By way of apologizing for the light blogging here – may I offer a sample chapter from Book Three of the Verein Trilogy, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”? I’ve gotten about two thirds through the first draft of it, and am getting ready to revise Part Two and submit Part One to the usual publishing suspects.
Enjoy… this one has a interesting climax to it, one that I’ve been hinting at, all through the first two books. Previous chapter here
Chapter Forty-Eight: Day of Reckoning
“It all seems very quiet,” Magda remarked, on the Saturday that she and Anna reopened the store. “And so empty!”
It was a week after Rosalie’s funeral, a week after Hansi and the boys returned, empty-handed and covered in trail-dirt, on horses trembling from weariness.
“I still keep expecting to see Vati in his room, or sitting under the pear tree,” Anna agreed, wistfully. “I wish Papa and I could induce Mama to leave her room – but she will not hear of it.” Hansi had exhausted himself, pleading fruitlessly with Liesel. He had finally lost his temper and left with Jacob, taking a wagon-load of goods to Kerrville. He had promised to deliver a load of cut timber to the Becker farm, where work had commenced on the house, after the spring cattle round-up. Magda didn’t know if Liesel would have forgiven Hansi by the time he returned, and was herself too grieved over Rosalie to care very much.
“It’s like one of those starfish,” Sam observed earnestly. He plied a broom with great energy, although Magda thought he was merely stirring the dust around. “When it loses one of its arms,”
“How is that, Sam?” his mother asked, much puzzled.
“It grows another one to replace it,” Sam scowled, thoughtfully, “Or maybe it’s one of those jellyfish things I am thinking of. It grows again into the shape it needs, even if it’s not in quite the same shape as it was before.”
“Clear as mud, Samuel,” Anna said, but secretly Magda thought her son was right. The household, her family – it was reshaping itself, like a starfish. Wearily, she wondered if the starfish, or whatever Sam was thinking of felt pain when part of it was cut off. For they all felt pain, but only Liesel was incapacitated by it, by the unbearable absence, the emptiness in the places where Willi and Grete should have been. She had withdrawn into her deep, deep cellar, leaving Marie to cope valiantly with the household, aided as always by Mrs. Schmidt in the mornings and by her sister and aunt whenever they could step away from the shop, and Hansi’s freighting concerns.
Vati might have coaxed Liesel to come forth – he had always been good with her, but then there was the Vati-shaped absence where he had always been, as well. Magda had the same sense that had haunted her in the months after Carl Becker’s death – that he had not really gone, but was somewhere in the house or close by. When she looked into the parlor, or into the garden she half-expected to see Vati there, dozing over a book with his glasses slipping down over his nose, or deep in some abstruse discussion with Pastor Altmueller.
Hansi insisted she move into Vati’s room; certainly she preferred that to her old room, which for her was marked forever as the place where Rosalie had suffered, and where the miasma of death still clung to the walls. Still, there was something restful about returning to the shop – restful and yet exhilarating. All the plans they had made while in Indianola, which had needed to be set aside for Vati’s final illness – all of them could be picked up again and coaxed towards fulfillment.
Very gradually, over the weeks and months of the summer – the summer of the first full year of peace, they were able to do just that, although Liesel still refused to come downstairs. Lottie began school that autumn, walking to the schoolhouse between Hannah and Sam, blithe and eager, with not a backwards look to Magda, who lingered in the shop door watching after them. Her older brother and sister had earnestly begun teaching her letters, marking out the shapes of them on Sam’s school slate and challenging her to sound out the letters of the shopkeepers’ signs along Main Street. Lottie stopped asking wistfully after Grete about that time. She was a sensible and sensitive child; Magda thought that her younger daughter had worked out the connection between the absence of her almost-twin cousin, and her aunt’s withdrawal into seclusion for herself.
There had never been any news of the children, in spite of all the letters that Anna wrote in careful English for her father, letters to the governor, to the officer commanding Federal Army troops in Texas and the territories, letters to the Indian agency. They received replies, expressing regret and occasionally even sympathy, but nothing more effective than that. Encouraged by Charley Nimitz, they placed advertisements in certain newspapers in Kansas and the Indian territories, asking for information and promising a reward should that information lead to the return of Willi and Grete, aged seven and four years of age, taken by Comanches from Gillespie County in the spring of 1866. They received some reply to those; mostly semi-literate scrawls asking for money, in exchange for information.
