Chapter Fourteen
“Are you sure about this, dear?” Agnes asked, regarding the ramshackle Morrisey house with distaste, then looking wistfully at Adam, who waited with the wagon.
“Very sure, Mama.” Clover rapped on the door again, wishing she had come sooner instead of allowing her mother and Ballard to coddle her. She had not been seriously injured in her ordeal, and it had been selfish to leave Willie in Morrisey’s brutal hands for four more days.
“You do not have the full sixty dollars,” her mother reminded her.
“I know.” She smiled at Bess when the timid woman eased open the door. “Mrs. Morrisey? You may not remember me, but I am Ballard MacGregor’s wife, Clover. This is my mother, Agnes Sherwood.”
“What do you want?”
“I would like to talk to you.”
“‘Bout what?”
“The boy. The one who is half-Shawnee?”
“My husband ain’t wanting to talk about him. He ain’t giving that boy up for nothing.”
Clover took the bag of coins from a pocket inside the folds of her cloak and hefted it in her hand so that Bess Morrisey could hear the distinctive chink of money. “I am here to do more than talk.”
Bess opened the door wider. “I will send one of the boys after my husband.”
As she entered the house, her mother following on her heels, Clover saw three young girls standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching her closely. When Morrisey had mentioned his family that day in the Clemmons store, he had talked only of sons. She suspected the girls were treated almost as badly as Willie.
Bess tugged a small boy out of a dark corner of the room and sent him to get her husband. She then signaled Clover and her mother to sit at the long plank table.
“You got all sixty dollars?” Bess asked as she sat down across from Clover and Agnes.
“Not quite,” Clover replied, noticing how hard Bess stared at the sack of money she had set on the table in front of her.
“Then he ain’t gonna be agreeing with you.”
“There is no harm in trying, is there?”
“Reckon not. Still, if my man said sixty, then he means sixty. He can be stubborn.” Bess tentatively reached toward the sack of money, but did not touch it. “How much do you have?”
“Forty-two dollars.” She saw Bess’s tired eyes grow wide and knew she had guessed correctly in thinking that the Morriseys rarely saw any coin at all. She had held back some of the money and began to think shewould be able to keep it. “I realize it is short of the fee your husband has been demanding, but ‘tis far, far more than he paid for the boy, and I suspect far more than anyone else has ever offered. After all, he is quite small and ill-fed. Judging from how often your husband feels it is necessary to discipline the boy, I would say that he must be a very difficult child.” She met Bess’s sardonic look and knew the woman was not fooled by her carefully chosen words. Clover also sensed that Bess would say nothing, however.
“Ma, we ain’t never seed that kind of money before,” said the tallest of the three girls.
“This ain’t none of your business, Lottie,” Bess said. “Your pa won’t want to be hearing from you. You three get back to the cooking.” She looked at Clover. “Why do you want the boy so bad?” she asked in a soft voice, glancing at the door as she spoke.
Clover realized that Bess was trying to find out something before her husband arrived. She wished she knew what it was. For a moment she hesitated, then decided to tell the truth. Since Bess clearly did not want her husband to hear the conversation, Clover felt certain that whatever she said would not reach Morrisey’s ears, to be used against her later.
“What I want, Mrs. Morrisey, is to get that child away from your husband before he kills him,” she replied in an equally soft voice. “I owe that boy my life. Four days ago he saved me from Big Jim.”
“Four days back, huh? That was the day my man came back spitting poison about you. He don’t like you much.”
“I suspect my threat to shoot off his manhood rathersoured his opinion of me.” To Clover’s astonishment Bess briefly, timidly smiled.
“You did that?” When Clover nodded, Bess quickly grew solemn again. “That ain’t gonna put him in a humor to bargain with you.”
“I am hoping this will put him into a more reasonable state of mind,” Clover said, lightly touching the money bag. “Fifteen dollars was collected from the townsfolk. The rest is mine. I am not the only one who wants that child taken from your husband’s hands.”
Bess nodded. “It mighta been better if you shot him when you had the chance. He will be holding that agin you.”
“To be honest, I have never handled a gun in my life. I was lucky I aimed the right end of the musket at him. I will get the boy free of him. If not today, then another day. I will not give up. As I said, I owe the boy my life. I owe him my husband’s life as well, for our enemies meant to use me to draw Ballard to his death.”
