her now, and she knew exactly what he had in his mind. But she feared to have him lie on her in her present state, bumping up and down like a wild thing, lest he harm her unborn child in some way.
�I think yo�re gonna hev to wait.� She patted the fullness of her belly. 'I been having pains off and on all day. Granny Stewart come over to pass some time, and to know how I was goin� on, and we was talkin� woman talk, an�she sed said we cain't do nuthin' like that till they let up. I don't want to lose our baby.'
Uriah scowled. He was well fed, and desire was now uppermost in his mind. He was not minded to be gainsaid, but he understood the rightness of what Iris was saying. He racked his mind for alternative choices, his lust waxing and growing with his frustration. �Yo� c�ld mebbe go down on yo�re knees, wife.�
Iris considered the idea for a moment, and shrugged. Maybe she could, though she did not see much comfort for her in the suggestion. She walked to their bed and knelt heavily, waiting for her husband to take off his bib-alls and come up behind her. Then she squawked in alarm.
�Thet ain�t the place, husband. I ain�t got room fer yo� there.�
Uriah pulled back sullenly. �Yo� don�t think it worth a try?�
Iris shook her head firmly. �Thet gonna split me apart.� She reached down with her hand. �Here, I�ll hev to guide yo�.�
But after a few panting attempts they both realised they were going nowhere. She sat down. �Yo� better lie down, an� I see what I kin do fer yo�.�
She closed her eyes as she lowered her head and opened her mouth. It was not a thing she had ever imagined she could bring herself to do, not since she had once taken a beating for refusing him. But she knew Uriah now for a reliable, hard-working man, and she knew that he was a man filled with a man�s need. She folded her mouth around him, moving her tongue against him, as she imagined she moved her loins against him when they were lying together, and felt him lifting himself up on his hips to press himself against her, and then he was moving in jerking spasms, and he was done. She turned away, spitting out what he had left in her, and felt near to vomiting. But she had performed the duty she owed him.
Uriah lay panting on their mattress. He avoided her eyes.
�It were the best I c�ld do fer yo�, husband.�
�I guess.� Uriah suddenly grinned. �It weren�t as good, but I guess we got the future ahead of us.�
They moved after chapel the following Sunday. Iris got up early to cook Uriah his breakfast, and had already finished cleaning her dishes, and begun rounding up the chickens she wanted to take to the cottage, when the Hultons arrived in the most broken-down wagon she thought she might ever have seen, with a pair of sickly looking mules that might just as well have done for dogfeed. She handed the newcomers big platters of fried corn meal mush, with a big slice of ham for Ezekiel Hulton, and butter and honey for his wife Sarah and their children, and and the Hultons wolfed into the food as though they had not seen a square meal in a month of Sundays. Perhaps they had not.
Then Uriah and Ezekiel Hulton chewed Uriah�s tobacco together companionably on the cabin porch as Iris took Sarah Hulton on a last tour of� her little world. She felt sad in a way to be leaving, because the cabin had played a central part in her life. But she knew that she was leaving in hands that would value it, and she would be able to count on Sarah Hulton for a steady stream of provender.
�Yo� tek care of the place, I lived here most of my time.�
Sarah Hulton pointed to her children. �Ma�am, yo� gonna see this place blossom. We get some flesh onto their bones, they�ll be an army of willing workers.�
The children smiled shyly. Butter and honey were rare treats, and they aimed to have more of it.
However news that David Kingman had turned his cottage over to Iris and Uriah, and planned sending Uriah down the line as a fireman, set a black scowl on Joe Wilkes� face. Sheriff Wilkes had spent most of the first week after the battle of Park Street, perhaps better known as �Joe�s shambush�, skulking out of sight. Some said he was away in Gallatin, the county seat, others that he was hiding. But Joe was planning his vengeance.
�I�m gonna get both those dayammed Hitts, devil tek me an� I don�t�. He was seated at the table in Zack Benton�s cabin, on Portland Road just a little way out of Coates, a few days after the shambush, along with his deputies Zack Benton and Dennis Saunders. �I ain�t havin� thet boy hiding behind Mister High-and-Mighty Kingman.�
Benton nodded. The three men were nursing glasses of Lewis Jenkins� best �shine from out of Macon County, for whilst Benton would have considered it highly improper to have offered Sheriff Wilkes some of the Hitt �shine he had bought from Jedediah in a secretive transaction behind the Commercial Hotel some time since, and still kept squirreled away at the back of his outhouse, Jenkins� whisky came with the full blessing of Macon County Sheriff Jerry Davis � though the brew seemed to stand a remarkably close first cousin to the Hitt sour mash with its stable flavor and pinkish tinge.
Dennis Saunders sat a little way back. He still entertained doubts about Zack�s feuding, but felt bound to go along with what duty might decide. Catherine Benton hovered in the background, ostensibly ready with a pot of good strong black coffee, but in fact mighty curious to know what the three men might be plotting, for Catherine was a long-nosed woman who liked to know her husband�s doings at all times, and spent much of her free time poking her long nose into other people�s doings into the bargain.
