Free The Big Gundown by Bill Brooks Page B

Sorrow. Unless, of course, there was a problem, some sort of trouble, like now.
    The sun stood straight up and glaring off the snow. Warmer than you might think, the snow growing to slush in some places along the road. Jake loosened the buttons on his coat.
    He dismounted in front of the cabin and knocked on the door.
    â€œAre you Marybeth Joseph?” he asked when the door opened a crack and a face peered out.
    â€œWho’s asking?” the woman said. “If you’re a drummer, keep moving. Got no need of anything and got no money.”
    Jake told her who he was, why he’d come: to speak to Marybeth Joseph. She looked him up and down.
    â€œWhat’s she done the law wants her?”
    â€œNothing,” Jake said, “I’d just like to talk to her.”
    He heard another feminine voice say, “Oh, Mama, let the man come in, ain’t you got no manners.”
    The door opened wide enough for him to enter.
    There in front of the fireplace a boy sat in a copper tub, his hair soapy, and a young woman knelt next to him with a bar of scrubbing soap in her hand. Their eyes came to rest on the tall man. It was plain to see the young woman was heavily pregnant.
    â€œMa’am, my name is Jake Horn,” he said, removing his Stetson and sweeping back the hair from his forehead. “Are you Marybeth Joseph?”
    â€œI am,” she said.
    â€œYou know why I want to talk to you?”
    She shook her head. He guessed her to be hardly more than sixteen or seventeen; the older woman, maybe fifty; the boy, nine or ten. Marybeth Joseph was a big boney girl made bigger by her swollen belly. Broad face but cheerful eyes. Skin about the color of goat’s milk and pitch-black hair twisted up into a bun atop her head and held with Spanish combs.
    â€œNo sir, I wouldn’t have the slightest notion why you’d want to talk to me,” she said. He could see, though, from the look she gave him that she did have some notion of what he wanted to talk about.
    The old woman had gone and settled into a high-back rocker near the fire. There were several tintypes in tarnished frames atop the rough-hewn mantel. Stark, unsmiling faces staring out, and one of a young soldier holding a pistol in each hand across his chest. He had the look of a man about to be shot.
    â€œMaybe we could have a private word,” Jake suggested.
    Marybeth Joseph stood with much effort and wipedher wet hands on her skirts and said, “Let me get my coat.” The old woman looked at her sharply, said, “What about Frisco?”, moving her gaze to the boy in the tub.
    â€œMaybe you could finish him up, mama.”
    The old woman said, “Lord…”
    Once outside Marybeth Joseph said, “She had Frisco real late in life. Daddy was already dead by the time he was born. Died of consumption. Daddy would have been surprised he had it still in him to sire another one. Is eight years between Frisco and me. She likes to believe Frisco is mine and not hers; I’m like his ma to him.” She rubbed her stomach with both hands on either side.
    â€œHow far along are you?” Jake said.
    â€œDue anytime,” she said. “I never had a little one. Sometimes it scares me.”
    â€œYou know why I came, don’t you, Marybeth?”
    â€œIs it something to do with Nat?”
    â€œIt is,” Jake said. “He is dead.”
    He saw her face crumple and she squeezed her eyes shut, as though trying to fight back whatever tears wanted to come. He thought she might lose her balance, but she steadied herself by leaning a hand against the door where the sun struck, turning the wood pleasantly warm.
    â€œI’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you.”
    â€œThey killed him, didn’t they?”
    â€œWho are they? ”
    â€œDallas and them.”
    â€œYou saw them take him out of here?”
    â€œThey wore masks, but I know it was them.”
    â€œWill you swear to