The Return. Dinah McCall

the hell are you doin’?” Jubal yelled, and yanked Turner roughly to his feet. “Have you gone crazy—comin’ in here and killin’ your brothers’ dogs like some madman?”

      For once the ugly accusations in his father’s voice passed through his mind without connecting. He picked up his gun, then pointed it directly into his father’s face. The quiet, noncommittal tone in his voice was deadly deceptive.

      “You killed her.”

      Jubal hid his shock as he struggled to answer. “We didn’t touch her, but even if we had, she’s just a damn Joslin. What the hell would it matter?”

      Turner shifted his aim until the barrel was pointing straight at his father’s belly.

      “Fancy was my wife. You set the dogs on my wife.”

      His brothers were stunned into silence, but not Jubal. “What the hell did you say?”

      Turner took a step forward. Now the barrel of the gun was firmly against his father’s belly.

      “Where’s the baby?” he asked, his gaze slowly shifting from Hank, to Charles, to John. “What did you do with my child? Did you feed it to the dogs, too?”

      “Jesus Christ,” John whispered, and took a step forward. “We didn’t know, Turner, we didn’t know.”

      Turner shifted the barrel of the gun from Jubal to John. His voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion.

      “Don’t touch me,” he warned them. “You’re all evil to the core. Now where’s my child?”

      Hank was getting scared. They’d crossed a line that not even he could excuse.

      “We didn’t know,” he said. “But you can’t blame us…after all, she was a Joslin.”

      Turner’s finger twitched as the gun swung sideways. The shock on Hank’s face spread as swiftly as the blood in the middle of his chest. Seconds later, he dropped to the ground without uttering a sound.

      Jubal lunged toward Turner. “God almighty!” he roared. “You shot your brother, your own flesh and blood, over a piece of filth.”

      Turner fired again, this time at his father. Jubal dropped to the ground, screaming in pain, his kneecap gone.

      Within seconds, Charles was taking aim. John held up his hand, begging for the killing to stop, and stepped in front of the bullet meant for Turner.

      Turner watched the look of disbelief on John’s face as he fell forward. Instinctively, he caught him, lowering him to the ground as Jubal fired off a round. But Jubal’s bullet hit Charles beneath his right eye. Now he, too, was gone.

      Turner rocked back on his heels and stood. His clothes were covered in blood. Fancy’s blood. John’s blood. The smell of death was everywhere. He turned, looking upon the area without registering the sight. He was out of his mind with grief and at the point of turning his gun on himself when it clicked on an empty chamber. He dropped the rifle with a painful grunt.

      The pain—the pain.

      He wanted it to go away.

      Without looking at Fancy, he reached for John’s gun with every intention of using it on himself, when a different sound penetrated the horror in his mind. It was the weak but unmistakable cry of a newborn baby. He spun around, frantically searching the tree line as if he expected the baby to miraculously appear.

      “Baby…is that you?”

      The sound persisted, faint but clear. His body and his voice were beginning to shake as he took a step forward.

      “Don’t cry, baby…. Daddy will find you.”

      He dropped the gun and started walking like a man in a trance. He didn’t feel the shot that hit him in the back, but the one that tore through his leg sent him tumbling to the ground. He rolled as he fell, then looked back. Jubal was up on one elbow, with a rifle in his hand.

      Turner looked past his father to the woman on the ground. He kept waiting for the pain, but everything felt numb. He looked at Fancy again. It would be so easy to let go.

      “Finish the job, old man,” he screamed, shaking his fist in the air.

      Hate spilled across Jubal Blair’s face as he raised the rifle, taking shaky aim.

      Turner braced himself for the shot that never came.

      Instead, the features on Jubal Blair’s face began to melt. The gun fell from his fingers as they curled into a fist. Instead of curses, nothing came from Jubal’s lips except a series of grunts as he fell to the ground with a thump.

      Turner dropped backward with a groan. Now pain was spilling through his body with every breath. He turned his head. In the distance, he could see the outline of Fancy’s body.

      “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and closed his eyes, willing himself to die.

      Then it came again, the faint but unmistakable cry of a tiny baby, mewling in the night, and he rolled onto his side. Moments later, he began crawling toward the trees—and the sound.

      Some time later, a silent figure of a woman slipped out of the woods and knelt beneath the shadow of Pulpit Rock. Her shoulders were shaking, her hands fluttering helplessly. Finally she stood and, with a burst of great strength, lifted Fancy Joslin’s lifeless body into her arms.

      Sometime during the night it started to rain. Softly at first, then harder and harder, until the raindrops sounded like bullets against the leaves, splattering upon the bodies of men and dogs alike and washing them clean of blood. Thunder ripped through the heavens, shaking Jubal Blair from the darkness. The raindrops felt like ice against his cheeks, and there were rivulets of water running beneath his body. He tried to scream for help, but nothing came out of his throat. He was alive, but trapped within a body that had already died.

      Meanwhile, higher up on the mountain, Annie Fane was frantically packing. She’d buried the young mother beneath a tree in her backyard, then burned her own bloody clothes. It was only a matter of time before the bodies would be found, and she was the only one within hearing distance of the site. Already distrusted by the people of Camarune, she knew someone would be blamed for the deaths. As superstitious as they were, it stood to reason it would be her. So using the light of the moon as a guide, she began to cover her tracks. She planted the bare earth above Fancy’s grave with some of the herbs growing on her porch, then ringed it with a circle of stones. By the time she was through, it was impossible to tell it from her other flower beds.

      The baby was crying again, and she hurried into the house, quickly washing her hands, then cuddling it to her chest. Fashioning a diaper from one of her dish towels, she gave the baby a change. The momentary comfort was enough so that after a few minutes of rocking, the baby drifted back to sleep.

      Annie gazed longingly at the little cabin that had been her home and salvation, then looked at the baby asleep on her bed. It had been a long time since she’d had a responsibility to anyone other than herself. But she’d made a promise—and Annie Fane was a woman of her word. She ran to a closet and pulled out an old suitcase. It was time to move on.

      

      It was morning before the county sheriff, acting on an anonymous tip, found the bodies beneath Pulpit Rock. Shock reverberated within the community of Camarune as the pastor of the local church raced to Jubal’s home to give young Turner the bad news. But there was no sign of Turner Blair. Only the note that he’d stuck between the salt and pepper shakers telling his father he would be in touch. Another great shock moved through the town when it was discovered that the men had seemingly died at their own hands. Bullets found in the dogs and the bodies matched the guns that they carried. There was an extra gun, but it bore the name of Henry Blair, Jubal’s father, so they assumed that one of the men had been carrying two. It made no sense to the people, and even less to the sheriff, but Jubal wasn’t in any shape to explain. It was also common knowledge that when the sheriff had gone up the mountain to question the witch, he’d