She scented opportunity in Joe Wilkes� plotting, and needed to know how to turn it to her best advantage, for she had little confidence that her husband would know how to benefit, counting Zack just about the least amongst the living.
Benton and Saunders were both part-time deputies, in a community with little need for full-time officers of the law. Zack also worked as a telegraph man at the Coates post office, a position that gave him unique access to the doings of the local community, whilst Saunders worked as a railroad dispatcher for the Louisville & Nashville. Neither man counted for much in the town, except perhaps when they were wearing their silver stars, and this anonymity rankled with Catherine like an open sore. The Bentons were poor folk, much to her chagrin, and she held Zack to account. She was nigh on ten years older than her husband, a plain-faced, bony sort of woman, with graying hair scraped back into a tight bun. Some called her an ugly old witch. Zack had been the only man in Coates to look at her, and she had baked him pies, and washed his shirts, and opened her arms to him with the whole-hearted desperation of one who knows that she must do something, anything, to avoid being consigned to that dreaded back shelf known as spinsterhood. But now she wished she had stayed single.
Benton had wed her, as much to stop her pursuing him as from any regard, and they had both regretted their union immediately. He was a raw, bony sort of man himself, but one who saw somebody completely different reflected on the infrequent occasions he inspected himself in a mirror - as many men do. He compensated by treating Catherine harshly, and she had learned to hate him in her heart of hearts.
�Yo figger we kin�� Benton paused. He had been about to say �Ambush him�, but �ambush� was a tricky word to use around Joe since the Park Street shambush. ��ketch them?�
Wilkes swallowed a good mouthful of liquor. �We�ll get the old man first, and then boy. There�s them that �d pay gold to hev it done.�
Benton narrowed his eyes. He had heard talk that Henry Gooch might have helped Joe out a bit - folks whispered that Gooch wanted competition out of the way, and been buying help. He could see no other way of Joe finding his way to a pot of gold. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, glanced up, and scowled irritably. Catherine Benton was now almost on top of them, her eyes smoldering with greed. She had also caught the word �gold� and wanted to close on it.
�Get back to yo�re stove, woman, or by the Lord yo�ll ketch the flat o� ma hand.�
Catherine edged back, far enough to be out of her husband�s reach, but still close enough to strain her ears. Benton stood up, advancing on her, and slapped her hard across the face. Then he pointed at their stove, at the far end of the cabin.
�I sed back thar�, woman, and I meant back thar�.�
Catherine put her hand to her face, but she did not make a sound, backing away slowly, her feet dancing a kind of shuffle, and her eyes filled with hatred. Had she the power to kill with a look in that moment, Zack would most surely have instantly gone to stand before his Maker.
The other two men sipped at their whisky, behaving as though nothing had happened, though Joe Wilkes very much wished he also possessed the courage to tan his wife up good and hard. But Becky Wilkes was a strong-willed woman, with a fiery temper and a right forearm strengthened by lifting many a heavy skillet, and he knew himself no match for her.
�Thar�ll be five twenty dollar pieces in it for the man thet does each deed.�
�Each deed?�
Wilkes hesitated. �Five Coronets for one, eight for the two.�
Saunders looked away. He was prepared to ride point for someone else to kill Jedediah Hitt and his son, but not to shoot them down himself. He had watched Hitt�s boy jump Zack, and he could understand Zack wanting vengeance. But the old man only merited a good ass whooping for making a fool out of Joe, no more.
Benton was silent. A hundred and sixty bucks would take him clean out of Coates - he could ride clear to California and seek to build himself a new life. The thought of distancing himself from his wife by several thousand miles was an irresistible temptation. �I�ll do them both.�
Wilkes glanced at Saunders, and the second deputy nodded. �I�ll go along. But I ain�t doin� no killin�, �cept in self-defence.�
The sheriff reached in his pocket, and passed something to Benton that changed hands with a metallic chink. Catherine Benton strained her eyes to see what it was, and was sure that she saw something gleam. But the transfer was effected in the blink of an eye, and she was not certain.
�Joe smiled thinly as he got to his feet. He had primed Benton, and now the man must wipe the two Hitts from the face of the earth to gain his fill of blood money.
However she tried her best to find out after Wilkes and Saunders left the cabin.
�Yo gonna do it, husband?�
Benton scowled at her. �Am I gonna do what?�
�What Joe sed?�
This time Benton was unmerciful. He unbuckled his gun belt and laid it carefully on the table, then took the belt from around his waist, cinching his trousers up tight to prevent them sliding down to his ankles. He raised the belt with both hands high up on his shoulder, and swept it down into his wife with all the force he could muster. Catherine tried to turn her back on him, but the belt buckle still caught her a tearing blow, ripping into the fabric of her dress. She bowed a little with the impact, making a small strangled sound of pain, and returned to her stove. But she did not weep. She would have time for tears later, when she was alone, and she would also have time for calculation - for she held murder in her heart.
