Nicole M. Taylor - The Hunting Party

T he traveler must have been something special indeed. Byron ran into the house to report before hed even stabled the horses and examined the mans vehicle. Byron was breathless, his cheeks scraped red from the bitter cold. He looked so young, all fat rosy cheeks and blonde curls. Hes a doctor, Byron told me, from back East. The gig looks brand new and he gave me this. He held out his open palm with a gold dollar in it. I reached out to touch it and found it still cold.

All at once, I felt my tongue grow thick and arid. Get him inside, I croaked. We would need to move fast; a well-heeled man in a good little buggy with dollar coins to throw around would never stay in a hovel like oursthat was, if we gave him a choice.

Byron nodded and vanished again out the door. He allowed it to slam helplessly behind him, which he always did, no matter how many times I had asked him to shut it nicely. The door was thin and cheap, like everything else we had, and we needed it to last through at least one more winter.

When I first came to this country, I imaginedI hopedthat I would never see a winter again, not like in my homeland. But I was very young then.

I smoothed out my skirt and breathed through my nose, reminding myself: this was good news, but not ideal. We didnt usually take our one-way guests this late in the season. Only an idiot would head out on the trail with winter looming on the horizon, especially with only a small, light buggy like a gig. Likely, this doctor was headed somewhere close by. Perhaps he had even thought to settle in nearby Madalane.

We always preferred those folks who had set their eyes on the golden country: Oregon or California. Those folks were intending to vanish. The people who loved them might not expect word for months or years.

While Byron was fetching the man, I hurried about making the place ready for him. It didnt take long. Our little cabinbuilt by Faders inexpert handswas home to us, inn to travelers, and even contained our small inventory of goods that folks needed if they were heading west. By dint of simple necessity, every single thing we had occupied its own niche.

I pulled the stretched hide off the top of the big wooden wardrobe that was Mammas prized possession and spread it right in front of the door, like a rug. If the doctor looked close at it, he would see the dark stains that never seemed to scrub out. But they never looked close.

Fader, I called out, we have need of your hammer!

I was right, of course. I saw it in the mans eyes as soon as Byron led him through the door. He saw our wattle and daub walls where the wind whistled through, and the big bed in the corner, a soiled nest for the four of us. He took in the dented tin plates and the poorly tended fireplace, oozing smoke throughout the room and casting everything in a dirty blue haze. Seeing exactly what we were, he wanted none of it; but before he could open his mouth to speak, Fader was already behind him. His aim was true, though he had been in his cups as usual, and he brought down the big blunt-headed hammer on the mans skull with all of his power.

It made the same sound it always did: a hard, damp slapping sound, like striking wet laundry on a rock. It was so simple. Just that one movement of Faders arm and that unremarkable sound and the strange tense eagerness left the air, as though each one of us were slowly deflating.

The man crumpled onto the animal hide, scalp oozing slow, black blood. Mamma and I rushed forward to lift the corners of the hide into a kind of sling to move the body before the blood could penetrate to the wooden floor underneath.

Take the body out and bury it, I told Byron. Bury it deep this time or the next grave you dig will be your own. I flicked his nose as I said it but I was serious. Byron had been getting awfully lazy; just a few weeks ago when we got all the rain, that farmhand from New York had emerged from the earth like a bad memory. First the tips of his rotted toes came up, then the shining pate of his skull, picked clean by the worms and the beetles. Mamma and I had to rebury him quickly in the full afternoon sunlight when anyone might have passed by and seen us at our work.

The ground wasnt even hard yet, so Byron didnt have an excuse for his sloth.

And hide the gig, I called after him. We can strip it in the stables. The fewer people who saw it sitting unattended in front of our place the better. With a local, we ran an extra risk of encountering someone who might knowhave knownthe man and would recognize his brand new vehicle.

Fader stood in the door, his hammer hanging from one hand. A bit of hair and flesh was crusted on the end with only a little blood, though enough to drip on the floor. Mamma stepped forward and lifted it lightly from his fingers, taking it outside to scrape it off in the hard, scabby snow.

Hes a doctor, I told Fader, who nodded, glass-eyed from drink. Probably looking to settle around here. Probably carrying everything he has in the world. I patted him on the shoulder and found his muscles there still tense, as though he were a dog on alert.

Viktig man, he muttered. Important man.

No more than any of the rest of them. Just richer.

Byron burst through the door again and I was about to shout at him for slamming it when I looked at his face. There was no color in his cheeks. Em, he said. Theres a problem.

There was a part of me that wanted immediately to blame Byron. You should have looked closer, I wanted to shout. I wanted to pepper him with slaps. But the truth was, it was I who had hurried him.

Before, we almost always sat with our one-way guests, fed them dinner and listened to their stories, oftentimes for hours. It gave Byron a chance to root through their things and decide if the bounty was worth the risk, but it also allowed us to feel a bit, well,