need for the knife. Why don’t you go on ahead and give it to me?”
The wary waif’s darting, sapphire gaze sizzled as it flitted from one of our faces to the other. “I’m not your darlin’, mister. I don’t even know you. Either of you,” she sneered. “My daddy didn’t raise any cowards, fools, or shirkers. So, I think I’ll just keep the knife, ’less you’d like to go on ahead and try to take it away from me.”
Another short-lived smile flickered across my parted lips. I took half a step backward. Hands raised in submission, I feigned shock and fear. “Well, no, miss. Don’t think I’d want to attempt disarming a determined young woman like you,” I said. Then, I tapped the side of my head with one finger. Thought of something I should have known to ask at the very outset. Said, “My friend, Boz, there, has already told you my name. Got any problem with telling me yours, miss? Do have a name, don’t you, child?”
As if I had somehow reached across six feet of open space and slapped her, the straw-haired youngster’s head snapped backward and bumped against the dirt wall at her back. Appeared to me that the thought of sharing her name with strangers—strangers who might have had a hand in murdering her luckless family—had not occurred to the feisty youngster.
“Uh, well, uh. Why don’t you go on ahead and tell me yours again?” she demanded.
In as soothing a voice as I had ever heard my rough-and-ready partner use, Boz came nigh on to whispering when he eased up a step or so behind me and said, “We can do that, missy. If it’ll make you more comfortable, we can sure ’nuff do ’er. Like I done said before, this here’s Lucius Dodge. Man’s famed near and far as a fearless enforcer of the law and protector of women and the downtrodden. My name’s Boz Tatum. Me’n Lucius been friends for almost as many years as you’ve been alive. Now, how ’bout you? What’s your handle? Your name, that is.”
“Boz is only trying to reassure you, child,” I added. “Wouldn’t want you, or one of us, to get hurt, now would we? Especially after everything that’s already transpired this sad and fateful morning.”
Then, as though suddenly overcome by a power outside herself, the hesitant youngster appeared possessed of a steely calm that surprised both of us. She made a little show of sliding the heavy-bladed butcher’s knife behind a thin leather strap tied around her narrow waist. Then, she held both skinny arms and empty hands out for us to examine.
“I’ve put the knife away” she said. “No knife. See?”
Boz and I both nodded.
Then, as if she had only just that moment managed to remember something long forgotten, she said, “Clementine. My name’s Clementine.”
“Well, now, that’s a right pretty name,” I said. “Yes indeed, that’s right pretty.”
“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid or helpless,” the girl snapped. “I’ve matriculated at Miss Hildegard Tyler’s School for Young Ladies in New Orleans. Studied reading, writing, mathematics, history, philosophy, and debate. I’m smarter than most grown men, by a long shot.”
Couldn’t help but smile at her feistiness. Said, “Why, yes, ma’am. Believe you likely are.”
“On top of that, my father taught me to ride like a Comanche Indian and shoot like Hickok by the time I’d turned six. The both of you should hit your knees tonight and thank a loving God I couldn’t get my hands on a rifle, shotgun, or pistol. Both of you’d be as dead as a pair of rotten fence posts by now.”
Boz rubbed a spot on his chest as though feeling for an invisible bullet hole, then sucked in a heavy, ragged breath.
I wagged my head from side to side, like Bear did when he was tired. Made a patting motion at the teary- eyed girl, then said, “Calm yourself, child. Please. There’s no need to get excited again.”
“And I do not like being called
I pitched a questioning glance at Boz.
He shrugged then nodded, as if to say, “What the hell? Was me I wouldn’t give up the knife, either.”
“Well, all right, Clementine. That’s fine with us. You keep the knife,” I said and motioned for her to follow. “You can tag along behind, if that’ll make you more comfortable with the situation. Keep as much distance between you and us as makes you happy. We have horses waiting down by the river. Food and water, too. You can ride behind me, or my friend here, when we head out for the ranch. Let you choose which when we get back to our campfire. Does all of that work for you?”
A short-lived wave of irrepressible panic appeared to dart across Clementine Webb’s youthful, painfully clinched face. Just as quickly, she regained control of her emotions again, then made little shooing motions at us and said, “Yes. Yes. That’s fine with me. You two go on ahead. Lead the way. I’ll follow.” She gripped the wooden handle of her only weapon, wiped a dripping nose on the back of her free hand, then added, “Try anything funny, either one of you, and I swear I’ll cut you up. Filet the pair of you like pond-raised sunfish.”
We did an about-face, trudged out of the gulley, and headed for the river. From the corner of his grinning mouth Boz muttered, “Do believe she woulda made good on them threats, Dodge. Just mighta gone and turned you from a rooster into a hen, if’n you’da got close enough. Spunky little thang, ain’t she? Have to admire that.”
“Spunky ain’t the half of it, Boz. Given what she’s witnessed this morning, got to figure the little gal’s tough enough to hunt mountain lions with a willow switch,” I whispered back. Shook my head, then added, “ ’Course, she’s going to need every bit of spunk, nerve, grit, and backbone available when the full weight of what’s happened finally hits her. Yep, every single bit of it.”
11
“. . . AND KILL THEM, ONE AND ALL.”
LITTLE MORE THAN an hour later, Clementine Webb stood near the foot of her family’s crude burial place. She clasped a cup of Boz’s campfire Arbuckles in one trembling hand and absentmindedly held the half-eaten remnants of one of Paco’s meat-stuffed tacos in the other.
I eased up beside the Webb girl and quickly noted that, while she made no sound, a river of salty tears flowed from her swollen eyes. Muscles around her lips involuntarily trembled and twitched. For all her previous displays of nervy, self-possessed grit, the scruffy teenager appeared as though teetering on the knife-edged precipice of emotional collapse.
Then, to my stunned surprise, our newfound ward cast the half-filled cup of coffee and unfinished taco aside and dropped to her knees atop the crude grave in a quivering, sobbing heap. “I want to see my little brothers again,” she screeched, then clawed at that pile of rocks and fresh-turned earth like a wild animal. “I didn’t get to see them when I came back before. Sweet Jesus, I need to see them one last time.”
For several painful seconds I stood rooted to the ground. Shocked and dumbfounded by the abrupt, poignant, and powerful turn of events. Then, as gently as I could manage, I lifted the struggling girl off the grave, held her at arm’s length, and said, “There’s no seeing any of them again, Clem. They’re all gone. In your heart you know it’s true. We told you as much on the way back here. Understand as how it won’t be easy, but you’ve got to turn this all loose. Give the whole horrible mess over to God. Put these tragic events on his shoulders. Let him handle them. Trust me, it’s the best way.”
The Webb girl wrung her hands together, then ran shaky fingers through her hair. Sounded nigh on unearthly, eerie, when she cried out, “Oh, God. I can’t see ’em again. I can’t see ’em again. Not ever. Not ever.”
“No, darlin’. Not ever,” I said.
“But my brothers. My poor, innocent, little brothers.”
“I know, Clem. I know.”
I placed a reassuring arm around the weeping orphan’s narrow shoulders. She leaned her full, delicate weight against me. Grabbed the front of my vest with both hands and buried her face in the safety of my waiting chest. A strange, strangled, sobbing rumbled up from somewhere deep inside the grief-stricken child. Pain, the likes of which I’d not seen or felt in years, flowed between us and shook me to the soles of my run-down, stacked-heeled riding boots.
I stroked the beautiful Clementine’s heaving shoulders as she sobbed and said, “I know it’s difficult for you,
