Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

(The menace at Yoakum’s Landing is now obvious; Clay Huff has recognized his missing brothers’ saddle – and his cherished hunting dog – in the possession of the Yoakums – and Ethan Landry has panicked, at overhearing a plot by the Yoakums to murder him, now that Jim has made out a power of attorney allowing them to act in selling his property. Earlier chapters here, here, here and here.)

He grasped the front of Jim’s coat, babbling in unseemly hysteria.

“Calm yourself, Mr. Landry,” Jim snapped. “Who is going to kill you – and for what reason? You are among friends, and this is broad daylight! What has given you this notion?”

“The Yoakums,” Ethan Landry whispered. He seemed utterly undone, pale with terror. “For the property. They will kill me, and keep the money paid for it, using the written authority you drafted for me. I overheard the Squire and his son … they are plotting to kill me, and it is your fault! You have to help me!”

“Of course,” Jim grasped the younger man’s shoulder and shook it. “Pull yourself together, Landry – and stop acting like a spinster with a lizard in her petticoats. Now – come with us. Do you have a horse, at least?” The three of them headed towards the stable, with Toby in their wake – walking purposefully, but not at so rapid a pace as to draw unwanted attention.

“No,” Ethan shook his head. “I did … but I sold it to the Squire in payment for lodging here. How could I know they would prove such utter villains! Why didn’t anyone tell me! Why did you draw up that power of attorney? It is my undoing!”

“Because you asked it of me,” Jim answered, between his teeth. What to do now, with this sniveling fool hanging around his neck? He racked his mind for options, wondering how many of the guests at the Landing were in league with Squire Yoakum’s sinister purpose – and how many of them were truly innocent travelers. There was no time to seek for allies among them; Clay and Toby were the only ones he could trust without question. Once in the shelter of the barn, he turned to the others. “Clay – get your horse saddled, and I’ll get Toby’s mule. You know the Trace better than I. Take Mr. Landry with you and ride with all speed towards Tevis’s Bluff or any closer place of safety. You have your pistol with you? Good – I shall make a pretense of you feeling poorly.” To Toby, he added. “Mr. Shaw, I regret to say that I must ask for the loan of your coat and hat for Mr. Landry here. If they cannot be returned, I will purchase new to replace them.”

Toby shrugged, “It is of no matter to me, James.” Obligingly, he stripped off his own coat, and handed it to Landry, who regarded it with distaste, until Jim snapped,

“Put it on, Mr. Landry – it’s either freeze, or venture back to the house for your own.”

Clay, his face sent in grim lines, emerged from a stable-box leading his own horse, already bridled. It was the work of a moment to saddle it, fetch Toby’s mule and do likewise, although a Negro groom appeared as though they were halfway through this operation, a curry-comb in one hand, a bucket of oats in the other, and a protest on his lips.

“Seh, there ain’t no need…”

“There is,” Jim answered, and fixed the man with his most intent and purposeful gaze. “And you have not seen anything untoward in it. You have not seen anything at all, should your master or anyone else ask. Understand me?”

For a long moment, their gazes locked – and then the groom nodded slowly, in complete comprehension. “Seh … iff’n you ride out t’wards th’ bayeau, an’ follow the track through the woods, Massa an’ Miss Kate an’ all – they won’t see a t’ing.”

“Good,” Jim answered. The groom grinned briefly, his teeth a slash of white in his dark face. “And you did not see a thing at all.”

“No, seh,” the groom answered and took himself and his currycomb and oats into the farther recesses of the stable.

“You heard the man,” Jim said, when Clay and Landry were ready to ride. “The woodland track, until you can rejoin the trace. Return by the same way, as soon as you have deposited Mr. Landry in a place of safety. I will cover your absence as best as I can. I will say that you have been taken ill. When you return, come to the outside door of our chamber under cover of dark – tap three times, then three times again.”

“What then?” Clay took up a fistful of reins. “I do not relish leaving you in this den of treacherous serpents … since it was my concern which brought you here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jim replied. “Mr. Shaw and I – we have been in tight places before, and likely will be in tight places again. Ride fast, Clay; bring aid as soon as you can. Then we will decide what course to take then. I do not think Squire Yoakum will be able to deny the evidence of bones in his meadow, or your brother’s dog under his roof – let alone the evidence of Mr. Landry here.”

“I cannot testify!” Ethan Landry squeaked. Jim and Clay regarded him with the same degree of distaste. “I am wanted for murder in Alabama, having killed a man in a duel…”

“Then play the part of a man, you bleating fool,” Clay snarled. “You are not in Alabama any more – a notch on your dueling pistol is a recommendation here.”

