A Bad Place to Die Read online

  Tennie leaned closer to him. “I didn’t want to marry someone I’d never met. I waited until there was a full moon. I took some food I’d hoarded, and I was going to leave, but then I looked up in the hills, and I saw a line of Indian warriors in the moonlight. I gave the alarm, and we were attacked. The men managed to repulse them, but they kidnapped one of the women. The next day, we found her. She’d . . . she’d . . .” Tennie couldn’t repeat the horror she had seen. “Mr. Payton told me I’d never survive by myself, that I should just come here and do what I had signed up to do.” Tennie stopped. She didn’t want to tell him Mr. Payton almost had to twist her arm in Ring Bit, too.

  “Tennie, Tennie,” Granger said, smiling at her in sympathy. “Poor little Tennie.” He rubbed her back and squeezed her shoulder. “I have a confession to make, too. I only wanted a wife to look after my sons. My health has been so bad, I haven’t corrected them as I should, and they’ve grown up half-wild. If I died, no one here would want them. When I saw you, I thought my plan had been for nothing. But then you said you grew up in an orphanage, and you know what it’s like. Would you promise me, Tennie, if I die, you would take care of my sons? That you would see they didn’t get split up and sent to an orphanage? Please?”

  He caressed her cheek with one hand, and Tennie found herself nodding her head. “I have to tell you something else, Tennie. I’ve had another spell with my heart since I sent for you, and I doubt I will ever be able to be a true husband to you. Do you understand?”

  Tennie nodded again, and he smiled. “Your eyes are so enchanting. You look like a beautiful little doe. Would you sit on my lap and let me hold you close for a little while?”

  Tennie realized she wanted nothing more than to be comforted by him. She moved into his lap and lay her head on his shoulder, allowing him to caress her and kiss her hair. The thought crossed her mind they could be seen and heard by the others, but she was so grateful for Granger’s kindness, she did not care.

  She looked up into his face, seeing him smile and close his eyes. Many seconds passed before she realized his heart had stopped beating. Not knowing what to do, she stood up. The only name she could think of was Wash, so she said, “Mr. Wash. Mr. Wash, would you come here, please?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Wash had not been far away. He strode across the porch and examined Granger, then turned to his friend. “Ben,” he said, keeping his voice down.

  The big man lumbered onto the porch. One look, and he, too, knew Granger was gone.

  “We’ll lay him out on the bed tonight and bury him in the morning,” Wash said.

  Tennie sat in the chair, put her head down, and closed her eyes. Tears rolled from her eyes down her cheeks, dripping onto her dress, and she didn’t even try to understand why.

  Wash and Ben placed Granger on the bed, covering him with a sheet. The boys stood silent with them, not asking for an explanation because they already understood. Traditionally, someone was expected to stay up with the body, but in unspoken agreement, they gathered blankets and quilts to sleep on the porch. Tennie stayed close to the patient, Poco, in case he called out during the night, but he slept easier than she’d expected.

  The next morning the boys announced they wanted to eat breakfast on the porch. Wash and Ben nodded in agreement. Tennie handed the boys their plates. They took the food without speaking, refusing to look at her, smoldering with resentment. Ben thanked her when she gave him his. Wash searched her face with his dark blue eyes when she handed him his plate, but she could read nothing in his countenance.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, his deep voice resonating nothing but politeness.

  The men took turns with a pickax and shovel under an elm tree in the backyard. The ground proved so rocky and hard, they couldn’t get the hole deep enough. While Tennie cooked dinner, everyone except Poco went in search of stones like the ones covering Ashton Granger’s first wife. After dinner, Wash spoke a few words and a prayer over the grave, and Tennie thought it was not the first time he had been called upon to repeat, “ashes to ashes.”

  Later on, while they stood outside, Tennie made an effort to distract the brooding boys by asking them if they had any school lessons she might help them with.

  “We don’t have lessons,” Rusty said. “The teacher told Pa not to send us back to school.”

  That knocked the wind out of Tennie, but before she could say anything, Badger burst out in hatred. “We don’t want you here.”