“They are extortionists, Papa,” Anna said firmly and burned the letters before Liesel could see them, and frantically beg her husband to pay anything, anything at all, to anyone who claimed to know where the children were.
Liesel grew pale from confinement indoors, and thin, thinner than she ever had been as a girl. Hansi’s dark hair began to come out in streaks of gray, and the skin under his eyes increasingly appeared bruised, as if he did not sleep well. When he did sleep at home, he spent those nights less and less often with his wife; Magda thought that he often the excuse of not disturbing Liesel, to stay at the Sunday House, or in the room that Sam shared with Elias and any of the older boys who were at home.
He was in the office, on a weekday in November, going through circulars with Magda and planning another buying trip to the coast. Marie came into the shop, saying,
“Papa – there is a man at the door, saying he has an appointment with you!”
“Well, show him into the parlor,” Hansi ran his hand impatiently over his hair. “Thunder and lightening, is it Thursday already? Don’t just stand there, Marie – Go on! Show Mr. Johnson into the parlor!”
“Papa… Mr. Johnson is a darkie!” Marie pleaded, in an agony of embarrassment. Hansi snorted,
“Marie, my silly goose, I am hiring Mr. Johnson to do a job for me… and if he does what he says he can do, I will be in such debt to him that he may make amorous advances towards you under my own roof and I will have no objection at all. Go… say that I shall join him in a moment.”
Marie fled, crimson with embarrassment and Hansi chuckled at Magda’s expression of shock,
“He wouldn’t, of course – besides being one of natures’ own gentlemen, he’s married – and married to a woman that he all but moved heaven and earth for, when she was taken by the Indians, two years ago. Besides,” Hansi stood from the desk with a grunt of effort, and pulled on his good coat, “He’s a sensible man… has connections among the friendly Indians, so they say. Tell Anna to close the shop for a bit – I want her to hear what I have to say. You too, Magda.”
“Who is this Mr. Johnson, then?” Magda asked, as she followed after her brother-in-law. “What does he do – and why do you think that he, of all people, can help you get your children back?”
“Because he did it before,” Hansi answered, and explained as Anna locked the door, and followed them towards the parlor. “He worked as the foreman, first for the family which owned him… and then for another. His wife and two children were taken two years ago in the Elm Creek raid… and he went and got them back; spent a year, prowling among the Indian camps in Kansas Indian territory. He’s a trusty man as well as having the very nerve! I made enquiries, you know! If you can send a man out to search and carry the ransom money for strangers, then I think I may trust him with about anything else. Including,” he added with a heavy attempt at humor, “The virtue of my own daughters in the parlor, under my own roof, eh? Think I can depend upon the wild African to restrain himself?”
“Papa, there are folk you must not make a jest like that to,” Anna said, seriously, and Hansi laughed,
“I know, Anna pet. I know. You, your mother and your aunt are about the only ones I might say something of the sort.” His face sobered, as he put a hand to the parlor door, “She would laugh, so much. I would give much to have her back again with us, in her own good temper once more!”
He opened the parlor door, saying as he strode within,
“Mr. Johnson – so generous with your time to come all this way – please, do sit down. My daughter, and sister-in law – I wished them to be present.”
Not a proper, formal introduction, Magda thought. Such was the way of this country, even such as Hansi had become attuned to it. Receiving a colored man in the parlor, having his daughter and sister-in-law touch his hand, acknowledge him in courtesy. No, Hansi had become a man of business; he would not offend against custom to that extent.
Anna stepped forward, her voice perfectly controlled,
“Miss Anna Richter,” she said, evenly in precise English. “I serve as Papa’s secretary. He has asked me to be present, Mr. Johnson. He tells me you may be able to retrieve my brother and sister from the hands of their captors. Do make yourself at ease and tell us of how you expect to accomplish this, when so many others have failed us in this respect. This is my aunt, Mrs. Becker,” Anna added with a challenging flash of her eyes. “My dear mother is indisposed; her sister takes her place as far as the proprieties are concerned.”
“Miz Richter,” Hansi’s guest had not sat down; he stood by the parlor stove, not at his ease but seeming to be comfortable, assured. He barely brushed Anna’s fingertips with his own, nodded courteously at Magda. “I cain’t much promise anything, Miz Richter – only that I will do my bes’.”