Jim and Toby strolled from the stable by the wide entrance door visible to the house, making an elaborate show of disinterest in the quiet patter of hoof-falls that rapidly diminished out of the other end of the Yoakum’s stable. Toby, lagging half a step behind as was fitting in the pretense of being a servant, kept his voice a little above a whisper.

“What do you plan now, James?”

“On the pretext of Clay being indisposed, I intend to remain here a few days longer,” Jim answered. “Or as long as it takes to get a second look at that field, without arousing suspicion. I don’t imagine there’s anyone here at the Landing that we can trust, not even the servants. If the Yoakum’s neighbors fear and dislike them, I imagine the slaves are terrified – and I certainly don’t blame them.”

“The day is cold,” Toby said, not appearing to feel any such thing with the brisk wind flattening this thin shirt against his shoulders. “While there is none about, let us take another look now.”

“May as well,” Jim agreed. With Clay and Landry safely away and no one among the Yoakums raising the alarm, this moment might be their only chance. The two of them retraced their steps towards the meadow. The wind among the pine branches shook down icy drops upon them both, and Jim thought of tears falling. No smoke without a fire – and the fire at Yoakum’s Landing burned insatiably, like a Moloch demanding constant sacrifices.

Toby led him to the waterside, first – yes, at first one might have almost thought those bleached white shapes were not bones, but the revealed dead roots of trees, scoured by the sun – but no roots were curved like those of a man’s ribs, as small and intricate as finger and backbones, or knobbed at either end like leg and arm-bones. And the rounded shapes of human skulls could not be mistaken for anything. Jim looked down from the top of the bank for a long moment.

“Either buried at the edge where the ground was soft or these are bodies dumped into the water and washed up later,” he ventured at last. Toby nodded. “The other servants did not speak so much of this,” he said, his face an inscrutable mask. “But they spoke of it as a bad place, haunted by the spirits of the dead. None of them would go here after dark, not under threat of death by their master, unless driven by the most awful threats. I think that must have been in play, James – Yoakum and his kind, they would sooner force others to their bidding.”

“What of the other places?” Jim asked. “You said that it looked as if the ground had been often disturbed … as in that place where the dog had been digging.”

“I think we should take a look at that first,” Toby answered somberly.

They looked for the spot in the tumbled meadow where Randall Hoff’s dog had dug, from which Miss Kate had bid Jim take the dog.  Where the dog had come to sit vigil, the earth had been dug up the earth again and again. It was much softened and easy to shift with bare hands, and as Jim feared, the place revealed much. A short way down through it, Jim’s hand touched cloth, from which a vile odor of putrefaction came; the edge of a pair of trousers and the corroded leather of boot-tops. Jim rose from the side of that rude grave and remarked softly to no one in particular,

“Poor faithful Gem – I think we have found his master.” More »

I have been tweaking the website a bit, and I decided to add a new set of pages for Lone Star Sons – a page for each completed story, so that readers can read the whole adventure all at once, instead of in bits and pieces. Eventually, the whole collection will be assembled, edited, formatted and polished to a brilliant sheen and published as a print and e-book, just like all the others. The parent page with the initial adventure – how Jim Reade and Toby Shaw began their first adventure – is here, with subsequent adventures linked at the bottom of the page. Enjoy –  this is a chance for readers to offer feedback and suggestions for additional stories – so keep those comments coming.

(The plot thickens, in the next part of Without a Trace! Jim and Toby have come as far as Yoakum’s Landing, searching for a missing man, the brother of cattle drover Clay Huff, who vanished somewhere along the Opelousas Trace, returning from New Orleans with his half of the profits from the sale of a herd of cattle driven from Texas to Louisiana. There are vile rumors among the local farmers and ranchers about Yoakum’s Landing…)

Rain continued to fall all that night, and into the next morning, lightening to a drizzle and then only an occasional splattering by midday. Jim and Clay had spent a restless night, for which the storm was only part responsible. Jim wedged a chair against the door to their room from the hallway when they retired for the night, and another against the tall French door which led to the outside. He also hung the gun belt with his pair of Colts – all loaded and with fresh caps on each chamber – from the bedpost within reach. Clay did the same with his own pistols. But the night passed without event – other than the storm, and Jim wondered if he hadn’t been more than a little foolish. He dispatched his errand for Ethan Landry at mid-morning, writing up an authorization for the bearer – presumably the oldest of the Yoakum sons — to sell the property described (in exacting detail, which was the hardest part to write) belonging to Ethan Landry, and allowing the bearer to do all that was required under law to transfer the aforementioned property to a new owner. Ethan, upon being reminded by Jim that the laborer was worthy of his hire, conveyed several hundred dollars worth of Texas notes into his hand, a duty done and accepted with ill-grace on both sides, since the notes were worth only about three American pennies to the dollar of Texas worth. Jim rolled up the bills, thanked Ethan Landry graciously, and privately thanked his Maker that he did not have, in this instance at least, to depend upon legal work for his living. On second thought, perhaps he was a charity in regard to this client.

