Chapter 7

Noah Calhoun was the kind of man who could not abide being resisted. When his wife died from smallpox, he blamed the doctor for not saving her life. The doctor left town and Calhoun had been violently bitter ever since. I knew that any reference to his daughter being harmed, however oblique, would enrage him so much his heart might give out. In one sense, I hoped it would. But I didn’t bear any ill will to Noah Calhoun. Not the kind that called for killing, anyway. I just wanted justice to be done to the last of the three men who had intended to rape my pregnant aunt as they tore her clothes. Aunt Mattie had said Chet was the one who exposed his dick, which, in itself, was the kind of thing that could get a man hanged. If you exposed yourself like that to a lady, folks might want to cut off the offending part, assuming somebody didn’t just shoot the man. I had seen the man who had lowered his pants in the saloon and told one of the upstairs girls she shouldn’t charge him at all, for the privilege of feeling it inside her. He was pistol-whipped and thrown in the dust outside the saloon. His pants were still down around his knees. He lost teeth and would have died if Horace hadn’t told some of the whores to go tend to him. He didn’t want his saloon to get the reputation for patrons dying, there. I thought it was funny that he’d get treated like that for showing it to a girl and then the same girl might have had to be the one to tuck his privates back inside his pants, out in the street.

I was thirteen, back then. Now, four years later, I knew the man had gotten off easy. Still, I worried that Calhoun would hurt Mama, Aunt Mattie, or Chastity. If he did that I’d kill him. If he burned down the store I’d burn every building on his ranch. Then he’d try to kill me and I’d try my best to kill him, first.

These were my thoughts as we left the ranch, riding north where there were many places to hide if he got home and he and his men chased us. If that happened, I’d have no choice but to pick him off with my rifle. Shooting one of his men wouldn’t do any good. Unless, maybe, it was Chet. Then I’d shoot Calhoun’s horse and yell out that it was over and for him to go home. He could ride Chet’s horse home.

I admit my thoughts were crazy and violent in a way I had never felt before. Seeing his daughter, standing there strong and confident, and knowing my sister would act the same way, made me realize how vulnerable the people I loved were. His people were vulnerable, too. I didn’t want to hurt that girl, but as we rode north I vowed, silently, that if Calhoun killed any of my women, his daughter wouldn’t live a week. And if he tried to ride her south to what was sometimes referred to as “civilized country” it wouldn’t do him any good. Wherever he went, I could go, and a rifle speaks long distances.

My mother actually tried to horse whip me when I got home and told her about all those thoughts. We had a buggy whip the traveling tinker had traded for something. It had never sold but it was on the wall where everybody could see it. She snatched it down and made to hit me with it before I rushed her and put my arms around her so’s she couldn’t bring it to bear. She lectured me for five minutes, starting with how Cain killed Abel, and was marked for life, down to how the Marshal would start hanging people if folks started shooting each other, especially if the one shot was a woman.

My mother was a good woman, with a good heart. She let people take things with a promise to pay for them later. She always had a smile on her face and was never angry in front of anyone outside our family. But people were nice to her. She was a widow woman and such were to be respected. She didn’t understand men like Noah Calhoun, to whom other people were just pawns, to be moved around and used and even sacrificed, like in a game of chess.

She wound down, eventually, and started crying. Mattie came and pried the whip handle out of her hand and pretty soon everybody was involved in a complicated hug. She sobbed that if things kept getting worse I was going to get killed, and if I got killed, she wouldn’t want to go on living. You can’t reassure somebody in that mood by saying you won’t get killed, and that you can take care of yourself.

What I did not realize was that I was much too young and inexperienced to fully understand what a man like Noah Calhoun might stoop to.

He didn’t molest any of the women in town. Instead, he beat his daughter until her face was swollen and black and blue and she held her side like it hurt a lot. Then he brought her to town and explained that she had allowed vermin to harm his property, and he had to teach her not to ever do that again ... even if it killed her. It was clear to all who saw her that if he’d do that to his own issue – and a girl at that – then he wouldn’t think twice about harming anybody else who “disappointed” him.

Three Feathers and I had gone back in the pine forest, watching through the field glasses. We hoped to see him bring Chet in, with his hands tied behind his back. Calhoun did ride in. He had ten men with him and his daughter was mounted behind one of the men. I knew it was her because she was so small, but I couldn’t see what condition her face was in.

He took her in the store and showed her to my mother. Thankfully Aunt Mattie and Chastity had gone upstairs, where Mamma chased them when Jake Carter dashed in, panting and yelled that a group of men was coming from the west. That could only be Calhoun and she didn’t want to take any chances. She told me she was willing to face him down, but didn’t want either her sister of daughter to be in harm’s way.

I saw Calhoun take his daughter down from behind his man. Nobody else dismounted. He took her inside and was only in there maybe two minutes before he came back out and lifted her back onto the same horse, as if she only weighed ten pounds. Mama said he gripped her by her waist and she cried out in pain. Mama thought she might have a broken rib. None of the men did anything. Then they rode away. He had told her he would never turn Chet over and that if he or any of his men saw me, they were to shoot me on the spot.

He did not hurt any of my women.

But he had hurt one I respected. He had hurt her like a coward, like a bully preys on the weak.

I didn’t tell my mother, but I vowed, silently, that I would beat Noah Calhoun within an inch of his life.

He needed to know what it felt like.

My mother was terrified, no matter how bravely she had stood in front of the man. He hadn’t threatened her, but if he would do that to his own daughter, he didn’t have to make threats to others. She wanted me to ride to Laramie and testify directly to the law, there. I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. The only witness I had that everybody I had killed was only when they tried to kill me, first, was Three Feathers, and I didn’t think they’d take his word for anything. I also doubted the star with a bullet hole in it would get me much respect. I didn’t think about the fact that any lawman looking at that badge would know, instantly, that the man wearing it had been gunned down. The Marshal service didn’t take kindly to that kind of behavior, no matter if the lawman was as low as a town constable.

Of course I didn’t think of that, at the time. I had been an official sheriff for a whole two days, and didn’t exactly think like a lawman at that point in my life. I was pretty sure that if I presented myself, saying I had shot three men and slit another’s throat (I wouldn’t let Three Feathers be hanged for that) that I’d be behind bars pronto, and stay there while any investigation took place.