The Broken Statue

Four

FourSheriff Thayer dropped Papa Henry’s prized knife onto the kitchen table. Accusation in the sound of the weapon’s cold clang. Bridget flinched at the clatter, the knife still stained with traces of blood, though the smearing showed an effort had been made to wipe it clean in the snow.

Thayer tipped his head toward the knife. “That his?”

Wire sat on his haunches beside Bridget, his head against her thigh. She kept one hand on the dog’s neck, dug her fingers into the dog’s cowl, and managed to nod.

“You sure it’s his? It’s from wigwam days. Could belong to another redskin. You seen one of ’em hanging around? The law ain’t got no concern with what red does to red.”

She wanted the man gone. The entire morning—could it still be only morning?—was a murky swill. She’d ridden Gus, one of the horses in Papa Henry’s team, into town. She’d burst into Dr. Potter’s house screaming, found him struggling to get out of bed and pull on his pants before she reached his room. “Papa Henry’s been murdered!”

For a moment, disbelief had clouded the old man’s eyes. “Get the sheriff,” he’d said. “I’ll be along.”

In Thayer’s office, she’d screamed the same news but hadn’t waited to see him rise from his desk. Running out the door, she’d heard him call in the direction of the office’s two cells. “You boys slept off your drink? Looks like I need you.”

She’d left them to locate horses. She ran on, slipping in the snow to the rear of the mercantile and to her friend Cora living in the back with her husband.

“My God,” Cora had cried. “I’ll get my coat.”

She’d not sent her husband to the livery for her horse but climbed on the back of Gus. Bridget wondered now if Cora had done so not just to save time but so she could wrap her arms around Bridget and hold her through the ride back.

Now, Sheriff Thayer stood in the kitchen, glaring down, and Cora stood behind her, close as a hen ready to stretch out a wing. Dr. Potter, along with Thayer’s two men, hadn’t yet returned from the barn.

“You listening to me?” Sheriff Thayer’s voice a near shout. “You suppose that’s what happened? Another redskin knifed him?”

No, Bridget thought, and you don’t suppose it either. Thayer, who’d been acting sheriff for only two weeks, didn’t want to investigate. He likely had no idea where to begin, and the way he kept fiddling with the ends of his weak mustache bespoke his nervousness. Was it his fear of trying to arrest a murderer, or his fear of never finding him?

“It wasn’t an Indian,” Bridget said. “And it wasn’t just a knife. He was shot in the back too.”

Thayer pulled again on the end of his straggly mustache. “If this here is a redskin problem,” with a gloved finger, he pushed the knife an inch closer to Bridget, “then it ain’t mine. I’m beholden only to white. How you know this ain’t red?”

Bridget’s eyes burned. The horror of Papa Henry’s murder and the loss of him came at her like bursts of wind. She was rocked, raked, pushed back, then minutes later it subsided enough for her to scrub her face and gasp for steadying breaths. Before the horror gusted again.

She swallowed hard. Thayer’s badge, pinned to the front of his coat, looked dull as a flattened tin can. “It wasn’t an Indian. No Indian is stupid enough to leave behind such a valuable knife.”

He sucked at his top lip, exposing a gap in his front teeth. One tooth chipped, the remaining stub jutting at an angle. “The law’s got nothing to say about a dead redskin off the res.”

“Mr. Thayer,” Cora interrupted. “I think you’ve made that point abundantly clear, but a man has been killed. One of our own. It’s your job to find out who did it.”

Bridget couldn’t lift her eyes from the b****y knife hilt. She’d cried and screamed at seeing it in Papa Henry’s back, but at the moment, she felt empty, the knife’s lying there impossible. The first years of her life, she’d listened to Grandma Teegan’s admonishment to “fight death.” Papa Henry had not fought hard enough. He’d drawn a knife rather than a g*n.

“As you well know,” Cora seemed to place each word as though carefully stacking a shelf at the mercantile, the better for Thayer to examine, “Henry was not off a reservation. He was born right here in this house. You went to school with his son.”

Thayer sniffed. “Ain’t any of those matters. We got us a sit-u-ashun here. There’s laws for whites. Chief being—”

“Henry,” Bridget cried. “If you can’t say Mr. Leonard, at least say Henry.”

“Was.” Thayer chuckled in Cora’s direction. “Was his name. Dead now.”

Bridget gripped harder at Wire’s cowl. “Whoever killed Papa Henry took Smoke.”

“Smoke?” His eyes narrowed.

She wanted to push him out the door, refuse to answer another question. “Our black-and-white-spotted stallion. You’ve seen him a thousand times.”

“Horse thieving? Redskins love horse thieving.”

