Levi and the Ferryman - Ch. 2

Seth Knight had been hunting bounties across the Arapaho territories, both Northern and Southern, for about six years before something tugged at him to move a little more southwest into the mountains.  Of course, that sounded far less practical than it really was—it was simply because there were more bounties to be had from those who’d fled into the wild peaks and valleys.  It was where he’d finally found real trouble, where men seemed more feral than not, and where it seemed just about everyone was a little more desperate and a little more dangerous.

It was where he’d met Tanner Dorsey and where, eventually, he’d lost him too.  Leaving, after something like that, just didn’t seem right.  So he was here, tracking wayward bounties and dragging their sorry hind ends back to sheriffs and back to marshals for the pittance he was paid just to survive a little while wherever he ended up next.

It was lonely.  At the very least, he had a few allies here and there but more enemies than those and he was careful not to tread too heavily in places he knew he was just barely tolerated.  Fortunately, they tended to avoid him too.

Fate always struck at a terribly inconvenient time.  This time he was snoozing in an old cloth hammock in the back of Mr. Huang’s grocery in the tiny little settlement called Milgrave, his hat over his face while two of the old man’s cats were curled over him and purring.  There was a subtle change in the room that his dozing mind couldn’t help but notice and he was quick when he tipped his hat up with his thumb, knowing that the man who’d come into the store room was no threat but was certainly not welcome either.  The cats popped up their heads, casting their unamused yellow eyes upon the intruder.

He was an Alpha, familiar but not overly-so, and his scent was calm and authoritative.

Seth cleared his throat.  “You lookin’ for me, Alpha?”

“You Knight?”

“I am.”

“Then I’m lookin’ for you.”  He hooked his thumbs into his gun belt and looked around at the meticulously organized groceries, on his face a light smile as though he remembered his younger days having spent a few hot afternoons in a kind foreign man’s shop.  “Your friend was a little reluctant to tell me you were here, but I convinced him I meant you no harm.”

“And do you?”

“I’m Marshal Embry, I think I’ve seen you in passing here and there but you’ve never brought me any bounties personally.  I mean you absolutely no harm at all and in fact, I’ve got a hell of a bounty for you if you’ll agree to take it.”

“Any reason I wouldn’t?”

“Well, it’s a hell of a bounty.”

He didn’t like the sound of that one bit, no sir.  That meant the marshal had very likely gone to others to recruit and was turned down.  There wouldn’t be a posse, there wouldn’t be support, and he’d be lucky to bag anyone at all after wasting time trying.  He grunted as he pulled himself up and mourned the loss of the cats when they gracefully jumped off of him and took their decadent warmth with them.  He carefully rolled himself out of the hammock and adjusted his hat back onto his head properly before he rubbed at his eyes and regarded the marshal anew.  “You took it elsewhere before me, I assume.”

“Harper considered it but Pruitt’s playing doctor back in Bridgeton and the former doesn’t go anywhere without the latter.  Likes his doc within arm’s reach if somemat goes wrong and I sure can’t say I blame ‘im the way it’s gotten out here these days.”

Seth nodded, a little melancholy bleeding into his heart at the thought of the two inseparable bounty hunters.

It could have been like that for us, Dorsey.  Pullin’ easy bounties…just you and I in the mountains.

He cleared his throat and motioned for Embry to lead, following him out into the afternoon heat.  He thanked Huang for his constant hospitality and strode easy-like down the steps toward the dust of the street.

“Thing is,” Embry started again as they walked down toward the saloon, “It’s a pretty big job and it’s got some folks spooked, not that they haven’t been mighty spooked before.”  He sighed.  “For good reason, o’course, you understand.  But this was a bit of a shock.  I know news has a way of travelin’ around here, you know what I’m talkin’ about?”

“Can’t say I do, Marshal.  Haven’t been untuckin’ my ears around the ladies, ‘m’fraid.”

“Fair enough.”  He pulled a cigarette out of a silver case in his breast pocket and offered it to Seth who took it gratefully.  After they were both lit and were lingering a bit on the creaky wooden planks just outside the saloon, Embry spoke again.  “Been a killin’ in Bridgeton.”