“So,” Hansi rumbled, “Do, please – sit, sit, sit!” He gestured Mr. Johnson towards a chair, and the visitor perched on the edge of it, wary and watchful, but not nervous as if unaccustomed to well-adorned and comfortable parlors. His eyes flicked once, twice around the room, making a wary assessment of his surroundings and of them; Anna and herself, before fixing his attention on Hansi, who continued,
“You did not say how you came to hear of our need?”
“A frien’ tole me about your advertising in de papers,” answered Mr. Johnson gravely. He had a deep voice, like a bass viol. His dark hair was cut close to his scalp, but other than that and the set of his mouth, Magda did not think he looked particularly African. He was not even as black as some of the slaves she had seen since coming to Texas, but rather dark brown and well-formed. “They knew I was set on going to Indian Territory to search for Miz Fitzpatrick’s youngest granddaughter… so dey says as I ought to send notice to you… since you have kinfolk taken captive. It might be of service if’n I look for your chirren as well.”
“So it would be,” Hansi answered and Anna said in very precise English,
“You seek payment of sorts, we presume?”
Johnson replied with immense and careful courtesy,
“Your father said a wage in his letter to me, but money ain’t a necessity, Miz Richter… not ‘til I find the chirren, if the Lord ‘lows it. Then I sees what ransom the Injuns want. I don’t wants you to open your purse, ‘til I come back from ‘de territory and tell you face to face an’ dat be de truth.”
Magda, sitting quiet in the corner, thought it sounded like a dignified reproof and wondered to what it was about him that seemed so familiar. Hansi replied with his own dignity,
“Since you are undertaking such an enterprise at least partially on our behalf, I insist you allow us to provide you with supplies necessary for your long journey.”
“I wouldn’t say no to that, seh, I surely wouldn’t,” Mr. Johnson answered and his reserve thawed a little, for he smiled, an unexpectedly sweet smile. Magda realized why she had been struck with such a feeling of familiarity; he reminded her of her husband. Not in any particular physical likeness between them, aside from height, but that they both reflected same self-contained reserve and the air of quiet competence. Men of the frontier, they were; used to being alone and supremely confident of their abilities to venture into the wilderness and survive against any odds they found there. If Carl Becker had sat in the parlor of Vati’s house and calmly announced that he was going to go to Indian Territory to ransom Willi and Grete back from captivity, Magda wouldn’t have doubted his ability to do exactly that for a second. And so it was with this man. He listened with grave sympathy, as Hansi spoke of Willi and Grete, of their ages and appearances, the circumstances under which they had been taken, and the fruitless pursuit of their captors. Mr. Johnson listened and talked little of his plans, only that he had intended to seek out a chief who was a particular friend of his, and who had served as a mediator on his previous quest into the Llano country and Indian Territory. Finally, Anna tilted her head and looked at him skeptically,
“And may we ask why you are so ready to undertake such a mission as this, for so little reward and so much risk to yourself?”
“’Cause I’m right good at it, Miz Richter,” he answered, “An’ mebbe the Lord has called me to use that fo’ other folk, they as knows what it’s like to ride like the very devil hisself an’ come home too late… find they own son dead on the porch and the house afire, an’ Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s daughter scalped an’ dead with a empty rifle in her hands. It took me pert-near two years to get my Mary back, and the babies with her and Mister White’s boy… but I did it. I found some Injuns an’ made dem hep me fin’ dose who had my fambly. I came back an’ I raised de ransom my own self, an me an’ Mister White, we went out an’ we got our own back. So, I got de callin’, Mister Richter, Miz Richter. De Lord, he say you got de talent, you cain’t put dat under no basket. Miz Fitzpatrick, she say her lil gran’baby still out dere, so…” he regarded them steadily, his determination a quiet thing, like the limestone that underlay the hills around them, “I’m going back, bring dem babies home where dey belong… just like I brung my own home.”
“You are the first to speak to us and offer hope,” Hansi replied, his own voice deep with suppressed emotion, “The first to speak so, since we lost the trail of the party who took them.”
“I ain’t brought them back yet,” Mr. Johnson shook his head, as if to warn them against expecting miracles, but his quiet certainty was as a tonic.
“None the less,” Hansi stood, as if to indicate that he had made a decision on the matter, “We shall support you in this venture, Johnson – support you with whatever you need. If you come to the house tomorrow, my daughter will provide you with letters of credit and introduction. I have friends in certain towns along your way – with my good word, they will supply you with all you require.” Johnson also rose. As they shook hands, Hansi gripped Johnson’s hand in both of his, begging, “Bring them back to us! My dear wife is nearly destroyed at the loss of her children.”