  Lucas and Rusty picked up the cry.

  “That’s right. We don’t need you,” Lucas said.

  And Rusty said, “You’re just a witch who killed our pa, coming here.”

  The second the word witch left Rusty’s mouth, Wash made for him. The words, “We can take care of ourselves,” crossed his lips seconds before Wash picked him up and threw him in the water trough. He grabbed Rusty by the hair and shoulders and pushed him up and down into the water until Tennie thought he was going to drown him.

  “Please . . .” she murmured.

  Badger kicked at Wash while Lucas pulled on him, but Ben grabbed each boy in one big hand and threw them in the trough with Rusty, repeating the performance.

  When Wash thought Rusty had had enough, he lifted the sputtering boy up to his face and said in a voice so low and mean it sent chills down Tennie’s spine, “If I ever hear you refer to Miss Tennie like that again, I won’t give you a drowning, I’ll give you a licking you’ll remember the rest of your life.”

  Wash threw Rusty down on the dirt while Ben did the same with the other boys.

  “You have just as much responsibility to look after her as she has to you, and don’t you forget it,” Wash said.

  From his great height, Ben looked down on them in pity. “Your pa was sick and dying before she got here, and you know it,” he said in a gentler voice. “She made your pa a mighty happy man before he died, and don’t forget that, either.”

  With tears in their eyes, the boys stared at the men. They got up together and began running down the road. Tennie started, but Wash stopped her.

  “Leave them alone to stew on it,” he said. “They’ll come back when they get hungry.”

  Tennie nodded, remembering she had a patient. She washed her hands and began the process of changing Poco’s bandage, rolling the sheet down just enough to get to his wound. Wash walked up on the porch, and after a second’s hesitation, began assisting her. Poco roused and said a few words in Spanish. Wash answered in Spanish, and Poco closed his eyes and went back into a peaceful sleep.

  “You can speak Spanish, too?” Tennie asked.

  “Just enough to get by,” Wash said, covering Poco when they had finished. “I can speak a little Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache, too, but it didn’t stop us from getting attacked. They were after our horses.”

  “They didn’t get them,” Tennie said, looking at the horses Ben was brushing down in the corral.

  “Not this trip. You probably saved the life of everyone on the wagon train by giving the alarm the night you decided to run away.”

  So he had been listening. Tennie shrugged. “I never thought of it that way.” She rose. “I’d better burn these bandages.”

  “There are peach trees near the creek making fruit,” Wash said. “If I brought you some, could you make a peach cobbler?”

  “Bring me as many as you can, and I can make preserves, too,” Tennie said. “At least I think I can remember how my mother used to do it.”

  Ben joined them. “Don’t feed him too well, Miss Tennie,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll never get shut of him.”

  Tennie smiled. After the emotional scenes of earlier, she would be glad to have something to do to take her mind off the new fix she found herself in. She wondered about the men surrounding her. They went from lightning-fast temper to gathering peaches for her.

  Along with the peaches, they brought dressed squirrels, instructing her to fry them like chicken. She took a few of the squirrels, though, and browned them, adding wa
ter to make a broth for Poco to sip when he became able.

  The boys, as Wash predicted, came home in time for supper. They were quiet and didn’t apologize for anything, but no one appeared to expect them to. They sat at the table eating squirrel after squirrel.

  Rusty said, “Tomorrow we can have rabbit. Lucas and I know how to find rabbits hiding in bushes and drop a knife to kill them.”

  “We can shoot good, though,” Lucas said. “But rabbits ain’t too bright, so we don’t have to waste no ammunition on them.”

  “Do I fry them like squirrel?” Tennie asked.

  “Pa liked them stewed,” Rusty said.

  “With lots of gravy,” Badger said. “Pa liked gravy.” Tears began to fill his eyes.

  Tennie rose. “I have a surprise for you. Mr. Wash and Mr. Ben gathered peaches, and we are having peach cobbler for dessert.”

  The boys lowered their eyes.

  Lucas said, “Thank you, Miss Tennie,” in a voice so low it could barely be heard.

  Tennie looked at Wash and Ben and gave a slight shrug before fetching the cobbler.

