“A robbery?”
“One that went tragically wrong. The clues are all there, if you know how to put them together.” He turned back to look at the bodies on the cart. “These two, together with the man in the tree, were obviously thieves. They most likely came to steal from the occupier of the cabin. The man inside disturbed them. He killed two of them and then he punished the third by hanging him. Then, doubtless injured after the tussle, he sat down inside and died due to a self-administered shot to the head.”
“There’s a rifle,” she told him, “but it’s propped against a wall.”
“Perhaps it flew from his grip.”
“And propped itself neatly?”
“Stranger things have happened. It had to land somewhere.”
Chandler thought about this for a moment, and finally she furrowed her brow.
“Do you really think the whole thing could be so simple?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t have said it,” he replied archly, “if I didn’t believe it.”
“There are other possibilities,” she suggested. “I think it would be rather rash to leap to a conclusion so quickly.”
“You’re absolutely correct,” Doctor Levant said, “but I’ve seen countless sites of this nature and almost all of them turned out to have been sites where robberies had taken place. This was a wild and lawless part of the country back in the old days, Ms. Chandler. You mustn’t let your modern sensibilities cloud your judgment. Although this site was occupied just a century and a half ago, it’s like a whole different world. A barbaric world.”
“Of course,” she replied, a little timidly. “I know you’re probably right.”
“I’ll bet you, a dollar to a penny, that this the site of a robbery that went horribly wrong.” He stepped toward the cabin and stared at it for a moment, and then he turned back to her. “I mean, think about it. What else could possibly have happened here?”
One
149 years ago
“No! Damn it!”
The left-rear wheel bucked and then slipped on a patch of stone, almost tilting the entire cart over.
Straining with every last ounce of strength, Garrett held onto the chain and pulled. Snow was falling all around and he was already knee-deep, and he knew that – if the cart tilted much further – it would be lost forever, along with its cargo. His whole journey would be ruined, he’d be broke, and there’d be nothing left to do except sit down and die. He adjusted his grip on the chain as he felt the weight shift, and he knew it was only the snow that was keeping him from sliding onto his face. His shoulders were burning with pain, his arms felt as if they were almost coming out of their sockets, but he clung to the chains for dear life because he knew that the cart was all he had left.
“I will not fail now!” he snarled through gritted teeth. “I still have work to do!”
Finally he cried out.
He had nothing left to give. The cart was tilting more and more, and any second now either the weight would turn or the chain would break or his arms would be ripped away from his shoulders. Still he refused to give in, and he pulled and pulled as the cart leaned further to its side and threatened to tumble down into the ditch. Letting out several impromptu grunts, Garrett began to feel the chain slipping a little more in his great gloved hands. He was clenching his teeth so hard now, he thought they might shatter, but he thought of Mary and of everyone back home, and he knew he had to give his all. For them. For her. For the chance of making this journey, and of fixing everything. Most importantly, for the importance of his work.
A knife slipped from his belt buckle and fell into the snow. Garrett didn’t even notice as the knife – its blade smeared in fresh blood – slipped beneath the surface and disappeared from sight.
“They need me!” he hissed. “They can’t do without me!”
Suddenly the cart shuddered, as the wheels shifted under the great weight. Garrett clung to the chain harder than ever. He waited to see the cart fall down into the ditch, but instead he saw the top section tilt the other way, and then there was a loud thud as the wheels settled and the chain fell slack.
Garrett waited, not daring to let go, but he didn’t understand what had just happened. The cart had been doomed, tipping further and further, yet suddenly it seemed to have righted itself. Finally he set the chain down and stepped closer, and to his surprise he saw that the wheels had somehow slipped a little further and had settled on a miraculously flat and bare patch of stone. Exactly how that had happened, he could not begin to judge, but he felt a rush of relief as he realized that disaster had been averted.
Sighing with relief, he closed his eyes and made the mark of the cross against his chest, and then he turned to go and fetch the chain again. At the last moment, however, he spotted a section of wood poking out behind one of the wheels at an unusual angle, and he stepped closer and crouched down to take a closer look.
As soon as he saw the splintered end that jutted out from near the side of the cart’s under-section, he knew that he had a new problem. The support for the entire frame was damaged, and there was no way that the cart would survive the sixty miles that lay ahead. He could fix it up with the right tools, of course, but at present he had no such tools. The cart had been saved from toppling into the ditch, but in so doing it had suffered damage that might yet cripple the journey. Garrett knew that the cart wouldn’t last much longer.
Getting to his feet, he took a step back and tried to figure out a solution. Could he somehow strengthen the damaged section? Could he find some other way of transporting his cargo? He looked for a moment at the great section of cloth that covered the items in the rear of the cart. At the edges, where the sheet wasn’t quite tied down, the fabric flapped in the wind, while pockets of snow had gathered in the various creases and folds. He thought for a moment of what was under the sheet, but he immediately understood that simply carrying the cargo on his back was no good. Maybe he could have done that back when he was a young, strong man, but now he was nearing fifty and his body was too far gone.
He needed to fix the cart somehow.
Sighing, he turned and looked around. Night was settling in, and he was hopelessly behind schedule. He’d tried to save time by taking a different route home, by going off the map’s trails and going direct through the valley. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now he was miles from anywhere and he was starting to wonder whether he’d made a fatal mistake. He didn’t know the land out here in this part of the region, and he couldn’t exactly turn around and head back to the other trail. As he stood with snow falling all around, he found himself remembering some words of wisdom imparted many years ago by his father.
“Out there in the wilds,” the old man had said, “one mistake can kill a man. It doesn’t even have to be a big mistake. One little error of judgment, and that can be the end of you.”
Had the moment finally arrived? By taking this unknown trail, had he made the one error that was going to cost him his life? He thought for a moment of Mary waiting back home, and of how she’d start to worry once he’d been gone a few more days. He thought of her begging men to journey out and search, and he thought of her holding out hope for his return. How long would she wait? A month? A year? He knew that his body would likely never be found in such a barren, remote place, not unless wolves came past. For a few seconds, the prospect of his imminent death stretched out before him and he realized that his father had been right. One mistake, that’s all it had taken.