The household dined at midday, on a light collation of meats, breads and vegetables. By afternoon, the sun emerged between the clouds. The grounds and gardens of Yoakum’s Landing were plastered with half-dead leaves from the oak and pecan trees, knocked down from branches where they had clung with a weak autumnal grip by the force of the storm. At mid-afternoon, with the sun peeking shyly through a break in the clouds, he and Clay made their way to the vast stables behind the main house, on the advertised purpose of seeing to the condition and keeping of their horses. Jim also had the intent of a quiet colloquy with Toby, somewhere away from where they might be overheard. Now as he and Clay walked purposefully towards the bustle of the stable-yard, it seemed quite a foolish precaution. Everything about Yoakum’s landing appeared to be quite stultifyingly normal and respectable. As expected, Toby waited in the shelter of the pergola twined about with the dry branches of grapevines, which led from the back of the house to the summer kitchen, a silent shadow making the required show of deference necessary to maintain the pretense.

But as they passed the extensive quadrangle of plowed earth which represented Yoakum Landing’s vegetable garden, Jim was brought up short by Miss Kate’s voice, crying, “Jemmy! Oh, Jemmy – come back at once!” Miss Kate herself appeared from around the side of the house, the ribbons on her white house-cap flying, charmingly pink in the face and breathless with the exertion of running. “Oh!” She gasped, very prettily distraught. “I beg your pardon – my dog has run out to the woods again. He will do that, and after all the trouble I have gone through to bathe and comb him – he will be dirty from the mud, after all the bother…”
Jim hastily removed his hat, Clay and Toby doing likewise, and said, “Miss Kate, good morning to you – If you would allow us, I’d admire to assist in retrieving your dog. If he is a ladies’ pet, he cannot have gone too far into the woods…”
“You go on and help the lady, Jim,” Clay advised, with a grin so broad that if it were a lake, Jim could have skipped stones two or three times on it. “I’ll see to the horses. You … be a gentleman and make the most of your chances.”

Clay put on his hat again, and strolled off towards the stables. He looked back again once or twice, still grinning. Jim considered how very fortunate this interlude was – but he would never hear the last of it from Clay, or Toby, either – especially Toby, whose flirtations were epic and the source of awed envy to Jack and the other fellows.
“There is a clearing in the piney woods by the lake – it’s where Jemmy usually runs. I don’t know why he goes there, it’s most peculiar.” Jim tucked Miss Kate’s tiny and capable hand into the crook of his elbow, as she looked up at him, those dark-brown eyes shining with relief and admiration. “Pa says that Jemmy was bred as a hunting dog – and all he wants is to chase after ducks and squirrels. But he is a dear little dog and I am so very fond of him!” She chattered in a charming and inconsequential manner, which quite relieved Jim of the labor of carrying on a large portion of the conversation. They walked through a grove of pecan trees, their leaves half-fallen and thickly padding the sodden ground under their feet. There was a footpath of sorts, worn by the passage of many feet; their footfalls and those of Toby following after made hardly any noise at all. They came out into a wide meadow on the edge of what Jim judged to be the bayou; a flat and shining expanse of water, lapping at the edge of the grass stems on the bank. The rain had brought the water to a higher level – but not enough to bring any current to flow from the bayou into the river of which it had once been a part.

The meadow presented a forlorn aspect – with tentative patches of new green grass coming up among the dry and now soggy stems of last years’. In the spring this might be a meadow of colorful wildflowers – now, it was just a clearing in the woods, the grass stems beaded with water and the ground soggy underfoot. Miss Kate’s Jemmy sat by a patch of new grass at the edge of the meadow; a medium-sized white dog with brown patches, a dog with long silky fur, who pawed at the earth while uttering a low and unsettling whine. His white paws were already deeply muddy, for he had been digging into the wet earth, and he looked up at Jim and Miss Kate with a beseeching expression.
“Jemmy – you are a bad, bad dog!” Miss Kate exclaimed. Jemmy looked up at her, cringing as dogs would, at the sound of their owners’ voice raised in disapproval. Jemmy was a handsome dog, Jim thought – but not to his taste when it came to a hunting dog; with long ears made even longer by the long fringe drooping from them, and round, slightly protruding brown eyes. A ladies’ dog, petted and brushed, lying in a padded basket at the feet of their mistress in the parlor …
“Poor little fellow,” Jim said. He leaned down and gathered the dog into his arms, disregarding the muddy feet or the brief hostile growl. It was a little heavier than he had expected. “Pay no mind, Miss Kate – he’s frightened and I’m a stranger. I’ll carry him back to the house for you.”
“I am grateful beyond words!” Miss Kate exclaimed, with a brilliant smile – but Jim was not so taken by it that he failed to note Toby at the edge of the meadow, looking at the ground at his feet and the shoreline of the bayou with a suddenly intent expression.

