That was Bob. He woke without really knowing why and listened for a clue, which came as a clink and then as the crunch of boots in rain-iced snow. He scurried from bed in his nightshirt with one name only on his mind and with a cavity inside his chest, and at the window he made out six armed men and maybe more, as rounded-over as hedgehogs, coming out of the woods as if they were created there. “Dick!” he insisted, and swatted the sleeping man’s foot.
Dick inclined on an elbow, rubbing his eyes, then slanted over just enough to see a man in a city coat slugging his legs through a knee-deep snowdrift, a rifle crossed at his chest. Dick shot from bed, collapsed a little on his wounded leg, and hopped on the good one to the clothes he’d thrown over a chair. “Who is it?”
Bob climbed into cold woolen trousers and hooked suspenders over his nightshirt. “I saw a tin star on someone’s pocket; that’s all the information I need.”
Dick said, “God damn Mattie anyhow,” and buckled on his gunbelt.
Bob looked down into the sidelot. A young deputy genuflected into the snow and steadied his arm and rifle with a raised knee. If he fired, glass would crash across Martha’s four-poster bed. A big voice in the yard called, “Jesse!”
Dick was in his knee boots and corduroy trousers, one suspender twisted on his shoulder. He bundled his coat and gloves at his stomach and asked, “How do I find the attic?”
“We know you’re in there!” Timberlake cried out. “Come on outside with your hands up!”
Sheriff Timberlake was near the iron well-pump in the dooryard. His eyes watered in the wind, his iced mustache was like an ivory comb, and though he may have been mortally afraid at that moment, he looked austere and authoritative. He bracketed his mouth with his mittens and shouted, “You boys are cornered! If you know what’s good for you, well, you’ll come out peaceably and no one will get shot up!”
Timberlake saw the kitchen door suck inward and he crouched down. The storm door misted with the inside warmth and then it was pushed open and Bob Ford leaned outside. “Don’t shoot!”
Timberlake turned to Craig. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
Craig claimed he hadn’t an inkling.
“Bob Ford. He lives here with his sister.” The sheriff called, “Come on out and show yourself!”
Bob took a probationary step out onto the porch and then rooted there with his hands squeezed under his arms. He rubbed a stockinged foot on his calf. “If this isn’t a surprise!” he said.
“That’s how we intended it,” the sheriff said, and slogged forward with Commissioner Craig and two Kansas City policemen as Bob Ford courteously butlered at the door.
Martha was at the oaken table, a frayed blue bathrobe clutched at her throat, her feet in scruffy white stockings. Craig withdrew circular eyeglasses and hooded them over his ears but resisted looking at Bob. He tilted his head to listen for footfalls overhead.
The sheriff asked if Jesse James, Jim Cummins, or Ed Miller was in the house and Bob said no, they weren’t. Craig asked if Dick Liddil was perchance there and Bob responded in like manner. “Your friend, Charles Siderwood,” the sheriff said. “Is that actually Dick Liddil?”
“No; that’s Charles Siderwood.”
“Is he here?”
Bob said, “You can look around if you want, but you won’t find whoever it is you’re after. It’s just me and my kin here.”
Craig instructed the sheriff to stay with the boy and took Sergeant Ditsch and two policemen with him to the second floor. Timberlake stood Bob in a corner and then poked charred stovewood with a fork, seeking red ash or embers.
Martha consented to start a fire and Timberlake invited the rest of the company inside out of the cold, which, as it turned out, was a compassionate but careless action to take. The sheriff moved around in the sitting room and kitchen and occasionally pulled out a counter drawer. Ida sleepily walked in with a wool coat over her nightgown and stared at the many policemen with big-eyed bewilderment. Martha set a coffee kettle on the stove and a coal-oil lamp on the sideboard. Smoke fluttered two feet above it. She kept trying to interpret Bob but couldn’t tell if he was pretending innocence or if he’d caused the posse to come. She remembered how Bob used to lick sugar from his palm; he used to throw apples on the roof when she had girlfriends over; she’d once chased him into the creek because he dumped mustard powder into her cake pan.
Bob could hear the party moving through rooms on the second floor, yanking and overturning drawers, rummaging through clothes. “Come on,” he muttered and the sheriff scowled at him. Martha carried empty coffee cups to the men. The kitchen was still so cold that their breaths steamed before them when they chatted. Martha came around with a coffee kettle and filled the cups and though Timberlake meant to smile at the widow, he sneered and then returned his glower to Bob Ford. He was six inches taller than Bob and sixty pounds his better, and Bob didn’t risk a sip of his sister’s coffee for fear the sheriff would punch the cup into his mouth.
Sergeant Ditsch came down to summon Bob to the second floor and Timberlake followed them upstairs. Bob said, “You’re not going to find anything. My momma and daddy brought us Ford children up right. I sleep in the presence of angels.”
The sergeant frowned at Bob and at Timberlake as he unclosed the bedroom door. Timberlake shoved past Bob into the room, saying, “Don’t mind what the boy says. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”
Commissioner Craig was sitting on a mattress with Bob’s shoebox in his lap. He said, “You’re quite the packrat.”
And Ditsch said, “Show us how to get to the attic.”
“You mean you haven’t been there already?”
Craig looked over his round eyeglasses and squinted sourly at Bob. “I don’t think we’re going to find much in the attic. I think our spy sent us on a wild goose chase.”
Bob said, “You need to move the boxes on the closet shelf. They left off the stairs to the attic and cut out a cubbyhole in that closet.”
Timberlake slid the boxes off the shelf and threw them, casting black dresses and crinolines across the floorboards where Wood Hite left the world. Bob sat down on the cot and rested his skull against the newspaper corset advertisements on the wall. He didn’t care if Dick shot at the men when they entered the attic; he didn’t care if Dick surrendered and confessed all and he himself was convicted for murder. He was shivering and sick to his stomach and wished only to lie down. The lady’s white dresser that was next to the closet now lacked its three drawers; coats and trousers rugged the floor; books had been tossed like cow chips.