Crook The Which Way Tree

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-83501-100-3
Verlag: Bedford Square Publishers
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

When a panther attacks a family of homesteaders in the remote hill country of Texas, it leaves a young girl traumatised and scarred, and her mother dead. Samantha is determined to find and kill the animal and avenge her mother, and her half-brother Benjamin, helpless to make her see sense, joins her quest. Dragged into the panther hunters' crusade by the force and purity of Samantha's desire for revenge are a charismatic outlaw, a haunted, compassionate preacher, and an aged but relentless tracker dog. As the members of this unlikely posse hunt the giant panther, they in turn are pursued by a hapless, sadistic soldier with a score to settle. And Benjamin can only try to protect his sister from her own obsession, and tell her story in his uniquely vivid voice. The breathtaking saga of a steadfast girl's revenge against an implacable and unknowable beast, The Which Way Tree is a timeless tale full of warmth and humour, testament to the power of adventure and enduring love.

Elizabeth Crook has published four previous novels, including The Night Journal, which received the Spur Award from Western Writers of America, and Monday, Monday, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2014 and winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. She lives in Austin with her family.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crook, Elizabeth

Leseproben

Testimony of Benjamin Shreve

Before Grand Jury of Fifteen

Home of Izac Wronski

Judge E Carlton Presiding

18th District

County of Bandera

State of Texas

April 25, 1866

As Recorded by Alfred R Pittman

Having been duly sworn, state your name.

Benjamin Shreve.

State your age.

Seventeen years, sir.

Where do you live, Benjamin?

Over on Verde Creek. Near Camp Verde.

All right. You may stand there. It’s crowded in here; I apologize for that. My name is Judge Edward Carlton, and this is Alfred R Pittman. He’ll be writing down what you say before the grand jury today. Speak clearly. If he asks you to repeat something, then repeat it.

Yes sir.

You can hang your hat there by the door.

I prefer to hold it, sir.

All right, then. Do you know why you’ve been called here?

On account of the men I found dead on Julian Creek.

That’s correct. We believe you were the first to see the bodies and that you may have seen one of the men who hanged those gentlemen. We realize this happened three years ago and justice has had to wait out the war. So your memory on the particulars might not be clear. Simply recall what you can. Don’t make anything up. If you don’t remember, say you don’t remember.

I will remember, sir.

Very well. Now, the basic facts of the murders have already been established, but we’re trying to verify the names of those who took part.

I can tell you Clarence Hanlin was one that did, sir.

I’m not looking for your opinion, Benjamin. I’m looking for your testimony. That means what you saw, not what you think. Answer only the questions I ask you. Now. What were you doing on Julian Creek that morning when you discovered the bodies?

Hunting, sir.

Julian Creek is quite a few miles from Camp Verde. Why were you not hunting closer to home?

There was no game closer to home. The Sesesh soldiers at Camp Verde had killed it all off for theirselves and their prisoners down in the canyon.

How did you get to the Julian that morning?

Horseback, sir.

Were you alone?

Yes sir.

What time did you leave your home?

I suppose about a hour or so before daylight. I recall I rode in the moonlight.

And your intention was to hunt on Julian Creek?

My intention was to kill the first game I come across. It was a deer near the Julian. I fired and missed it.

What happened after that?

I pitched a fit, sir. Dismounted and cursed, and then right away wished I weren’t behaving in such a manner.

For fear you would scare off game?

For fear of Indians and Sesesh and bushwhackers and vigilantes and whatnot. It was loud and dangerous behavior, sir.

Benjamin, the men in this room, some of whom you probably know, are of various persuasions on the late war. You would do well to refrain from name-calling.

Yes sir, I know one… two… three… four… five of them here that me and my father sold shingles to. That one by the door there—

Don’t bring politics into this.

No sir, I won’t. But it was Sesesh that done in the men I found dead.

It is true that Confederate major William J Alexander from Camp Verde, whereabouts unknown, is currently under indictment for murder and highway robbery. We’re trying to ascertain which of his men took part in the hanging of the eight travelers you found dead.

Clarence Hanlin was one, sir.

I know that’s your testimony. But if it’s true, we have to get to it in a logical way. Simply answer my questions.

Yes sir.

So you fired at the deer, and missed, and pitched a fit. What happened next?

I heard coyotes yipping and I thought it was Comanches. I tied my mare in the brush and went a distance off and laid down flat where nobody could’ve seen me in the grass. But the longer I laid there and listened, the more I thought, that is not Indians, that is actual coyotes. I figured maybe I’d shot the deer and wounded it, and it had run off and gone down and now the coyotes was closed in and devouring it. So I thought to go and investigate and see what they was up to. I went on my belly on the chance it was Comanches in fact and not coyotes. And that was when I come across what I seen.