“Not too unusual, I hear.”

“There was that business a while back with the bedhouse, yeah, but this was diff’rent.”  He took a long drag and let it out.  “Rancher just outside o’ town.  Big ol’ place.  Entire family.  Alpha and ‘is wife.  Two sons, a daughter, even the baby.”

Seth shook his head and flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette into a drying up mud puddle just off the edge of the walkway.

“Dastardly work.  One of their ranch hands musta heard somethin’, came up to the house, got hisself cut up bad.  He’s barely holdin’ on and I think he’s the reason Pruitt ain’t wanna go nowhere just yet—tryin’ to keep this boy alive seems his priority.”

“Decent of ‘im.  Some kind o’ mystery, or…?”

“Not much o’ one.  Seems it was another one o’ the ranch hands what did it, though no one still can believe it.  If you ask anybody who knew ‘im, they’s just about convinced he was dragged off and kidnapped.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No,” Embry shook his head.  “I don’t.”

“And you ain’t on the tail of this ranch hand because…”

“My deputy…” he sighed out his nose.  “My mate, Isaac, and I just welcomed into the world our little boy Bo.  O’course, Isaac bein’ the way he is, he jus’ had to make ever’thing as complicated as possible and got himself a nice little hole in his shoulder from some Harchem’s twenty-two.”

“Damn Harchems.”

Embry gave a sharp nod.  “That’s right.  That’s another reason Pruitt’s in town and ain’t off on this.  Selfishness on my part.”

“It ain’t selfish to want a decent doctor around for your mate and your pup,” Seth provided amiably.  “So you came to find me.”

“You’re not exactly difficult to track down.  Might be the only son of a bitch in the territory with two different colored eyes.”

Seth consciously put a finger up to the brim of his hat and tipped it down as if to hide those two differently colored eyes.  It was as much a boone as it was a hinderance, having his left eye a deep brown and the other a pale blue, with many along his travels afraid that he might be able to see more because of it.  It unnerved as much as it enticed, something of a novelty out in the wilderness where novelties were seldom found.  “I suppose that might make anyone easy to find.  Don’t suppose our missing ranch hand’s got anything quite as noticeable?”

“Outta luck on that front,” Embry lamented.  “I’m told you’re a decent tracker.  Come from your mother’s side.  She Indian?”

“Half.  Cheyenne.”

“Decent folk.”

“Nice to hear you say so.”

Embry nodded in acknowledgment, the two of them comfortable enough with their camaraderie to relax a bit by now.  “Have I convinced you?”

“I’ll take a look.  This ranch hand…the one who lived.  Can I talk to ‘im?”

“You can.  He can’t.”

Seth shrugged one shoulder, finishing up his smoke before he followed the marshal and went to fetch his horse.

Bridgeton was a quiet little place just at the base of the mountains which towered above and promised a wealth of lumber and furs.  It hadn’t ever been a boom town with gold or any kind of riches, but it did well enough in terms of industry.  With Rex Folguard having set up his smelting a few miles away in between there and the ruins of the old mining town Talton, it boasted a decent little boost in population at least and there was a little less desperation here than many other places out west.  It was at most three times the size of Milgrave and it took about two days to ride there with he and the marshal out under the stars on the spare night between.

When they rode in, there was a bit of a hush, as if everyone there had known the marshal was out to find a bounty hunter who might be of use to them.  Embry had sure been right in the statement that they seemed spooked, every statement low and every glance furtive, as if they were afraid somehow of being accused or being next.

The marshal put him up at the inn and told him to take his time getting freshened up before he’d meet him back at the jailhouse on the main street.  Seeming as he was here on the law’s dime, he thought he might just well take up the invitation and he very much enjoyed a bath before he changed into a fresh set of clothes and set out on his way.  It really was a miracle what a nice hot bath could do for a man when nobody was knockin’ on the door or otherwise harassing him.

Feelin’ a bit better about his situation, he gave a little nod to the innkeep before he left and made his way over to the jailhouse wherein he discovered an intriguing little scene.  It smelled a bit like alcohol and somewhat like what he recalled his sick room smelled like when he was a boy and he’d broken his leg falling out of a tree.  A couple steps in and he was aware of why.