“Unnerstand,” Johnson also appeared much moved, “The Lord will guide my feet, and set my eyes on the heavens.”
“Good, good,” Hansi pulled himself together with an effort and made as if to show Johnson out of the parlor. As they went into the hallway, Magda heard her brother-in-law say,
“So… what is your profession, then? A scout for the Army, or a huntsman of the buffalo?”
“I allus done a lil freight-haulin’,” Johnson replied, “Wit’ my own wagon an’ team. An’ I usta manage Miz Fitspatrick’s land fo her, but that wuz before she an’ the chirrin an’ my Mary was all took by Injuns. Now, I took my fam’bly an’ settled in Weatherford, over in Parker County… I do some teamsterin’ now, haulin’ more freight out to dem Army posts.”
“Ah!” Hansi sounded very jolly, as he opened the front door, and showed their visitor out, “I’ve always thought, if you can trust a man out and about driving a wagon full of your own property, you can trust him with about anything else.”
The next day Mr. Johnson came for Hansi’s promised letters; he was going north, he said, and advised them gravely not to look for word or return immediately. It would take months of patient search and negotiation among the skin lodges of the Comanches and the Kiowa. But in spite of his words, their hopes had been raised, only to gradually deflate. Liesel kept to her room. By degrees, Magda and Anna became accustomed to that state of affairs, for she would emerge from it on occasion, come downstairs and busy herself in the kitchen as of old. She took to sewing, almost compulsively, doing all the household mending. Liesel seemed quite cheerful then, with her mouth full of pins and slashing energetically with the sewing shears, with fashion papers strewn all about the bedroom that she and Hansi did not share.
“Really, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry,” Anna said, twirling around to show off a new dress that Liesel had pressed upon her, one afternoon, “It’s like having a fairy dress-maker locked up in the attic.”
“Your Mama has always done beautiful work,” Magda said, as Anna tied her shop apron over the new dress. They were in the workroom, where Magda was sorting through the mail.
“Good that you think so,” Anna replied, “For she has one for you nearly finished.”
“In black, I hope,” Magda said, austerely and Anna nodded.
“Merino wool, with jet buttons. But I am worried, Auntie… she is also making clothes for the children – for Willi and Grete. For when they return, she says.”
“Oh, dear,” Magda sighed. “I wonder if that is wise, Ann-chen?”
“I don’t see how we can stop her from doing so,” Anna said, with an air of utter practicality, “After all, it is of somewhat more use than wringing her hands and cursing Papa.”
“True,” Magda sighed, “And… they will need new clothes.”
“It has been nearly a year,” Anna said. She would have sounded harsh, but for that she was holding her grief in firm check. She came and sat at Magda’s side, pulling up Vati’s old work stool. “And no word in all that time; Auntie… what do we tell her when it becomes clear to everyone that my brother and sister are really gone? That no one can find them, and they are most likely dead? How long can we hold on to hope, before that hope becomes destructive?”
“I don’t know, Ann-chen,” Magda answered, heart-sore because she had begun to wonder the same thing. Death was final and grief… well, if not final, became a familiar thing, something that one became accustomed to. Uncertainty and hope endlessly deferred – that was a wound freshly inflicted every day and every hour. “Mr. Johnson did warn us…”
“A charlatan like all the others,” Anna sniffed, dismissively, as Magda slit opened another letter. “That one’s not from him, is it?”
“No,” Magda answered, as she read the short missive within. “It’s from Porfirio…”
“Auntie, what is the matter!” Anna cried, as Magda laid down the letter. Her face was as white as linen.
“He says that J.P. Waldrip has returned from Mexico… that he has been seen in San Antonio… Anna, mind the shop for a bit, I must take this to Charley Nimitz.”
Magda snatched up the letter, and crammed it into the leather valise that she carried with her always. She put on her bonnet and shawl, fairly running all the way down Main Street to Charley’s hotel. Hansi was on the road with his wagons, her son was trying to restore what his father had built with such care and labor – Charley was the only one she could take into her confidence on this matter.
“I want to bring charges against him,” she demanded, sitting in the Nimitz’ little private parlor, “For murdering my husband! Tell me what I must do, Charley! You were his friend – cannot I demand justice, now that the war is over and his fine Confederate friends no longer look the other way?”