Jim carried the recalcitrant Jemmy all the way back to the house. Toby lingered in the meadow, but then trailed behind at some distance. Jim wondered abstractedly what Toby had spotted – for he had seen something in the water, or in the broken-down tumble of earth, stones and rotted stumps at water’s edge. Clay met them, coming from the stables as they approached the house, a most particularly grim expression on his countenance, which only deepened when he met Miss Kate and Jim. Clay’s eyes went to Jemmy and he whined again, deep in his throat, as Jim returned the dog to Miss Kate’s care.
“Thank you, so very much,” Miss Kate exclaimed, as if Jim had performed the most prodigious feat of chivalry imaginable. She had a length of ribbon in her hand. “You are a most gallant gentleman, Mr. Reade – and we are so grateful, aren’t we, Jemmy?” She attached it to Jemmy’s collar and led him into the house through the nearest French door – into the parlor, as Jim noted.

He had half a mind to follow, but for Clay saying in a voice hardly louder than a whisper,
“Jim, that was my brother’s dog. I’d swear on it before the magistrate.”
“What?” Jim looked at Clay, utterly astounded. “You said he had a hunting dog with him – that dog couldn’t possibly be a serious hunting dog!”
“He is,” Clay answered, still in a whisper. “One of those English spaniels, trained to retrieve ducks and flush out birds. A friend of his in New Orleans had a bitch that whelped a litter three or four years ago. Randall thought the world of that dog, and the dog followed him everywhere; kept up with his horse at a trot for miles. That’s my brothers’ dog, no doubt about it. Randall,” Clay took a deep breath. “Randall called him Gem. Silly name, but my brother always said he was a pearl of a dog and above price. And there’s another thing of my brother’s that I found here.”
“What?” Now Toby caught up to the two of them, his face completely expressionless in the way which Jim knew that he was hiding something. Toby waited at a deferential distance, in the manner of a good servant – which was good, in case anyone watching them thought there was something amiss. Being a cold and blustery afternoon, no one was about outdoors save those Negro servants who had reason to be.
“A saddle – among the tack in the stables. It’s my brother’s also, just like Gem. I’d know it anywhere – a saddle like the vaqueros use. Randall had it made special, by a Mex saddle-maker in Bexar.”
“Show me,” Jim ordered. As they made an elaborately casual way back towards the stableyard – for the benefit of any hostile and prying eyes – Toby ventured, “I also have found something, James.”
“In the field by the bayou?” Jim kept his face bland and his pace casual, as they walked. “Where the dog was digging? I thought so. You may as well let me know the worst, Mr. Shaw. A skeleton?”
“No,” Toby still kept the bland expression. “A pair of skulls and a lot of bones, there for a long time, before the rain ate away the edge of the bayou – but not so long as all that. Not above ten years or so. One more thing, James; they had the marks of having been killed by a blow to the back of the head – as if with a war-ax like mine. That whole field, James – it had a look to it, as if it had been a graveyard many times…I have seen such, in the Ohio country, after a hard winter. There are many buried there.”

Jim let out his breath slowly; he had half-expected this, until beguiled by Miss Kate, not half an hour ago. It still came as a shock; murder and villainy so open, so well-known it was the fearful gossip of half the county, black and white alike, yet under the guise of friendship and hospitality. And what of Miss Kate – so innocent, presiding over the supper-table, and charming the guests with such an open face and demeanor? Before he could entirely digest the matter – the bones in the meadow, the revelation of Jemmy the dog and Randall Huff’s saddle, a man’s voice called his name from the parlor door. Jim’s heart sunk, even further – the dapper and temporarily impecunious Mr. Landry, although looking considerably less dapper.
Ethan Landry was in his shirtsleeves, his neck-cloth awry and his dark hair standing up as if he had never been acquainted with a hairbrush. He came hurtling off the verandah, as a gust of wind blew the door behind him closed with a crash that sounded fit to shatter the panes of glass in it.
“You must help me, Mr. Reade – God help me – they’re going to kill me! I am doomed, and it’s by your hand they are aided to do it! You must help me!” He grasped the front of Jim’s coat, babbling in unseemly hysteria.
“Calm yourself, Mr. Landry,” Jim snapped. “Who is going to kill you – and for what reason? You are among friends, and this is broad daylight! What has given you this notion?”
“The Yoakums,” Ethan Landry whispered. He seemed utterly undone, pale with terror. “For the property. They will kill me, and keep the money paid for it, using the written authority you drafted for me. I overheard them talking … they are plotting to kill me, and it is your fault! You have to help me!”