“You ain’t got a doctor’s office around here, Marshal?”

Embry was at his desk, scribbling on some papers and he pointed with the implement toward another wooden chair off to the side.  Doctor Gabriel Pruitt, a man Seth had only known through reputation and description, was inside one of the cells with the metal gate flung open as he tended to what looked like a bundle of blankets from where Seth stood.  He was a solid Alpha with wide shoulders and hair lightened to blonde by the sun.

When Seth sat down, Embry grunted.  “The other doc here in town is a little territorial as you might guess, and if our boy there is to bear witness to a crime this gruesome, I ought to know he’s as secure as he can be.”

“Am I supposed to just wait until he can talk?”

Pruitt got up suddenly, wiping his hands with a clean towel before he deposited it into a traveling wash bag.  “He’s not going to be able to talk to you.  Likely ever.  His larynx was almost entirely destroyed in the attack and it’s a miracle already that he’s alive at all.  He’s been having trouble breathing and he hasn’t been able to eat in days.”

Embry cleared his throat.  “Water?”

“We managed.  Through tears.”

“He’s tougher than he looks, I’ll give him that.  Saul and the girls down at the bedhouse have been payin’ for his care as they’re wont to do when somemat tugs their heartstrings.  Helps that the priest is always there to nudge ‘em.”

Seth smiled, tickled when he recalled that Bridgeton’s whorehouse was also their church.  “Can he write?”

Pruitt nodded.  “Well enough.”

“Alright.  We ought to get him to write what he can before he takes a turn and we can’t get much else from ‘im.  Would be prudent.”

Pruitt glanced at Embry who nodded in return and stood.  “We uhm…ought to take a step outside to talk about this next bit, Knight.  If you don’t mind.”

“I surely don’t.”  He expected to be brought out into the street but was surprised when he was led through a doorway to a back living space before the three of them stepped out into a tight grassy area that was, presumably, meant to be a garden of sorts. It had a small modicum of privacy by way of the building’s natural formation of an alcove and a relatively high unpainted wood fence that blocked off the alley.  He looked between his compatriots, smelling a fair amount of apprehension between the two of them, as if he was about to become privy to some grave secret.  He scratched the back of his neck.  “There’s somethin’ strange about this, isn’t there?”

“I don’t know if ‘strange’ is the word,” Embry began, shifting uncomfortably to pop out a hip.

Pruitt was braver.  “In the process of the investigation, it was discovered that the missing ranch hand and our boy Levi here were uhm…involved.”

Seth schooled his features, tamping down on the old grief that threatened to well up at that moment.  “Involved.”  He swallowed hard.

“In a…certain kind of way that doesn’t exactly inspire kindness among folk.”

Getting pushed down hard into soggy dirt.  Ribs aching from kicks as he dragged himself away through brambles and weeds.  Trying to carefully roll and climb down rocky embankments while stones clattered around him thrown by malicious hands.  And all for what?  For what…?

For love?

He blinked and took a deep calming breath, hoping his scent hadn’t spiked too badly with the memory.  “You found evidence o’ this?”

“Yes,” Pruitt acknowledged.  “Unfortunately, things weren’t exactly as tightly controlled as they might have been otherwise and it was widely known before the marshal could lock it down.  Some folk have been rather magnanimous about the affair and others…well…”

And others throw stones.

“So you’ve got him in here for his own protection and it ain’t necessarily from who might’ve murdered a whole family.”

Embry shrugged.  “Came as a shock.  Nice boy like Levi Brandt endin’ up a sodomite?  Drove some folks to some uncharitable words…jus’ didn’t want nobody turnin’ them words into actions.”

Seth nodded, again rubbing the back of his neck.  “And you think it was ‘is lover who done it?”

Embry gave another look at Pruitt before he gave a slow nod.  “I do.”

“How’s that?”

