Closed All Things Have a Beginning...

[Ethan Edwards]

((Ok, let's see if I can write something new that's worth reading? Let me know if I succeed as we go along ))

Texas, 1882

Boots propped at one corner of the desk were the first thing the small boy saw as he scampered into the shadowed office. His tiny hands gripped a tightly-woven basket covered in a yellow kerchief, and he puffed dramatically as he sat his load onto the desk. He then pretended to wipe at a not-so-sweaty brow, peering expectantly toward the man seated at the desk, peeking shyly around the man’s boots.

A pair of pale-blue eyes stared back at him. “I have a feelin yer wantin’ a penny, ain’t ya Billy Willson?”

The child nodded his head quickly, then smiled broadly when the man sat up and pressed a coin into his open palm. “Thanks Marshal Edwards!” shouted the boy as he tumbled through the office door and out into the hot, Texas sun.

Ethan Edwards smiled, watching the child run back toward Fly’s Boarding House where his mother cooked for the drovers, drifters and drummers who passed through the sleepy, Texas town of Blackthorn. He leaned over the basket and plucked away the cloth. The steamy aroma of fried chicken and biscuits caressed his face as he breathed it in. Smiling, Ethan pulled his supper from the basket and started eating right there at the desk. He was nearly finished when he heard the rush of a team; the creak and braking rasp of a wagon as it pulled up outside the tiny office. An older man wearing bibs slid from the seat of the buckboard and tromped into the room, staggering slightly. The lawman thought he saw a splash of blood on the man’s sleeve and jumped up from his seat. The newcomer’s eyes were a bit wild, but Ethan thought he recognized him. He moved to steady the man.

“Clem Harper?”

The old rancher nodded. “Ethan…. You hafta come quick… I found… things out at the old Seever’s place where I’d been lookin’ after the stock. It were a couple of girls – or I think they used to be. Somethins’ been at ‘em like pieces of meat…”

Marshal Edwards blinked twice, his face going cold. He nodded and turned to grab a Winchester off the rack, the cartridge belt he already wore creaking as he followed the old man outside into the sun...

 

[Ethan Edwards]

Two low sets of hills sprawled to either side of a wide valley, where a crumbling house and barn stood silently… the Seever farm. The ground was very dry and very brown, with little in the way of grass growing along the heights. A warm breeze teasing in from the west kicked up dust and set it to dance along the crests of the hills, and spinning like tiny devils, the hazy air watched as a wagon followed by a lone rider entered the valley. A small copse of trees clung to life beside a feeble streambed running along the ranch’s southern boundary. The buildings themselves stood nearby; dried out pine boards and stiff, crumbling sod for a roof; a pole barn leaning to one side.

When the Seever family had died from cholera just after the war, other ranchers in the area began using it as just another extension on which their own cattle could feed. The bank could care less, as no one around wanted the land in particular. The ranchers were happy, and so far it had been an amicable partnership. There had been little disagreement, and each of those using the Seever place took turns looking in on things.

This morning it had been the old man’s turn. He was fairly certain he’d never do it again. Clem Harper guided Ethan closer to the house, taking him around the back, to the side facing the stream. The cottonwoods struggling nearby stood as gaunt parodies of what they could have been had the stream been truer to its name. Their limbs and branches were dry arms reaching for the earth and the bliss of death – the old man shuddered, halting the team and setting the brake. He made no move to drop to the ground… until the Marshal gave him a look.

Ethan slipped from his strawberry roan, and coiled the reins around the handle of a rusty water pump. He snatched the ’73 from its scabbard, then carefully checked the action. The brass gleam of a .44 WCF cartridge winked at him under the sunlight. Easing the hammer down on the rifle, he carried it with him as the old man joined him at an old hitching post, where black flies swarmed about remains clad in calico.

One body was smaller than the other. A tiny apron – the sort a child would wear -- was tight around its throat. Both corpses were bloated, cooking like sausages under the hot Texas sun. Ethan dropped the shutters across his eyes, and his face went cold. This wasn’t the time to care too much. He had seen bodies before, far too many in his time, and it was his guess they had been tied to the post for a few days… long enough for something to have ripped open their bellies to get at the soft meats inside. He glanced around; there were no small animal tracks – although the ground was too dry and packed to draw too many signs from it.

Stepping closer to the bodies, Old Harper began to cough and brought a hand to his face. He staggered a few feet away to retch onto the ground. Sour bile fell to the dirt and the horses stamped from where they stood, tied off. The stink from his belly was sweet compared to the cloud floating around Ethan and the two corpses.

Ethan leaned the Winchester against one end of the hitching rail, slipped on a heavy pair of roping gloves, then pulled an old Case knife from his pocket. It snapped open with a loud click. The big lawman crouched beside one of the bodies and cut the rawhide strips binding it to the hitching rail. Carefully he eased the corpse to the dusty ground, then followed suit with the second, smaller one. He could tell in life it had been a little girl, perhaps no older than eleven…

Crouching down, he slid his Colt Army to one side so he could bend more easily at the waist while he examined the bodies. The wounds were jagged; the two had been ripped open from between their legs upwards. Oddly, there was very little blood, despite the wounds. There wasn’t very much clotted on the dusty ground either, and only a bit more on their clothing. It was obvious an animal had been at them, but how could they be so… clean?

