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Ellie Scott was in her favorite rocker on the porch and saw the first gray light of dawn in the east, above the trees, when the commotion from the barn reached its apex. She looked to Mill for assurance, but he was as terrified as she by the sounds of holy war being waged out in their barn.
They heard the shudder of rails and the creak of straining studs punctuated by thunderous thumps and claps. They heard the trembling of the barn roof and the groaning of its walls. They heard the voice of the preacher as a stormy roar, counting out the cadence of psalms and prayers and abjurations, and the answering squeals and raspings and shouts of the demon, writhing in the body of their son.
It was when the demon’s voice rose and became a high-pitched wail of pain and suffering—the wail of a little boy whipped by an over-zealous father—that Ellie broke from her vigil on the porch and ran for the barn. She nearly made it across the yard, but Mill stopped her and held her in a tight embrace, and told her not to go out there, not ‘til it was all over and done with. If Daniel came back to them, he’d speak in tones of comfort, not in suffering. This was only the devil in their son, and not their son himself. Ellie fought, though she knew Mill told the truth, and the greater part of her wished that she would just quit . . . that her heart would simply burst in her chest and her breathing would still and the darkness would take her and she’d be sleeping soundly before her body even touched the ground.
Mill led her back to the porch, never letting go of her. They took shelter under the eaves and listened. They couldn’t make out what the preacher said, only that his litanies were punctuated by the name of their Lord again and again, though in brave invocation or terrified curse, they couldn’t tell: Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ . . .
Ellie sank her nails into Mill’s back, drawing blood through his shirt. To his credit, he didn’t balk. He just held her tighter as the noise rose, and when she thought she might go mad with it and scream until her lungs burst, she bit hard into Mill’s shoulder. Again, she drew blood. Again, he made no complaint.
Then silence fell. There were no more noises from the barn. Ellie heard her own choked sobs and realized that Mill was praying under his breath. She disengaged her teeth from her husband’s bleeding shoulder, opened her eyes, and dared a single deep, shuddering breath. She looked up into Mill’s slack face. Mill stared at the glowering barn doors. Vaguely, Ellie was aware that dawn was nearly upon them, the world turning purple-gray, shapes and shadows resolving out of the retreating darkness like the ghosts of old dreams. The familiar sounds of morning surrounded them: a light breeze in the orchard; the cock in the coop crowing; the river in the distance lapping at its muddy bank.
“Mill?” she said.
Mill slowly drew himself away from her, but gave her a single, level glance that assured her he would not leave her, he only wished to investigate. He moved toward the porch steps, descended, and started across the yard.
That’s when they heard a new sound: the whicker of a horse, followed by hoofbeats, moving slowly up the path through the orchard.
Ellie watched, waiting for the new arrival to show himself, the shadows under the orchard trees still hiding him, though his hoofbeats drew nearer with every breath.
Mill returned to the porch, mounted the steps, stood at her side.
For just a moment, Ellie hoped that the hoofbeats were just those of the preacher’s horse—but no, they’d tied him out back, with their own stock that they’d kept in the yard since Daniel had been imprisoned in the barn. So who was this, approaching as first light crept into the world, while their son might lie dead out in the barn?
He appeared from beneath the trees, his skinny, pale horse clomping up the path at an even, funereal pace. The rider drove his mount with intent, yet strangely, did not seem to be in any hurry. Ellie had a momentary thought—from whence it came, she couldn’t say—of a wolf loping slowly-but-surely behind some wounded prey, tracking its blood trail, sure that it would overtake that prey and loath to show its impatience with the chase.
The rider was a big man, face shadowed by a wide-brimmed, ragged old hat, draped in a duster that hung to his boot-heels. They could not see his eyes, but his mouth was set in a clench-jawed scowl, yellow teeth bared like those of a snarling hound. Though Ellie could not see him clearly in the graying light, his pallor struck her as unnatural in some fashion—a sickly, chalky gray-green, like something long dead.
Perhaps, she told herself, it’s just dust from the road.
She tried to accept that explanation, but somehow knew it wasn’t true.
“Mornin’,” the rider said. His voice sounded like a whetstone drawn across a rusted iron plow blade.
“Mornin’,” Mill said, his own voice strangled in his throat.
A long silence fell between them.
“Horse needs water, maybe some feed,” the rider said. “I got coin, so’s it won’t be just for hospitality’s sake.”
Ellie and Mill looked at one another. Should they? Could they afford not to? Who was this man?
Mill, God bless him, took charge. “Who might you be, sir,” he asked, descending the porch steps. He left his scattergun propped beside the door. Ellie would have felt better if he’d taken in with him. “Ain’t tryin’ to be rude, just need to know. Got a family here, after all. Can’t be too careful.”