“Jameson Everwin had a very distinct hunting knife.  Had an engraving of an eagle on the blade that trailed quite close to the tip.  Well we found the tip o’ that knife broken off and lodged into the spine of Mr. Truman, his boss.  He’d been so brutalized that his head was damn near off ‘is body.  Probably the only reason Levi lived was because that tip was already gone from the blade and Everwin was in such a goddamned hurry to go.”

“Has Levi confirmed that’s who attacked ‘im?”

Pruitt drew in a steadying breath.  “Obviously it’s difficult to get a confirmation in his state, but I believe his reaction to questioning was a definitive ‘yes’.”

“Good enough for me.”

Embry and Pruitt took him out to the ranch that afternoon just as a storm was brewing, the overcast gray getting deeper as thunder rumbled over the landscape with subdued ferocity.  The whole place was eerie and silent, as if the birds themselves knew the score and sought not to soil the air with joy when such loss had been so close.  Tracks were difficult to follow as there were so many different folk who’d come and gone after the killings though there was, among all of it, a pattern of blood that had balled into the dirt and stained it a deeper brown where Levi had stumbled, holding his throat, standing still with disbelief as he was bent over the earth just before he made to run and was struck to the ground from behind.  The pattering was then a series of sprays, gushes, and trails as he was savaged and then left to die just a few feet from an old out-building just bigger than a shed with the door open wide so bits of straw could catch the breeze.

Seth let himself wander in through the door, finding the place to have a rustic but pleasant scent—that of mild pipe tobacco and piles of pine needles dusting the forest floor.  This was what Pruitt and Embry had meant when they’d said they’d found evidence.  He ducked through a blanket that had been draped over a half-sized entry point into a small space where any normal man would have to hunch.  A straw-packed bed, a small lantern, little scent-marked kerchiefs to trade back and forth after making love…

He put his hand over his mouth, rubbing at his lower lip a little too hard before he wiped his palms on his jeans and turned around, unable to look at a nest like this any longer.

Tanner Dorsey, laid out like a prince on his bedroll, reading in the firelight and wearing not a damn stitch o’ nothin’.  Not even his boots or his hat.  Just naked in the flickering oranges and yellows, his hair a little damp from his washin’ in the creek and his smile ready whenever Seth came and tsk’d him for his temptin’ ways.

Levi had been waiting for his lover in their usual place.  He’d heard something—something awful—and he’d come out to see what was going on only to find his fate right there in the misty dark.

He almost felt sorry that the boy might have to live.  It was a terrible way to die…it was a worse thing to survive.  He followed where Levi would have gone to see what was happening and walked right past the place the boy had been first assaulted just inside the door to the ranch house.  The kitchen was fairly untouched save some blood streaks on the doorframe where the poor boy had paused the flight of his would-be killer.  There were drips mostly, a few small cast off marks from the edge of a blade…but the bedrooms was where the real carnage had taken place.

The bodies were missing, already taken to be given a decent and proper burial, but the huge pools of blood upon the mattresses and the patterns of spray on the walls and furniture were enough to see how everything had happened.  He followed a path that made the most sense from blood directionality and found that the sons had been killed first, then the parents, then the girl…then the baby.  Between the girl and the baby, the killer had gone into a back room that appeared to be a study of some kind and had opened the large metal safe under the desk to empty it before he’d gone back and slaughtered the child in a crib in the parents’ room—likely to cease its crying.

The crying was what brought Levi to the door.  He knew something was wrong when the pup wasn’t soothed.

What would have happened had Levi never left the safety of their nest?  Would he have been killed there?  Or was he an accomplice who ended up a loose end?  Were they supposed to take whatever was in the safe and run away together?  Did Levi not have the stomach for something so terrible and chose instead to wait it all out?

Embry and Pruitt waited for him outside under the darkening sky and when he came back he grunted out his thoughts.

“No indication there was more than one at work.”

The two men nodded in agreement.

“Our boy was waitin’ for ‘is lover, came out to see why the pup was cryin’, got caught in the back doorway and that was that.  Everwin—or whoever—ran off that way into the fields and this storm is about to wipe away just about everything left to find of ‘im, unfortunately.”

“Can you find ‘im?”

