In The Beginning by Gail Daley (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

"What's all that racket?" The noise of the breaking furniture roused Emory, and he staggered into the doorway, holding onto the jamb to keep from falling over.

"You stupid worthless drunk!" Ira roared. He backhanded his son and Emory went down on his butt. Instead of getting up, he lay there snoring.

Breathing hard, his father stared at him in impotent fury. Going to the sink, Ira pumped a bucket of water and sloshed it over his son, following it up with a kick.

Emory rolled over on his stomach and puked. Getting another bucket, Johnson slopped it over the mess Emory had created. Grabbing his son by the collar and his belt, he hauled him outside to the water trough and dunked him in it until he was convinced Emory was too drunk to be sobered up and would have to sleep it off. He left him lying there in the dirt and went into the house to get rid of any liquor he found.

Several days later when Emory finally slept off his drunken binge, Johnson had located another cook for the men and put them back to work, naming Jones as temporary foreman.

Emory staggered into the kitchen and fell into a chair. Johnson put a cup of coffee in front of him and waited until he had drunk it before slapping some cold biscuits leftover from breakfast in front of his son.

Emory looked at the biscuits with disgust. "What's this?"

"Breakfast. You may as well know your brother is gone."

Emory blinked. "My head hurts. Did you say Samuel is gone? Where did he go?"

"He didn't say. That means it's up to you and me to make the plan work."

His son broke off a piece of the cold biscuit and chewed it. "What do you mean Pa?"

"You're going to marry St. Vyr's girl."

"Bethany's already married," Emory pointed out, "the other one is about to be, and I ain't about to take on a hellcat like the youngest."

"So? We make Bethany a widow."

"Pa, I don't think I'm fast enough to beat McCaffey to the draw."

"You ain't going to face him in a gunfight. I got that part covered. You will go over to St. Vyr's spread, grab the girl and bring her back here."

Emory sipped his coffee in silence, considering the order. Finally, he said, "Won't work Pa. Too many people around. What if she screams? I can't keep her quiet and fight off the hands at the same time. Even if I get her away from the ranch, St. Vyr can still send his hands after us, and it ain't like she's some whore out of a pleasure house we drug up here. She's a respectable married woman. Even some of our own men would turn on us for kidnapping her."

Ira sat back. "Well if you're too yellow to do it..."

His son flushed red and lunged to his feet. "You take that back! That's a lie!"

"Glad to see that beating didn't take all the sand out of you," his father said coolly. "Sit back down and listen. We're going to set fire to St. Vyr's pastures near the house. It's been a dry year and that grass will go up like tinder. That will draw almost everyone out of the house to fight the fire. In the confusion, it shouldn't be too hard to grab the girl; if she screams, it's likely everyone will just think it's got to do with the fire. Don't bring her here. Use that empty line cabin up on the six forks."

"Okay, Pa."

"Go take a bath. You stink. And stay away from the cook and her daughters. Save it to use on Bethany St. Vyr."

Johnson was out of town, so he didn't get the news that the first part of his plan had already failed. Marlow Chamber was one of the bodies being shown to Tim Morrison, the town Sheriff who rode out to the ranch with the doctor and Paco. By this time, the St. Vyr's had quite a collection of corpses to turn over to him.

The sheriff eyed the stiffs being piled into a buckboard for him to take back to town with disfavor. "Hell," he said, "I don't want them. Just bury them out here and charge the town for it. I'll take any papers and money to hold for their next of kin, but that's all I want besides your signed statements about what happened."

"Certainly, Sheriff," Giselle agreed. "You can use my parlor to take witness statements."

After setting Morrison up with a table, writing paper and some coffee, she went upstairs to check on the doctor's progress.

"Well, Garth, how is our patient?" she inquired.

Doctor Garth Rogers, a portly man in his forties, looked up from taking Carlos' pulse and smiled at her. "An excellent job, Giselle. I wish I had you as a nurse more often."

She laughed. "Shame on you! What would your wife say?"

He laughed too. "Skin me, probably."

"If you are through talking about me as if I'm not here," Carlos interjected irritably, "When can I get out of this bed?"

Doctor Rogers grinned at him. "Son, I thought the idea was for you to get into Miss Iris's bed."

Carlos glared at him. "You are hilarious. The idea is for us to get married. I can't do that flat on my back."

"Actually, you can get up now. I'd put off any marital gymnastics until your shoulder heals a little more though."

"I want my clothes," Carlos told Giselle.

"Over there on the chair," she replied.

"Can I offer you a cup of coffee Garth before you start back?"

"I'd love one," the doctor replied, following her out of the room.

Once he was dressed, Carlos went looking for Iris. She was in the cheese cellar, giving orders to move the corpses as far away from her precious cheese as could be arranged.

"And wrap them up in those used cheese cloth scraps. It will cut down on the smell," she said.

Tim Griggs gave her a pained look. "Do we have to?"

"Yes,"