“My dear Mrs. Magda,” Charley regarded her with deep sympathy, as he finished reading Porfirio’s letter and the scrap of stained notepaper that she had thrust into his hands. “The trouble is – they will look the other way. Anywhere outside Gillespie County, that is. Politically, it’s an untenable situation, bringing charges against what a Confederate sympathizer for what he did during the war. The Union might have won, Mrs. Magda – but the most of Texas is still mighty full of Southern sympathizers.”
“He murdered my husband,” Magda cried, passionately, “Trap Talmadge said he shot him in the back! Not from anything to do with the war – he hated him long before the war ever began! He left an affidavit to say so, and I saw J.P Waldrip in my own house with the hanging-band! He held our children at the point of a gun in my own kitchen… until… until my husband agreed to go with him! Surely a jury would hear me out…”
“I am sure they would, Mrs. Magda,” Charley agreed, with a somber face, “And Waldrip was a very beast, but murdering Carl Becker is not the very least matter of which he can be charged. What of the Grape Creek murders, or that of Mr. Schuetze the schoolmaster? There is plenty to lay at his door, but the trouble is that it was all done in wartime and now the war is over. I fear that there is talk of an amnesty regarding any such deeds, Mrs. Magda.”
“And those who benefited by such deeds, or justified them wish not to have them thrown in their faces?” Magda asked bitterly and Charley sighed,
“Indeed, they wish to have them forgotten. Having connived at such wrongs, they wish to begin with a clean slate. I am sorry, Mrs. Magda. I would wish to also see him in the dock and better yet with a rope around his own neck, for what he did to you and to all of us. Justice may yet be done for that, but I do not think there is much official stomach for it. But I will talk to Judge Warhmund and see what he thinks can be done.”
“Watch and wait,” Magda sighed, as she returned Profirio’s letter to her valise. “So I have waited nearly five years for something to be done about that vicious man. I can wait a little longer.”
“If he returns to Fredericksburg,” Charley added cheerfully, as he escorted her to the door, “We will have the warm welcome we promised him before. But I do not think he will dare return here. Dogs return to their vomit, but in my experience, criminals think twice about returning to the scene of their crimes – especially when they have been warned against doing so.”
“I suppose you are correct,” Magda agreed, and departed thinking bitter thoughts about the Confederacy and those men who had trafficked in rebellion, committed crimes and now wished not to face any more of the consequences.
She had all but put Waldrip out of her mind, on the March day that she took Lottie by the hand and walked to the graveyard. It had been a year since Vati died, a year since Rosalie breathed her tortured last. Magda felt the need of being alone with that awful anniversary, alone but for Lottie who was finished with school for the day. Her daughter carried a little pail to dip water from the creek, and Magda left Anna in charge of the shop for an hour or so. Peter Vining had come to town to bring back another load of lumber and supplies, and Magda thought that he might also pay some elaborate courtesy to her niece while he was at it.
Oh, to be out in the fields on a spring afternoon, while the wind chased dandelion-puff clouds in a faultlessly blue sky. It put Magda in the memory of how she had wandered, tending the cows in the last year of the war, leading Lottie by the hand, with her valise full of knitting and useless wads of Confederate money, should she run across anything worth buying from the shops as she returned. She had never worried about danger, from Indians or anyone else, in those last days of the war, for Jack the dog accompanied them and she had always carried Carl Becker’s old five-shot Paterson revolver in the valise as well.
She and Lottie picked armfuls of sweet wildflowers from the fields beyond Town Creek, and from the banks of the creek, to add to the little handful of new-blossoming daffodils from their own garden. They walked among the stones and monuments – so many of them there were now, so many friends! Dear Mrs. Helene, Pastor Altemeuller’s wife, Liesel and Hansi’s son Christian, dead in the diphtheria epidemic in the last year of the war, and now Vati, dearest of all. And Magda still felt tears coming to her eyes, to think of Rosalie and her Robert, dancing at their wedding and looking only at each other, little knowing how short their marriage would be.
She tidied the graves, kneeling and heedless of her new dress – which, true to Anna’s words, Liesel had pressed upon her. The grass and the soil in her fingers felt wonderfully like working in the garden; how little of that she did, these days. It was country-quiet out here, town was far enough that the sounds of it carried but faintly; horses hoofs, and the regular thud of someone splitting wood in the backyard of a house on Town Creek, and once the crack of something that could have been a rifle-shot. Magda wondered who might be hunting, so close to town.
She and Hansi had paid for a fine stone for Vati, with a holder for a little brass vase at the bottom. She emptied out last weeks dead flowers, and Lottie solemnly filled it with fresh water from her pail.