“Mr. Thayer,” Cora said. “Please. Show some respect.”

He looked down at Bridget. “You got any proof a horse was stolen?”

A gale struck her. Wire whined at her clutching, and she moved her hand to his shoulder. “Smoke is gone. That’s your proof.”

“A feisty horse will run off given a chance. A barn door left open.”

Acting sheriff, Papa Henry had said of Thayer, only until there’s a proper election. Papa Henry hadn’t minded the man though, had thought someone interested only in his monthly pay was healthier for the town than someone walking the streets looking to make trouble.

“Smoke didn’t run off,” Bridget said. “Papa Henry was killed, his horse stolen.” Her voice broke. “The tracks. One set led to the barn. Then two sets came out. Side by side. Evenly spaced as train rails, the distance of a lead rope apart.” She watched the shadow pass over his expression. “You didn’t see them, did you? You and the two you brought out rode in right over the top of them.” So had she, kicking at Gus’s flanks, desperate to get help and return to the body.

“Oh, Bridget,” Cora said. “We rode over them too. We aren’t any of us experienced in crime scenes.”

Thayer shuffled, a wet, slushy sound coming from the floor where snow melted off his boots. “Hoof prints ain’t like a boot or a lady’s shoe. They don’t tell you a dang thing. You know anyone had an eye on that horse?”

Bridget shook her head.

He glanced again at Cora, his lip giving a single, determined twitch. “I’ll get to the bottom of Chief’s murder.”

Chief. Most of Bleaksville referred to Papa Henry as Chief. Even Bridget had before her adoption, before he explained all men have names to which they’re partial. Now, hearing others use the term hurt, reminding her of her own insensitivity and thoughtlessness. And making her think of Sheriff Cripe. The man Thayer replaced hadn’t much liked anyone in town, thought them all country hicks, but he’d hated Papa Henry most. His list of racist monikers had been long: half-breed, braid, blanket. And the name Bridget hated most: buck. Said with a gyration of his hips, intended to suggest an animal rutting.

“If Papa Henry were white,” she said, “you’d care about his death.”

He looked at her as if she’d suggested if dogs were kangaroos.

“It’s our country.” His gaze lifted to her red hair. “White race.”

The words cold and cutting. She’d heard the whispers, read the papers, and seen the cartoons. Negros, Jews, Chinese, Irish, Indians—all depicted in caricatures with features more animal than human.

“Cripe.” The name flew from her mouth. “Your boss. He’d do it. Cripe hated Papa Henry.”

Cora had gone to stare out the back window at the barn. She turned on hearing the name. “Mr. Thayer,” she said, “please. Bridget doesn’t know what she’s saying. A father’s death is a terrible thing.”

A bubble sputtered from the gap in Thayer’s teeth. “It ain’t lawmen need looking into.”

Cora squatted beside Bridget’s chair. “You don’t want to start accusing a man who could make trouble for you.”

“Cripe would do it.”

A man stuck his head just inside the door. “Freezing our balls out here.”

“I know Sheriff Cripe disliked Henry,” Cora tried again. “And I’ve never cared for the man, but he was elected. We need to respect that. Why, when he no longer has any contact with Henry, would he do something so awful? And Smoke is, what,” she tried to keep her voice soothing, “eight or nine years old? If Cripe wanted that horse, he’d have stolen him long ago. Sheriff Thayer has a point, this does look like someone traveling through, happening on your place. Though,” Cora looked pointedly at Thayer, “it’s highly unlikely that it was an Indian.”

Thayer touched his hat in Cora’s direction and started for the door. “I had the boys put Chief in one of ’em coffin boxes. Law says redskins can’t no longer hang their dead in trees or put ’em up on scaffolds. Civilized folks need them in the ground.”

Bridget watched Thayer’s wet tracks crossing the floor, the heels of his rundown boots, and the dirty hems of his trousers. The town’s acting sheriff. “Wait.” When he turned, she eyed him squarely. “Isn’t all murder against the law?”

He sucked his crooked tooth. “A trial’s needed to decide a man’s guilt. And that’d be a jury of white men, all of ’em remembering Custer and his fine soldiers.” He threw open the kitchen door to winter. “You best forget this here happened and study ’em there books. Cora done bragged to half the town how you figure on being a doctor.”

“You’re not leaving us alone?” Cora asked.

“Ain’t nothing else to be done here.”

“There’s a murderer out there.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And tonight?”

He considered. “If I ain’t settled nothing, I’ll be back. Stay the night so you women can sleep. Keep ’em barn doors closed. Wolves’ll catch a scent. Ground thaws in the spring, you can hire yourself a grave digger.” He stepped out. “Body’s froze up good. It’ll keep.”