The dry wind teasing across the ranch picked up, fluttering at the bloodied tresses of the larger corpse. Ethan brushed the hair out of his way as he looked over wounds he had spied along the throat; deep punctures that became jagged as they angled toward the collar bone. There were several along what was left of her upper thighs as well. The child’s body was much the same, though it seemed crooked, as if the pelvis was broken and split in two directions.

The old man coughed, and Clem stumbled closer. Ethan glanced up. Harper had seen much in his long life, but he kept his eyes averted. He could barely even look at the lawman. Trying to swallow, it was obvious his throat was far too dry. “What do ya reckon it was what got ‘em?” he finally asked, calloused hands nervously rubbing at the sides of his coveralls.

Ethan shrugged, but as he stood up, something caught his eye: a single set of unshod hoof-prints moved away from the rail and the bodies, barely visible on the sun baked ground, snaking away in no real pattern except moving toward the streambed. Waving off the old man, the marshal picked up the ’73 and began following the trail. Ethan was no tracker, but he was able to at least follow it as far as the stream. There, upon reaching the wide, flat rocks lining it, the steps vanished.

Ethan searched several yards in either direction after crossing to the opposite bank, but there was nothing. The trail was gone. He quickly returned to find Clem had moved to stand quietly near his wagon. As the sun burned toward noon, Ethan -- and after some coaxing, Harper -- wrapped the two bodies in blankets from the house, then rested them carefully inside the wagon. The horses stamped nervously, then seemed to move more quickly than before as the living made their way out of the valley.

 

[Ethan Edwards]

Outside, the sun burned its way to the ground, tired of staring across the dusty hills of west Texas. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day? In the barn, Ethan hung his saddle to one side of the stall -- well out of reach of a roan who liked to chew. He tossed the animal a large handful of dry hay, then fastened the door. The horse stamped softly, chewing contentedly as Ethan watched him. It would get oats in the morning… Eat, sleep, breathe -- that’s all the damned thing had to worry about. The big man shook his head.

His eyes were clouded: Ethan’s thoughts were still in town with Doctor Mason. The older man was not only her lone, medical practitioner, but also Blackthorn’s embalmer – and one of the sheriff’s closest friends. It was to his office that Clem and Ethan had taken the bodies found at the Seever place. The corpses hadn’t been on the examination table longer than two minutes before Old Man Harper was gone, out the door and headed for a deep bottle.

Mason looked over the bodies with an eye jaded by war and far too many years on the edges of the frontier. When he was done, he poured them both a drink – although Ethan was a bit put off that they drank in the examination room and not the outer office. It was a cramped place, filled with stacked boxes, tubes and needles, as well as the sharp stink of chemicals. An oil lamp worked hand-in-hand with sunlight spilling through the thankfully-open window… but the thin shadows still bothered him.

“I ain’t got no idea what’s had at ‘em, Ethan, but I doubt it was anything else but a coyote or four…” His voice trailed off, wrinkled hands dropping the sheet and hiding the corpse he’d examined. Ethan frowned at the older man.

“A damned critter like that would have left tracks that even I could find, and the bodies would have been in even worse shape than they are…” He tried not looking at the sheets covering the corpses. One of the pair was so small… “Besides, who the Hell were those two women, Doc?”

Across the yard, opposite the barn, was the Edwards’ home, a tidy timber farmhouse whose only remaining claim to such fame was the sprawling garden running along the eastern wall that Ethan’s wife tended throughout the year. It kept the family fed, its bounty either prepared fresh or sealed in glass jars for later. As the light slowly faded and the temperature outside began to drop, a soft breeze picked up. Bells hanging at one corner of the front porch began to softly chime.

Sophia Edwards absently wiped the inside of a pot while she watched her young son play through the kitchen window – one made of real glass, carefully hauled in from Fort Stockton, and one of so many promises Ethan had kept over the years. The little boy, no more than seven on his last birthday, played in the thin grass at the front of the house, and Sophia couldn’t help but smile. Michael tried so hard to be like his father, and the older he got, the rougher the play became. The child slowly crept around a planter filled with pale flowers, carrying a long stick in both hands while he stalked some imagined savage, some shadowy Yankee soldier waiting to pounce. As he cleared one corner, the boy straightened, the “rifle” coming to his shoulder – but before he could shoot, the child tossed the stick to the ground and began running.

“Daddy!”

So-obviously tired, her man walked from the barn, snatching up his son and holding him high in his strong arms, despite the lad’s already above-average size. Sophia couldn’t help but smile – she loved them both so very much, had loved Ethan the very first time he’d teased her inside her father’s store, the much-patched grey coat he wore, a grim reminder of what he’d seen...

Sophia quickly checked her coal black hair, deftly re-pinning it before Ethan could walk into the cabin. A glance reassured her the table was ready for them all, platters and bowls covered with towels to trap their warmth – and to keep the flies off. Her husband’s boots fell heavily against the wooden floor, but the sound was a welcome one to her. Most of his days were spent in town, only a few miles away, but while she was indeed proud of him, sometimes it got lonely.

She turned toward the door just as her two boys stepped inside, one carrying the other…