Benton went outside the cabin to sit on his porch rocker, breathing heavily. He was frowning, and wondering just how he would catch the Hitt boy. He had no qualms about taking on the old man: he could ride up to his cabin early one morning, and lie in wait for him - he reckoned he could ambush him, and no bother at all. But killing Uriah Hitt plumb in the middle of Coates presented a much tougher challenge. He would probably have to act at night, unless Joe consented to him picking a quarrel out in the open, and progressing from a quarrel to a showdown. He would also have to plan for immediate flight afterwards, with cash in his hand. Maybe Joe would pay another hundred, on top of the twenty he had already taken, on news of the old man�s death, to settle his slate and pay something down on the son, with a final forty bucks to send him out of town. But maybe he would hang back, for Joe was a wily man, and not easy to part from his money.
Benton shivered in the cool air. Maybe Joe would set him up as well, as a killer, just to avoid paying out. He began to realise just how much he had taken on, and to feel that he might have been outsmarted. But the thought of Catherine lurking in the cabin behind him drove him forward. He had shaken on a deal, and he was engaged. Now he had to act.
The two deputies rode up to Jedediah�s place before dawn two days later.
�I recken I�ll summon him to come with us back to Coates.� Benton spoke with a blustering air. He was beginning to regret having taken on the sheriff�s commission, but the thought of escaping to California drove him on against what humanity he had in him.
Saunders hunched his shoulders. Zack could do just whatever he pleased, just as long as he did it alone.
They stopped a little way from the Hitt cabin, and Benton swung himself from his horse, ground hitching the animal. He had a Colt .45 in his gun belt, and was also carrying a 50 calibre Sharpes rifle provided by Wilkes. It was a good gun for man hunting, with a slide adjustment sight set just forward of the breech, and he had oiled every movable part with great care, and also deftly sliced deep crosses into the tips of his stock of� bullets.
�One bullet, one kill. Thet�s gonna be sure,� he murmured to himself as he began to edge around the cabin, moving from tree to tree, and keeping about a hundred yards distant, staying upwind of the cabin so that no guard dog could wind him. �This boy�s gonna split yo� head to toe, Mister Hitt, and thet�s for certain.�
His words echoed the battle cry of Confederate snipers in the war between the states and buffalo hunters out on the Great Plains, for the Sharpes was reputed to be able to take the heart out of an ace of hearts at 300 yards, and slicing the bullets meant that a small round hole on entry would open out into a great gaping wound. Benton was counting on a fast kill and a quick death, and had spent the previous afternoon shooting at pumpkins perched on the top of man-height posts, perfecting his aim, and accustoming himself to the gun�s mule-like kick. He knew he had no room for error.
He found himself a comfortable patch of grass, and hunkered down into it, resting the Sharpes� barrel on a small hummock just ahead of him. Then he sighted the gun carefully at the Hitt cabin porch, judging distance and light. The air was still, an ideal day for hunting, and a hundred dollars in gold were calling the shots. Now he must wait.
The cabin door opened, just as the day began to dawn, and Jedediah Hitt looked out carefully. He sniffed the air, and it smelt like it was going to be a good day. He thought he might go hunting, looking for deer, or maybe wild turkey. He listened, but all was still, no sound from his dogs, probably still sleeping. They would only stir when he stepped down from the cabin porch, barking their welcome and seeking their breakfast. He was holding his hunting rifle, to be on the safe side, and it was cocked ready for action. But he scented no danger.
�Hitt, stop right there!� Benton shouted his words from his patch of grass, sighting on Jedediah�s long johns, just above where he judged his navel to be.
Jedediah stiffened, raising his hunting rifle. He had heard the voice, but he could not judge where it came from.
�Drop yo�re gun. We�re taking yo� in.�
Benton�s second shout gave Jedediah his mark. He raised his hunting rifle to his shoulder and fired. But he misjudged, and the bullet missed by a clear three feet.
Benton�s aim was better. He fired once, and watched as Jedediah arched backed onto his porch step. He waited. He had all the time in the world now, but he did not want to be caught by a mortally wounded man.
The cabin door opened again, and Capitola Hitt came out slowly. She stopped to look down at her husband�s body, as though unable to believe what she was seeing, for Jedediah now lay in a pool of dark blood that had begun to trickle towards a crack between the porch boards. She stared at the hole in his chest, and then knelt beside him, taking him up in her arms, regardless of his blood, pressing her ear against his chest as though her pressure might save him.
But Jedediah Hitt was dead. She looked down at him, and began to howl like wild animal in her grief, her voice rising in a long keening sound of despair.
Benton got to his feet and returned to his horse. He remounted, and looked around him for Saunders, but his companion had already left. Death is a very final end, and needs no confirmation, and a coward who kills in cowardice is no fitting companion for any God-fearing man.