  Poco roused just long enough for Tennie to get some broth down him. Even though the bedroom now sat empty, Tennie stayed all night on the porch with the others.

  In the morning, Poco regained consciousness. A small wiry man in his twenties, his dark eyes flashed in humor. He teased Tennie while she and Wash changed his bandages, telling her in a weak voice how beautiful she was.

  “Am I as pretty as Rosita? As Maria? As Consuela?” she teased back.

  “Even more beautiful,” Poco said.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, Miss Tennie. He’s the Mexican version of Don Juan,” Wash said as he pulled the covers back over Poco.

  “Who’s Don Juan?” Tennie asked, picking up the soiled bandages.

  “Nobody you want to know,” Wash said. “Lucas or Rusty can help me change the bandages from now on.”

  Poco gave a weak smile. “You are a demon.”

  “No, I just don’t want you to get to admiring Miss Tennie so much you bust a gut open.”

  Ben came around the side of the house. “Buggy coming, Wash.”

  Poco shut his eyes while Wash and Ben disappeared without seeming to leave so much as a footprint behind.

  Wondering what was going on, Tennie disposed of the bandages and waited on the front porch. The boys stood by the gate and watched a buggy with three men bounce down the rutted road to the house. The men pulled up and alighted, knocking the dust from their pants. They raised their hats to her and gave slight bows, their appearance marking them as middle-aged and prosperous.

  The chubby one with gray hair wore a gold watch chain hanging across his wide middle. In his hand was a short top hat. The other men held bowlers. One of the men wore a suit even more expensive, but not as elaborate. His face looked as cold and white as the inside of a day-old baked potato. The excitable looking man standing near him, who was bald on top with little gray fringe, at least looked like he had warm blood flowing through his veins.

  They began to walk toward the porch. The chubby one turned to the boys and said in a growl, “Beat it. We want to talk to this woman alone.” He turned and gave Tennie an ingratiating smile.

  She took an instant dislike to him.

  The boys frowned but slunk away, and Tennie knew they would stay out of sight but within hearing. She had no idea what had happened to Wash and Ben. She waited on the porch.

  “Mrs. Granger?” Chubby asked. “We heard about your unfortunate loss.”

  Tennie nodded, thinking it odd to hear herself addressed as “Mrs. Granger.”

  “I am the mayor of Ring Bit. These gentlemen here with me are on our town council,” he said, saying their names and introducing the one with the soulless eyes as the banker, and the excitable one as an influential businessman.

  “Yes,” Tennie said, not understanding what they wanted with her. “Won’t you come in?”

  They followed her into the house and refused an offer of refreshments. Tennie sat on one end of the sofa while they occupied chairs to her left. She could hear the scurry of feet, and to hide the sound, she spoke. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  The mayor looked at the banker, nodding for him to begin.

  “I hate to inform you, Mrs. Granger,” the banker said. “But the note on this property comes due at the end of the month. Unless you have the money to pay the remaining twenty-five hundred, you will have to vacate the ranch.”

  Tennie stared at him. He might as well have said twenty-five thousand or twenty-five million.

  “And there is no money in Mr. Granger’s account to cover that?” Tennie found herself asking, wondering if some other composed woman was talking. Surely it wasn’t her.

  “No, ma’am,” the banker said. “He has a balance of ten dollars.”

  “Ten dollars,” Tennie repeated. They would have to tear the house apart to see if he had stashed any money aside. But even if they found some, Tennie doubted it would be twenty-five hundred. She was finding it hard to breathe.

  “Now, Mrs. Granger,” the mayor said. “Don’t fret. We have a proposition for you that will give you a place to live and an income.”

  The last proposition she had was to work in a cathouse, and she wondered what theirs would be. It couldn’t be worse.

  “The thing of it is,” the mayor began, “our little town is being overrun by a wild and reckless element. People are leaving and the ones who might settle here are passing us by for safer places to dwell. If this keeps up, Ring Bit could become a ghost town.”

  The other men were staring at her.

  Tennie stared back and said, “Yes?”

