Wild Thunder

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes.

—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

The room was deep in shadow as the sun rose and Tiny slowly opened the door to Chuck’s office. He tensed when the door squeaked ominously in the early morning hours; Chuck should still be asleep.

Tiny scarcely breathed as he looked over his shoulder at the closed door to Chuck’s bedroom across the hall. He listened carefully for the sound of Chuck’s cane against the wood floor.

He didn’t hear it. Tiny’s eyes narrowed. He went on inside the office.

He gave the door a questioning stare. He would feel much more secure if he could close it, yet it was too dangerous to chance making it squeak again. Since Chuck’s eyesight had weakened, his other senses had been strengthened: namely his hearing.

Knowing that time was of the essence, Tiny tiptoed across the room to the desk. His fingers trembled as he opened one ledger, and then another.

At any moment the rooster in the barnyard would crow. The rooster was Chuck’s morning alarm and had never failed to wake him.

Tiny smiled when he found the ledger he was after. This was the only one that had not yet been altered in his favor.

Dollar by dollar, Tiny had stolen that which he had erased from the finances shown in the journals. Soon he would disappear, and no one would be able to trace him, or Chuck’s money.

Tiny had given up believing that he could ever own Chuck’s land—the land that bordered the Potawatomis’s. Now that Chuck’s relatives were involved, Tiny had lost all opportunities of taking anything but cash money.

“Damn that Hannah,” Tiny whispered as he sat down behind the desk and opened the journal. “If not for her, I’d be home clear. And now another sister will be here to see after Chuck’s welfare. It’s time for me to take what I can, and leave.”

Smiling crookedly, Tiny dipped a pen into the inkwell. Slowly, methodically, and skillfully, he began altering the figures on the pages.

He gazed over at the safe. Thank God he knew how to open it. Today he would remove the money that he had been setting aside beneath a thick bundle of journals.

Tiny had swindled Chuck out of enough money to live the life of luxury for the rest of his life.

By tonight, he would be so far from this ranch, no one would ever be able to find him!

So absorbed in what he was doing, Tiny didn’t hear Chuck entering the office. After hearing the door squeak, Chuck had purposely not used his cane to feel his way from his bedroom to the office.

Chuck stood at the opened door and sniffed. He could smell the mixture of perspiration and horseflesh and knew from that, that Tiny was in the office.

Chuck squinted through his thick eyeglasses, yet was unable to make out anything, or anyone.

But his ears picked up the sound of a pen scratching its way along paper. His keen smell picked up another familiar scent. Ink.

Tiny had come at a strange time to work on the ledgers. The reason could only be that he was doing something underhanded.

“And so you are eager to work today, are you, Tiny?” Chuck said as he felt his way across the room.

Tiny was so startled by Chuck’s sudden appearance, he knocked over the inkwell, spilling ink all over the top of the desk and the journal in which he had been altering the figures.

“Damn,” Tiny said, reaching quickly for an ink blotter. As he looked guardedly up at Chuck, he soaked up the spilled ink. “Chuck, you scared the livin’ hell outta me.”

“And why would my appearance in my own office frighten you?” Chuck said, stopping to stand over the desk.

He glanced over toward the hazy, dull light of morning that he could just barely make out at the window. “I don’t believe I heard the rooster crow yet,” he said. “That has to mean that you are working before breakfast.” He smiled smugly down at Tiny. “Want to tell me why you have such a sudden interest in working over hours?”

“I . . . I . . . just had to take a look at the journals,” Tiny stammered. “I worried about some recent entries. I . . . I think I may have made some mistakes.”

“Yes, I think you have,” Chuck said. He placed his hands, palm side down, on the desk and leaned closer to Tiny. “Now, would you like to explain to me about those . . . eh . . . mistakes. Tiny?”

“I . . . I . . . just rushed through making the entries, that’s all,” Tiny said. He slowly eased himself up from the chair. “But now they’ve been corrected.”