“No sir,” the rider said. “Can’t be. Name’s Tooms.” He reached up slowly and drew back the lapel of his duster, revealing a tarnished, battered tin star pinned to his vest.
“You’re the law,” Mill said.
“I’m the law,” the rider answered.
His voice made Ellie’s skin prickle.
“Up and about early,” the rider said, seeming to study them both with eyes that neither of them could see.
“It’s a big farm,” Mill said. “Plenty to do.”
“And we heard you comin’,” Ellie added. “It’s early… for a visitor.”
Tooms made a strange, strangled sound that might have been a cough or a short chuckle. That rictus, gnash-toothed snarl of his never wavered. His lips were like stone around his clenched teeth, only moving the slightest when he deigned to speak.
“Trailin’ a fugitive,” Tooms said. “I’m passing through, following his trail.”
Mill moved nearer and reached up for the horse’s bridle, presumably to lead it and its rider toward the side of the house. “Trough and pump’s this way,” he said, and gave the bridle a tug.
The horse didn’t move. Tooms didn’t urge the animal along. He just stared down at Mill.
Ellie forced herself to descend the porch steps and share the yard with her husband and the strange, cadaverous lawman. “This fella you’re after,” she said, “is he dangerous?”
The constable turned his face stiffly toward her. She thought she could see his eyes now that a little more light had crept into the world. Maybe she was imagining things, but they didn’t look like any man’s eyes she’d ever seen before, except maybe a dead man’s, all milky and clouded…
“Yes’m, he’s a killer. May not even be in his right mind.”
“Who is he?” Mill asked. “What’d he do?”
“You want to hear such things so early in the mornin’, sodbuster?”
Mill, trying to remain amiable, shrugged.
The lawman, Tooms, gave another of those strange cough-chuckle sounds. His throat clicked, as though he were trying to swallow but found his gullet dry as Texas in July.
“Burned his church. Burned all his congregation. Burned his wife and little girl. Even stood by while the flames ate them and put bullets in any who tried to bust their way out.”
Ellie could barely speak. “His church?”
“Yes’m,” Tooms said. “Sumbitch fancies himself a preacher.”
Ellie was speechless. What had they gotten themselves into? How could God be so cruel, sending a preacher to deliver their Daniel, but only a preacher who could burn his congregation and his kin alive.
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And now, to send this fearful lawman on his sickly pale horse after him…
Then Ellie saw the lawman’s gaze upon Mill. He studied him closely for a long, pregnant moment from his saddle, fixated on something. Ellie had her suspicions…
“You got blood on your shirt, sir,” the lawman said.
Ellie started to formulate an explanation, but another new arrival interrupted her.
“Mama?”
Ellie and Mill both turned toward the breathless voice. For just a moment, Ellie thought the devil was loose—he stood right there in her yard, in his bloody, filthy night shirt, pale skin covered in sores and lacerations, hair a tousled, greasy mess.
But it took her only a moment to realize that she wasn’t looking at the devil anymore. She was looking at her son. Daniel stood there before them in the cold, gray light of a new day dawning, and though he looked like he’d been to hell and back in longjohns made of thorns, his frightened, questioning eyes and the way he tottered on his bare feet told her that he had returned to them. He was cut and broken, but he had returned to them at last.
Ellie and Mill forgot about the lawman. Both of them rushed to Daniel and threw their arms around him and held him so tightly she thought they might suffocate him. Tears wet all their cheeks, and their laughter was tinged with sobs of joy and disbelief. For that moment—that single, indelible, everlasting moment of Heavenly reconciliation—Ellie completely forgot about the preacher, and the lawman, and all the terror they had just come through.
There was only Daniel. He was theirs again.
Then, from out back of the house, they heard a horse scream—probably in answer to a pair of sharp spurs digging deep into its flanks. The scream was followed by a rolling thunder, and a moment later, they all raised their eyes and saw a horse and rider come galloping out from behind the house, racing off northwestward along the scrubby riverbank. The horse was a flea-bitten gray. The rider was the preacher.
Ellie turned to the lawman, Tooms. He sat his mount, slowly turned his head to follow the preacher as he fled their farmstead, then lowered his dead gaze on their frightened, exhausted, reunited family. Ellie thought his gaze alone might stop her heart, there was so much hate, such a hellish rebuke, to be found in it.
“Your time’ll come,” Tooms said. “Everybody’s time comes.”
Then he laid spurs to his pale horse’s flanks and the beast hitched forward with a snort. Its big, dark hooves ripped clods out of their yard as it sped past them, rounded the house, and fell into the track of the preacher’s escape. In moments, Tooms was out of sight, lost among the woods that skirted the riverbank, and soon after, even his horse’s hoofbeats were a memory.
The sun’s first light crept over the distant horizon, bathed the yard, and cast copper fire on the muddy crests of the Missouri River.
Ellie and Mill took Daniel in their arms again and held him.