As precisely as you can, describe what you saw.

Clarence Hanlin and a pack of coyotes under a clump of scrub oaks, sir. Some ways from the creek. They was in dusky light of the morning, amid prickly pear, on rocky ground, and the coyotes was lighting out because Clarence Hanlin was waving a stick and yipping at them with a yip like he was one of them. He was spooking them out. It was a puzzle to me why he did not shoot them if they was bothering him. He had a gun. But it appeared that he—

You had not, at that time, ever seen Mr Hanlin before – is that correct?

Not exactly correct, sir. I’d seen soldiers coming and going on the roads near Camp Verde, and I believe I’d seen Clarence Hanlin amongst them, as I’d noticed he had a eye that drooped. He had a distinctive look, sir. It was not a pleasant look. He was not homely, but his looks was against him and not right.

Gentlemen, can we please have no snickering? Alfred, I hope you’re getting everything down. I want the details recorded. All right, Benjamin, you saw a pack of coyotes and a man, whom you thought you might recognize as one of the Confederate soldiers stationed at Camp Verde, but whom you did not, at that time, know by name and with whom you had never conversed, waving a stick at the coyotes in the apparent effort to scare them off. Is that right?

Yes sir. And yipping at them, sir. It was a odd thing, to my thinking. There was a doglike thing about it, sir.

Are you casting aspersions?

If you mean am I insulting the man, no sir. I guess you could say he sounded a bit like a pig, too, sir, if you wanted to cast what you said. A aspersion. It would not be off the mark. I will put it this way. It was a weird noise he made to fuss at them coyotes. Rather spooked me. Then I seen him squat down like he was fixing to pluck up firewood or some such. There was plenty of broken limbs laying about. But what he plucked up was not firewood, it was a arm. And then I seen that it was attached to a body. And then I seen other bodies.

Pause there. Where were the bodies?

All about at his feet, sir. Scattered, I would say. Maybe a dozen of them.

For the record, there were eight bodies.

They looked like more than eight to me, the way they was strewn. But eight’s on the mark if you say so. I was twenty yards off, or more. The light was feeble, on account of the sun was not full up. And now that I think on it, I suppose my first idea was the bodies was logs and branches, and nothing amiss. So how many of them there was, I did not contemplate on at that time.

There were eight dead, precisely. We have their names. Some of these men here in this room were called out from town to help bury them. Now continue. What did you do when you saw the bodies?

I tried to figure it out like this: here is these bodies and these coyotes and Clarence Hanlin with his stick and his yipping. So—

Clarence Hanlin, whom you did not yet know to be Clarence Hanlin, but with whom you would later, I take it, have some familiarity?

That’s right, sir. At that time I known him for a man with a droopy eye, in a Sesesh outfit, who I thought I might have seen before on the road near Camp Verde. So I figured the coyotes was trying to feast on the bodies, and Mr Hanlin, the Sesesh, was scaring them off. That’s how I seen it, the best I could figure. But then it come to me that I had more to figure, because what was the bodies doing there? I figured maybe Comanches was there and killed the men the coyotes was trying to feast on, and this Sesesh come along, and though he was not friendly to look at, he was protecting the bodies. But hold it there, I thought. Because then I seen him take a object from the jacket of one of them on the ground. He took from one, and rose a step, and poked at another with his stick, and squatted and took a object from that one, too. He was looting the dead, sir. He was taking what he could find. He went from pocket to pocket, searching for valuables to pinch and pilfer. He had a satchel strapped to his side, and he put things in that. I was fearful to breathe, sir. I figured if he should see me witness him, he would come after me. I did not so much as twitch. He turned my direction at one time and did not see me, but I got a good look at him. His gaze was oddly fixed, sir. He had a harsh stare. When I seen that, I rose to my feet and took to my heels in a hurry. I made my way to my mare and rode as fast as she would take me back to my home.

And why did you not report the crime you had witnessed?

It was not easy to know what was a crime, and what was not, with so much mischief afoot.

I understand your parents are deceased?

Yes sir.

For some time now?

Yes sir. I live alone with my sister.

Very well. Now. About your subsequent encounters with this man. Tell me about those.

Well, that’s a long story. He wanted to do me in. Me and my sister both.

He wanted to kill you? Because of what you had witnessed?

No sir. Because of a thing that happened. I’d rather not be made to speak of it, if that’s a option.

It is not an option, Benjamin. Why did he want to kill...