They did the same for Rosalie and Robert. They had a fine stone, a single one for both of them. Mr. Berg had come out of the hills long enough to do it, carving a single rose by way of ornament – Robert Hunter, Rosalie his wife, side by side through-out eternity.
Magda shouldered her valise when they were done, and took Lottie’s hand. The child swung the empty pail as they walked towards Austin Street and the stage stop at the back of Charley’s hotel. Magda considered walking towards Pastor Altemeuller’s house and paying him a visit on the way back; after all, that was only a little way out of their way, down Austin Street, where all the houses backed on a loop of Town Creek. It looked as if the stage had come in, for there was a small crowd of men at the stop. But something was very strange, for the driver stood gesticulating, by the side of his horses. They should have been on their way almost at once. Magda wondered what had happened. Perhaps one of the team had gone lame; not surprising, for the coaches went at a fearful pace, uphill and down.
As she and Lottie crossed over the Town Creek footbridge, Magda observed there were two groups of people; some of them stood around the driver, quite upset, seeming adamant that their journey continue. Most of them were Americans; the other group was men of the town, Germans from Fredericksburg and nearby. They seemed terribly agitated also, gesticulating and shouting at the first group and each other. Even as she approached, some of them scattered, with a purposeful air about them.
Something had happened, something to do with the stage. If the war had still been going on, Magda would have thought it brought great news of some battle, victory or defeat with it. But she had no need to ask what; as she drew closer, one of the men shouted,
“Madame Becker, have you heard! He’s back! J.P. Waldrip, he was on the stage from San Antonio! He was in a great bate of anxiety, all the way here, so they say!”
Magda felt as if she had been turned at once to a pillar of ice, for the words struck her numb and silent. So she had been, when J.P. Waldrip’s masked friends had taken away her husband, binding his hands with rope and leading him away to his death. Then Waldrip had put his hands on her and struck her senseless with a revolver in his fist. When she revived, she was already a widow, although she had not known that for many more hours.
“Waldrip! Come here to Fredericksburg? Has he gone mad?” She gasped, “We must send for the sheriff! I demand that he be arrested for killing my husband!”
“The Sheriff has already been sent for, Madam!” It was Fritz Ahrens, Charley’s brother-in-law. He seemed most particularly exhilarated, “No fear, on that! He might be quite eager to surrender to the sheriff, on all accounts!”
“What happened!” Magda demanded again, “And tell me – why did he even come back to Fredericksburg, where did he go?”
“It seems that he has enemies in San Antonio,” Fritz Ahrens chuckled with great satisfaction, “It seems that last night, some Mexican tried to knife him in an alley! So in mortal fear, he bought a stage ticket for El Paso, thinking to get as far away and as fast as he could! Of course, he must have known that the stage stops here, but I imagine he thought to brave it out for a short time! But just as everyone was dismounting… up rides young Braubach on a lathered horse, shouting riot and murder and fire!”
“Philip Braubach?” Magda gasped, “That married Louisa Schuetze?”
“The very same! He had ridden after the stage, upon hearing that Waldrip was on his way here! Young Braubach took out his revolver and shot at him! Right here, on this very street not ten minutes ago!”
“Where is Waldrip then!” Magda demanded; there was no body on the ground, no evidence of anything untoward, and yet it seemed as if the whole universe had suddenly turned upside down.
“He missed,” Fritz Ahrens said, regretfully, “The revolver turned in his hands, for they were sweaty. He missed, and the bastard Waldrip – sorry, Madame Becker – ran like a hare. He ran towards the gardens, but he can’t get far, even if he runs true to form and steals a horse. We’ll find him soon, of that you can be sure!” He touched the brim of his hat to her, and went off to join in the clamorous search.
“We must get home,” Magda said urgently to Lottie, “And send Mr. Vining with word to your brother! He must know of this! And see that the sheriff arrests that vile murderer!”
She set off towards Main Street, towards where the large oak tree shaded the entrance on Magazine Street to Charley’s stable-yard, and the bathhouses that served his guests. When they had first come to Fredericksburg, when it was nothing but a forest of oak trees with pegs and little flags of cloth marking the outline of where it would soon be. Magazine Street was where the Verein blockhouse and stores had been, as well as the communal gardens that had supplied them all in the very first days. Now, Charley’s hotel and outbuildings lined one entire block, between Main and Austin Streets, facing a row of small homes and shops opposite.
