A Wolf in the Fold

“Just the same, I gather there’s a lot of ill will toward your family. You should take precautions. Never go anywhere without a revolver or a rifle.” Now why in God’s name was I telling her that? When she was on the list?

“I’ve never shot another living thing and I don’t reckon to start,” Daisy informed me.

“But you’re a country girl, aren’t you?”

“Oh. I get it. That means I must kill rabbits for breakfast and squirrels for dinner and deer for supper.”

“And chipmunks to nibble on between meals and elk for special occasions,” I bantered.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Parson, but my brothers do all the hunting. Me, I like to plant flowers and heal things.”

Daisy had such an honest face, it made me wince inside to look at her. “Do your brothers kill the cattle they steal?”

I nearly lost an eye. She swiped her nails at me and would have clawed my eye to ribbons had I not caught her wrist.

“You’ve been talking to that mean Gertrude Tanner, haven’t you? She’s wrong, Parson. My ma doesn’t have any truck with stealing.” Daisy crooked her neck to study me. “Is that why you’re paying us a visit?”

I let go and clucked to the team. “I’m making it a point to get to know everyone in these parts.”

“You’re saving Ma a trip. She was fixing to come see you.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I should let her tell you.”

I glanced up and down the track. We had it to ourselves. My palms itched, but I could not shake the feeling that other Butchers might be watching. Better, I thought, to continue to playact.

“So tell me, preacher man,” Daisy said, “are you married to the Good Book or are you like the rest of us?”

Her frankness was unsettling in more ways than one. “That’s not the kind of question a girl asks a man of the cloth.”

In typical female fashion, she ignored me. “Most preachers are so attached to it, they won’t look at a gal unless she wears the Bible around her neck as proof she has virtue.”

I could not stop myself. I laughed.

“Do you always turn the other cheek, Parson?”

“It’s what the Bible says to do,” I hedged, thinking of my wife and the night I came home to find her in bed with another man. I didn’t turn the other cheek then. I used a shotgun on him and my bare hands on her, and I’ve never been more ashamed of anything in my life.

“So my ma keeps reminding us. But we can’t let that awful woman go on accusing us of things we didn’t do. My brothers Ty and Clell and Jordy are for paying the LT a visit, but Ma won’t hear of it.”

“Your mother is wise.” Several hundred yards ahead the track ended at a broad clearing. I saw a cabin but no sign of life except for half a dozen horses and a dog. “Is that your place?”

Daisy poked me with her elbow. “Whose else would it be? No one but us dares live up here. They’re too afraid.”

“Of your family?”

“No, silly. Of Injuns and outlaws and such. But we haven’t had a lick of trouble except for the Tanners.”

I glimpsed movement in the trees to my right and then to my left. A young man with a rifle appeared. He grinned as if he were playing a game. My instincts told me he had been shadowing the buckboard for some time. He had the shoulders of a bull and a sloping forehead, and pointed a Henry rifle at me, saying, “Bang. You’re dead.”

“That’s Jordy.” Daisy grinned. “He sure is a caution.”

I brought the buckboard into the clearing in a half circle so that the team was pointed toward the track in case I had to get out of there in a hurry. The dog, a large speckled mongrel, barked its fool head off until Daisy yelled at it to shut up. It contented itself with baring its fangs and growling at me.

More Butchers came out of the woods. Carson and Sam, I recognized. Another young man about the same age I took to be Kip.

From the cabin emerged more. First was the older sister, Sissy, I believe she was called. She had blond hair that was not quite as lustrous as Daisy’s. She also had the same blue eyes, only paler.

The two oldest boys were enough alike to be twins, although it was my understanding they were born a year apart. They were big boned, with anvils for jaws, and held matching Winchesters. I remembered Calista saying one was Ty, the other was Clell.

Last to step out was the matriarch, as Gertrude had referred to her. Hannah Butcher was as broad as she was tall, and she was not much over five feet, a stout wall of a woman with a wide face and a wide mouth that curled in a smile as she held out a hand as big as mine. “So you’re the new parson. I’m right pleased to meet you. I’m Hannah, as if you couldn’t guess.”

“How do you do?” Her grip put Lloyd Tanner’s to shame.

Her offspring had formed a ring around the buckboard and me. Every single one except Daisy had a rifle, and the boys wore pistols, as well, tucked under their belts. Their clothes were home-spun. Only Hannah wore store-bought shoes. Sissy, like Daisy, was barefoot. The males had on moccasins. But not Indian moccasins. These they had made themselves.

“What are you doing here, mister?” one demanded.