  “Well, we have a solution,” the mayor said, his three chins wobbling. “We want to appoint you as our town marshal. Think of it! The reputation it would give us as a peaceful place.”

  Tennie thought she had not heard him right. “What?” She shut her mouth, feeling guilty—she hadn’t meant to sound rude.

  “Mrs. Granger, you won’t have a thing to worry about. There is an unwritten law in the West, and one that is perfectly legal in Ring Bit, that if a man kills someone and leaves their children orphans, he is obligated to take care of those children. And let’s face it, Mrs. Granger, no one wants to be saddled with those hellion stepsons of yours.”

  Tennie stared at them, thinking they were crazy.

  The nervous one spoke. “You’re not putting it right, Horace.” He turned to Tennie. “No one is going to hurt a beautiful young woman such as yourself. We don’t expect you to wear a gun and go around arresting people. We only want you to use your presence to calm some of the rougher element. You will have to write a few warrants to hand over to the U.S. deputy marshal when he comes, and you’ll have to feed any prisoners in the jail. That’s all.”

  The banker crossed his legs and pinched the smooth fabric of his pants. “Really, Mrs. Granger, you have few options. You can farm the boys out to orphanages, because I assure you no one in Ring Bit will take them on, and you will have to support yourself in whatever way you can, or you can accept our offer.”

  Tennie sat still. She couldn’t seem to think straight. Where were Wash and Ben?

  The three men stared at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I am taking care of an ill man my husband operated on before he passed,” Tennie said. “It will be two weeks at least before I can leave here.”

  “Two weeks will bring us to the end of the month,” the banker said, rising.

  The other men stood up.

  “We’ll send someone out for you and your things at the end of two weeks, Mrs. Granger,” the mayor said.

  Tennie could not understand his suppressed elation or the relief of the other men. It seemed out of proportion to what appeared to be just a stunt. They said their good-byes and left her standing on the porch, watching them go.

  The boys crept from the shadows they had been hiding in.

  “Do we really have to leave the ran
ch and move to town, Miss Tennie?” Rusty asked.

  “It looks that way,” Tennie said, not able to keep the despondency out of her voice. What else was going to happen to her? She looked at the three boys. She hadn’t wanted to be a mail-order bride. She hadn’t wanted to be a widow. She didn’t want to be responsible for three wayward boys nobody else would have. And most of all, she did not want to move into Ring Bit and become the freak of the West, a woman town marshal.

  “Let’s go see if Mr. Poco is awake. He has two weeks to get better.” As they walked to the back porch, Tennie said, “You went to town and told people your father had died, and I had promised to take care of you, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” Lucas said. “You sure are getting clever, Miss Tennie. Going through an Indian attack and coming to Ring Bit must have made you a lot smarter than when you left.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Tennie said. “If it had, I’d be able to think of a way out of this mess.”

  After checking on Poco, they went through the house looking for money, but all they found was a five-dollar gold piece and a few dollars in Ashton Granger’s wallet. There were a lot of papers on the desk, but Tennie couldn’t understand any of them. Ben walked in while Tennie sat at the desk, looking at receipts in puzzlement.

  “Miss Tennie,” he said, drawing near.

  “Yes, Mr. Ben?” Tennie answered, grateful to look at him instead of Ashton Granger’s crabbed handwriting.

  “Wash said not to throw any of your husband’s papers away. He said as soon as you can, hire an attorney you trust to look into his affairs.”

  Tennie frowned. “Why doesn’t he tell me this himself?”

  Ben paused before continuing. “He’s upset about you taking the marshal job. He don’t want you to do it.”

  “Well, what does he want me to do?” Tennie asked, her voice getting shrill.

  “He knows you don’t have no choice,” Ben said, trying to calm her. “He’s in a turmoil over it and can’t trust himself to talk about it right now. That’s all.”

  “All right,” Tennie said, resigned. “I’ll keep the papers.”

  “Miss Tennie,” Ben repeated, considering every word before he spoke it. “Me and Wash, we can’t help you right now, but soon things will be different. Then we’ll be able to do something for you and the boys. We promise.”