Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] by Yesteryear Page B

voice croaked with disbelief. “It’s yore home, Miss Addie.”
    “It’s just a place. We could be at home in a wagon, or anywhere, as long as we’re together.”
    “Ya’d give up this to . . . keep me and Jane Anne with you?”
    “I’d do a lot more than that, honey.”
    “But you said you loved the farm.”
    “I said that. But the truth is . . . I love you more.”
    *    *    *
    John left the magistrate’s office with his face set in lines of anger and frustration. He had gone there the afternoon before only to be told that the magistrate was away for the day. He had returned this morning and waited for the man to show up. When he finally did, he was bleary eyed from a night of heavy drinking.
    “Worthless piece of trash,” John muttered to himself as his long legs ate up the distance to the livery.
    The South was in a hell of a mess, he thought, if they had to put the dregs of society in positions of authority. As soon as he had mentioned the reason for his visit to the magistrate, he had been informed that Renshaw had filed for legal custody of the orphan Colin Harris. No, Renshaw had not asked for the boy’s sister, the magistrate had said, because he did not have a woman living in his house.
    After that announcement, everything John tried to tell the man about Renshaw had fallen on deaf ears. The magistrate had scoffed at the suggestion that Renshaw was a sexual deviate. He hadn’t even understood the meaning of the word until John had bluntly explained that there were some men, a very small number, who got their pleasure from young boys.
    The magistrate had declared that Ellis Renshaw was an upstanding citizen of the county and had countered the charge against him with one against Addie Hyde. He’d said that when Mr. Hyde went off to war, she had not only harbored a runaway slave but had turned the farm into a place of prostitution. A house of ill-repute was not a fit place for children. He had even hinted that now that Mr. Hyde had been reported killed and so would not be coming home to take charge of the boy Dillon, Preacher Sikes was going to petition for guardianship of Mrs. Hyde’s son.
    It was then that John was no longer able to contain his rage.
    “You let that happen,” he had said softly, as with fists clenched he towered over the man, “and I’ll nail your mangy hide to a tree and your bones’ll not be in it.”
    The cowering magistrate had looked into eyes blazing with anger and realized that this stranger dressed in the clothes of a frontier scout could kill him in an instant with the bowie knife stuck in his belt.
    “I got the law behind me.”
    “The
law
?” John had answered with a wintry sneer. “The law around here is about as useless as tits on a boar. You’re a hell of a lawman. You’re nothing but a drunken sot!”
    “I can arrest you for threatening me.”
    “Try it, and you’ll get more than threats. When a snake needs killing, I kill it, and it makes no never mind to me how it’s done. I lived three years with the Shawnee, and sneaking up on a man and putting a knife in his back is one of the things I do best. Remember that!”
     
    *  *  *
     
    Jerr Simmons, known throughout the Indian Nations as Buffer, had watched John leave the magistrate’s office and head for the livery. The scout’s face had had the look of a snarling wolf. He was sure sour-mouthed about something. From the doorway of the harness shop Simmons had seen John come out of the barn, swing into the saddle, and ride out of town in the direction of the Hyde farm.
    Why would a well-known scout and cattleman have need to see the law in this one-horse town? Simmons had made a midnight visit to the livery stable. Tallman’s horse had been there. It had not been in the stable the night before. Had he spent the night at the Hyde place? The only things of interest out there were the women. Which one had caught the scout’s fancy?
    The blond woman was pretty enough, Simmons thought now. But