She held Lottie’s hand tightly, all thought of a leisurely stroll down Main Street forgotten with this news. She urgently wanted to speak to Charley, to Mr. Vining, to her son, to the Sheriff – anyone! J.P. Waldrip must not be allowed to escape.
As she swept past the oak tree, her skirts rustling like a storm in a bed of reeds, she heard someone scream, and the dark figure of a man ran out of the stable-yard. It was Charley’s daughter Bertha who screamed and screamed again as the man ran towards Magda and Lottie,
“It’s him!”
Magda stood rooted to the spot; fear, shock and anger warring within her breast. Yes, her mind told her with chill precision; that was J.P. Waldrip, stumbling as his eyes darted here and there, like a trapped animal seeking escape, a fox hearing the hounds baying all around. He did not look much changed, with those feral miss-matched eyes, and that tall black felt hat by which he was known. But he was caged, however loosely; by the hotel behind, and the girl standing in the passageway between the main building and the bathhouses, with a pile of towels in her arms. His eyes darted towards Magda – she thought that he did not recognize her, at first. She was just a woman in widow-black, holding a child by the hand… a woman who stood between him and his escape. And it came to her with almost a start that there were men at either end of Magazine Street; those standing at the stage stop, as well as those searching. There were men on Main Street as well, even if they were not in on the search.
His eyes darted this way and that, finally meeting hers and holding for a startled instant, as recognition flashed between them. Recognition and desperate calculation too – and in a flash, something in Magda’s intellect read his impulse and reacted with the same cold and unthinking precision.
He knew her. When his eyes slid to the side and downwards, towards Lottie at her side and he stepped one step closer and made as if to reach into his coat, she was in no doubt about what he meant to do, and had no intention of letting him do it.
No, her mind cried out, no, not again. He will not hold my child hostage. And on that single thought, she set Lottie behind her, and took out the Paterson revolver from her valise. She held it straight out, locking her elbows straight as her dear husband had advised her so many years ago, and calmly aimed as he had also told her. Aim for his breadbasket, Carl Becker’s voice whispered in her ears. The shots rise up. In that moment, which seemed eternal, she was ice-cold and aware of everything happening around here – and it yet it all seemed distant, as if everything else happened behind a great glass window. She and the man who had killed her husband, threatened her children; she and he stood facing each other, Lottie huddled at her back like a chick sheltering under the mother hen.
The first shot crashed like a thunderbolt in her ears. She supposed that she was at least as startled as J.P. Waldrip was, for he looked with amazed horror at the spreading red mess on his vest-front, just below where his coat buttoned over his chest. Then his parti-colored eyes met hers. He took one wobbling step forward and said in a voice that sounded queerly normal,
“You shot me,”
That was for my husband, Magda thought coldly, as she drew back the hammer. My husband. You fired the shot that killed him. The Patersons’ narrow trigger slid obediently open to her finger. She fired again. This one is for Trap Talmadge, whose weakness you used, whose guilt for having betrayed my husband to your gang led him to seek death in battle.
A second bloody mess blossomed on his vest-front. Waldrip clutched his belly and his mouth opened in wordless, bewilderment. Yet he remained on his feet, and as Magda pulled back the Paterson’s hammer once again, his coat fell a little back and she saw that he had a revolver also, in a leather holster under his coat.
That is for our children, she thought, as she shot him again. You used his love for them as a weapon, in order to make him go with your filthy gang. Waldrip fell then to his knees, stark bewilderment on his countenance. What had he expected, Magda thought with vicious satisfaction; that he would be welcomed with rose petals into Gillespie County where his wolves had ravaged and murdered all during the war? That a woman he had wronged in every way but the worst way imaginable would allow him once more to threaten harm to those she loved?
That’s for Schoolmaster Schuetze, the kindest and cleverest of teachers, who made a jest one afternoon and the hanging-band came to his house that very night. That shot hit high, and left him gasping on a gush of bright blood that came out of his mouth.
She could hardly see his shirtfront and vest for dark blood, yet he still lived, racked in agony for every breath as he lay on the ground at her feet, in the dust under the tree by Charley Nimitz’ stable-yard.
“Don’t shoot me any more,” he gasped. Pitilessly, Magda pulled back the Paterson’s hammer one last time.
That’s for me, she thought. There was a tremor in her arms, no need to brace her arms out straight, no need to really aim, that last time. You made many enemies… but never knew until your last moments that the worst of them all was a woman.
