The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Nora Bonesteel said softly, “Frankie is only eighteen years old. A likelylittle woman, folks said. Not five feet tall. Not ninety pounds.”

“Right.” Spencer nodded, picturing the girl in his mind. “She can’t handle this alone. She’s in over her head. She’ll want her daddy.”

“Daddy is in Kentucky on a long hunt.”

“Her mother, then. Someone who will believe her; someone who will be on her side. She goes home to mother.I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident, Mama. ” Spencer looked around at the tangle of woods. “The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. Where is the river?”

“Across the paved road,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Did you see the dirt road across from the logging trail? Likely that takes you down to the river. From where we’re standing it might be a mile or more.”

“The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. The land on this side belonged to the Silvers. There’s no bridge. It’s the dead of winter.”

“She can walk it. The river is frozen. The snow is knee-deep.”

Spencer nodded. He felt cold in the pale sunlight that filtered through the Silvers’ woods. “It’s night. Bitterly cold and dark. Frankie has to walk through the deep snow and across the frozen river to reach her mother’s cabin. It will take her more than an hour, but she has to go. She’s terrified. But…but…”

“She can’t take the baby,” Nora Bonesteel finished softly.

“No. The night is too cold, and the snow is deep. She must hurry. She can’t take the child with her. It would slow her down. So she leaves it in the cabin in the woods. No one will hear it cry while she’s gone. The baby is alone and afraid-”

“Because Daddy won’t wake up.” The old woman shivered. “Even now I can feel that little child’s bewilderment and sorrow.”

It felt right. Spencer could see things falling into place. It must have happened this way, he thought. Of course Frankie would go for help. She was eighteen years old.I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident. What must I do? He began to pace again. “And what does her mother say? She’s shocked at first, but she’s angry, too, that Charlie would get drunk and try to kill Frankie and the baby. Barbara Stewart doesn’t waste any tears over him. If only her husband were home. What a time for him to be gone! But Kentucky is days and days distant. There’ll be no help from him. They must see to things themselves.”

“If Mr. Stewart had been home, we wouldn’t be here now,” said Nora Bonesteel.

“Right. We wouldn’t be out here because there’d have been no legend of Frankie Silver to draw us in. She’d have got away with it! She would have said that Charlie didn’t come home from the Youngs’ place, and no trace of him would ever have been found. Her father would have seen to that. A strong adult man-a trapper and a woodsman-would have been able to hoist up Charlie Silver’s body like a sack of flour and haul him away. Into the deep woods perhaps. Or he could have broken the frozen ground and buried the body whole. But Isaiah Stewart wasn’t there that night. Neither was the oldest son, Jack. All Frankie has to rely on is her mother, and her brother Blackston, who can’t be more than thirteen.”

“But they have to do something.” Nora Bonesteel understood what the sheriff was doing now. She saw that she needed only to nudge his thoughts along and he would reach the conclusion on his own. It was all there. You had only to picture the scene and it all came clear, whether you had the Sight or not.

He nodded. “They have to do something. They don’t trust the law, and they don’t understand that self-defense isn’t considered murder. They think they have to hide the evidence that the death ever took place. Two women and a young boy can’t lift the dead body. At least not easily.”

Nora Bonesteel said, “The snow is knee-deep and the river is frozen.”

“Lord, yes. If they try to take the body out of that cabin, they’ll leave tracks through the snow that a blind man could follow. Besides, there’s no way to dispose of the body once they get him outside. The river is solid ice. They don’t have shovels-a pick, maybe, but it’s hard to dig frozen ground with a pick. It would take too long. Even the wild animals and the scavengers can’t be counted on to devour the remains in deepest winter. So the Stewarts are limited to what they can do with Charlie’s body inside the cabin.” Spencer ticked off the impossibilities on his fingers. “Can’t drag him away to the woods without leaving tracks. Can’t bury him. Can’t dump him in the iced-over river.Burn him! ”

“It was bound to occur to them,” said Nora Bonesteel. “They were desperate.”

Spencer sighed. “I wonder if they knew how useless it was to try to burn him. Probably not. People think of fire as all-consuming. They wouldn’t have known that a body is mostly water.”

“They ran out of fuel, I expect,” said Nora.

“I think so. Yes. One of the legends is that shortly after Charlie disappeared, Frankie asked her brother-in-law Alfred to chop some wood for her, and Alfred replied that he’d seen a whole cord of firewood stacked by her cabin a day or so earlier. The Stewarts used up that cord of wood trying to burn the body, but they ran out of wood before-”

“Before they ran out of Charlie.” Nora Bonesteel permitted herself a grim smile.

“That’s why the body was cut up. It wouldn’t all fit into the fireplace in one piece.” Spencer stepped away from the hearthstone and closed his eyes for a moment.There. They cut him upthere. And fed him into the fire piece by piece. Who did? He turned to his companion. “You know, there has never been a case-not one that I can find-anywhere-of a woman younger than thirty, working alone, dismembering a human body postmortem. Not one case.”

“Including this one,” said Nora, “don’t you reckon?”

“Well, I can’t imagine Frankie cutting up her husband’s body. She’s only eighteen. He’s her husband, for God’s sake! The baby is there.”

“Someone else then?”

“Barbara Stewart!” whispered Spencer. “Frankie’s mother!” He tried to picture a tiny, faded blond woman, old at forty, staring down at the lifeless body of the man who had beaten her daughter. “She is without pity. It is the living who matter now.Go stall the Silvers. Your brother and I will take care of this. Yes. She must have said that. Frankie couldn’t do it. She was nearly in shock, and besides, there was the baby to tend to. The mother and brother know that if they make Frankie cut up that body, she will become hysterical, and then all is lost. So come sunup, they send her to the Silvers’ cabin to visit.Pretend like nothing is wrong, they tell her.Say that Charlie went over to the Youngs’place and he’s not back yet. Give us time to take care of this. ”

“That poor girl, having to sit there and make small talk with her husband’s relatives, knowing what she’s left back there in the cabin.” Nora Bonesteel sighed. “No wonder they thought she was a monster, later, when they found out. But by now she had her mother and brother mixed up in it, too, so she had no choice. She was fighting for all their lives.”

“Barbara cut up that body. She must have butchered deer before. Her husband was a hunter. She had the ax and a hunting knife, at least. She had time, I guess. The search for Charlie went on for nine days.”

“Yes, but she had to get it done a lot quicker than that,” said Nora. “Someone must have dropped into the cabin before then. They had to figure that somebody would stop by as soon as Frankie went back home from visiting. Maybe nobody did come to see her, but the Stewarts couldn’t chance it. They had to be ready for company by the afternoon of the first day. They’d have disposed of the body that first night, best they could, and cleaned the blood off the cabin floor.” She shrugged. “Leastways, I would have.”

“You’re right,” said Spencer. “Of course you are. Close family-there were a dozen Silvers, give or take a child-living less than half a mile away. Someone could have walked in on them at any time. Besides, Barbara and Blackston Stewart couldn’t risk being gone from their own cabin for too long, either. If they were missed, someone might wonder later what they were up to.”

“People did wonder,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Didn’t you tell me that they were