“Might take a while.  I’ll have to gather some information from around your little town here first.  When this Everwin came, if anyone knew ‘im before ‘e started work here on the ranch…I take it he’s a transplant.”

The marshal rubbed the bridge of his nose.  “Yeah.  Far as I can tell, he came about a year back but I don’t know which set o’ pilgrims he come with and it’s not like many of them stay.  He mighta been the only one.  We got some outlaw types here and there and the ranch mighta been a big target for ‘em but the easier way of doin’ is to just raid.”

“If you have the manpower and the gumption, sure,” Seth replied, sweeping his gaze up over the sky which was beginning to deepen and turn a slight shade of green.  “Everwin was a Beta…they’re the subtle type, as I’ve always known them to be.  Not prone to violence but they can do well enough if they have the stomach for it…and they like to stalk.  They like to wait.  Almost seems more dangerous than an Alpha, if you’ve got that kind o’ mind.”

Pruitt seemed unsettled.  “You think this was a plot, Alpha?”

“It’s just a thought,” he shrugged.  “A man don’t kill an entire family himself without a plan, does ‘e?  What we have to find out is what role our boy was playin’ in it.”

Pruitt swallowed.  “I couldn’t imagine Levi…as an accomplice…”

“Love will make a man stupid.”

There was a gentle note between his two compatriots of utter understanding—they’d been stupid for love before and they’d seen it time and time again.  It was heartening to know that the hardy Alphas of the west were those that could find and acknowledge love even if it was of a sort they may not understand.

Well…

He gave Pruitt a discreet once-over.  Quite likely one of them understood it very well indeed.

He pulled himself onto his horse, a happy palomino mare named Nimble, and they all rode back to town.  The rain, thankfully, held off until the three were safely back inside the marshal’s office.  Seth lingered near the cell door after Embry had opened it to let the doctor inside, watching as Pruitt took to very gently changing Levi’s bandages after washing his hands.

The Beta was pale in the lamplight, his blue eyes glazed and unfocused as he stared upward and took in short, labored breaths, one hand coming to hold onto Pruitt’s shirt, his thumb stroking back and forth over the fabric as if it calmed him.  His wound was ragged but clean-looking and Pruitt did what he could before he used fresh bandages to cover it up again while the rain pounded on the roof above them and poured over the eaves to plop in the muddy grass just outside.

“Levi,” Pruitt cooed, as if he spoke to a child.  “Embry found Mr. Knight in Milgrave, he’s going to look around a bit.  You might have to do a little bit of nodding if he wants to ask you some questions.  Do you think you can try to drink a little bit more water for me tonight?”

Seth winced at the pure despair he saw cloud Levi’s eyes—the anticipation of pain and the trial that was survival.  He couldn’t watch as the poor boy tried to drink, hearing him choke, gurgle, and attempt to cough before he managed a few meager sips.  If he did survive, it would be by the skin of his teeth, Seth thought, and by then he would have earned every right to live and be left well enough alone.  This was punishment enough for whatever he’d done to deserve it…if anything at all.

He meandered out under the eave into the humid air, his boots thudding on the wooden porch while he fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a spare match.  The rain was coming down in sheets and a fine mist of it occasionally caught the wind and was sprayed into his refuge, but not enough to be bothersome on such a warm afternoon.  

Smoke coiled up from his lip and obscured his vision for a second, clearing until he could see across the muddied street onto the porch of the gunsmith—a man stood there, dressed all in black with shining boots and leather gloves.  So jarring was his sudden appearance that Seth stared at him rather rudely before he received a small tip of the hat in acknowledgement and was forced to do so in return through etiquette.  The door of the marshal’s office thudded open behind him and he turned to see Embry coming out to join him but when he brought his eyes back across the street, the man in black was gone.

A strange tingle started up in the back of his mind then, as he frowned and stared out through the rain at the empty space in which the man had been standing.  He’d seemed…familiar.  Like an old friend.  But where had he seen him before?

Or had he ever…at all?

“Alright, Knight?”

“Alright,” he mumbled, still frowning to himself as he turned his back to the rain and leaned against the sturdy wooden railing.

Alright.