With that final crash of the Paterson firing, the life burst out of J.P. Waldrip in a tide of blood. Magda stood over him, trembling like a leaf. She felt nothing more than an enormous sense of satisfaction. It had happened all so very fast. She looked down at the body at her feet, thinking that she ought to feel something more than that. She had killed a man, five shots with a Paterson, out in the street in front of everyone. All that she could muster up by way of regret was a conviction that if she had more of a chance to think about it, she should have contrived to shoot him without any witnesses. There would be trouble over this. Hansi and her son would be furious with her, on that account, especially if it affected the business.
“Mama?” Lottie’s voice quavered from beside her, “Is that man dead?”
“Yes he is, little miss,” Charley answered cheerily, and Magda looked up, startled out of all countenance. He winked broadly at her, chucked Lottie on the cheek and in one swift movement he took Magda’s wrist and slipped the Paterson out of her grasp. Magda blinked; he had palmed it neatly and conveyed it out of sight with all the aplomb of a stage magician, somewhere underneath the tails of his neat black suit coat.
“I do believe,” he added in a louder voice, “That this would be the infamous J. P. Waldrip. I’ll leave it to Doctor Kiedel to confirm the details, but he certainly looks dead to me.” He looked around at the murmuring crowd, suddenly gathered from the stage stop, from within the hotel and from up and down Magazine Street. Many of them were men, carrying weapons – among them young Philip Braubach, and the cobbler, Mr. Fischer who had his workshop in a house opposite Charley’s stable yard. Mr. Fischer clutched a long carbine, and looked much put out. Charley put his arm comfortingly around his daughter and added, “Bertha saw him in the stable yard. When she screamed for help, I came out and saw him running towards the street, in the direction of Madame Becker and her daughter. And suddenly,” Charley looked exceedingly bland, although his eyes danced with suppressed mirth, “I heard gunshots, but couldn’t see from whence they came. Waldrip fell dead, right in front of us and I have no idea who shot him. Some unknown assailant, I suppose. Waldrip had many enemies hereabouts…”
Young Braubach snorted; it sounded suspiciously like a stifled laugh and a rustle of agreement went through the gathered crowd. Charley looked straight at her, and continued,
“… and he had friends and kin, as well. Knowing that he is dead at the hands of an unknown assailant…” Charley emphasized that phrase again, “They might wish to avenge themselves against the person who killed him… if they knew who what person was, of course. Alas,” Charley shrugged elaborately, “I have no idea who shot Mr. Waldrip. Did anyone see… anything at all? Bertha?”
“I didn’t see anything at all, Papa,” Bertha took her cue demurely. Magda saw comprehension flicker from face to face around her, saw the idea move like witches’ fire, like ball-lightening, saw the complicit acceptance on every face, even those who couldn’t possibly have been where they could have seen her shoot J.P. Waldrop five times in his body.
“Twasn’t me,” Philip Braubach was the first to speak, “I had a shot at the bastard, but I missed, clean. Everyone saw me.”
“Some will do anything to keep from having to buy wine for shooting competition winners,” commented Mr.Fischer dryly and to a general laugh. “So, if anyone cares to ask, what did he die of?”
“Lead poisoning,” Suggested Charley sweetly, and that elicited another round of laughter. “Still and all,” he added, significantly looking at no one in particular, “I suppose we should bury him decently, hat and all; lest his next of kin come to complain of our hospitality. If they have cause,” he coughed, and sent another significant look, “They will come and complain. Dissatisfied guests always make that special effort. Just as well they know nothing of where to direct their complaints, eh? Bertha, Madame Becker looks quite shaken; would you conduct her to the little parlor, and tell your Mama what has happened?”
Charley looked indecently pleased with himself, Magda thought, as Bertha led her and Lottie into the family parlor. As soon as they were safe indoors, Charley presented her with the Paterson, saying,
“I do believe this antique weapon belongs to you, Madame Becker – I found it in my stable-yard. I can only imagine how it got there.”
“Charley… I…” Magda began to say, her heart overflowing with gratitude and affection for Charley’s quick thinking, and affection too, for all of those townsfolk who had seen her shoot J.P. Waldrip.
“Not a word, Mrs. Magda,” Charley kissed her other hand, the one that did hot hold the Paterson. “Not a word. I did not see anything, nor did you. But…” he held her hand, just a fraction longer than necessary. “I can’t tell you how long it has been, since something I did not see, gave me such an enormous sense of satisfaction!”