Dorothy Garlock Read Free

stared coldly at Chester Remnick. If hatred were an emotion she could translate into action, she was certain that in that moment she would have killed the man. With that realization, she was glad that it was Pearl who held the rifle. Still, Chester wasn’t her real concern;
Mary was
.
    “We’re taking you out of here, Mary,” Hallie soothed.
    Putting all thought of Chester behind her, Hallie turned her attention back to her devastated friend. Placing a hand tenderly upon the woman’s shoulder, she softly asked, “Can you hear me, Mary?”
    The only answer she received was a racking sob.
    “She’ll be fine as soon as we’re gone from here,” Pearl offered.
    “We’re leaving, Mary. We’re leaving Whiskey Bend,” Hallie said.
    And you’re coming with us
.
    Hallie found it hard to believe that it had only been a few short hours since she had witnessed Chester viciously slapping Mary’s face in the center of Whiskey Bend. She and Pearl had happened upon the scene on their way home, and what they witnessed horrified them. Mary had stopped to speak with a young man, a clerk in one of the stores. Chester took her act as an affront and slapped her viciously. He punctuated each blow with a curse or slur, further demeaning the girl whose only crime was stopping to talk with an acquaintance.
    Hallie flinched at every blow, as if she were the one being struck. Tears clouded her vision.
    “Stop it, you brute! Stop hitting her!” she shouted.
    “Tend to yer own business, slut,” Chester barked in answer.
    Pearl’s hand grabbed her arm, refusing to allow her to become involved, when not a man along the street offered to interfere between a man and his woman.
    “Now isn’t the time,” Pearl said.
    “But he’s going to kill her!” Hallie argued.
    “I’m not disagreein’ with your concern,” the older woman explained, her jaw set as firmly as if it were made of stone, “only with your timing. Not here and not now . . . but we will do something.”
    In that moment, unspoken between the two of them, was the realization that it was time to leave Whiskey Bend. It was inevitable that, if they didn’t take Mary with them, Chester would surely kill her. Maybe not that night, or the one that followed . . .
but it was going to happen
! In order to save the life of Mary Sinclair, a girl they had befriended, they had to act fast. They needed to get themselves and Mary as far away from him, and Whiskey Bend, as possible.
    Their plan had not yet been solid, but they had to act quickly. Hallie and Pearl each had her own reasons for leaving Whiskey Bend, and the sight they had witnessed was simply the final straw. They were leaving and they would take Mary with them.
    After procuring horses and a wagon, the two women loaded it with their own meager belongings. Hallie held her tongue when Pearl placed the rifle in the wagon beneath the seat. It had still been pitch-black when they headed for the ramshackle cabin that Chester and Mary inhabited on the far outskirts of the township. Conveniently, the closest neighbor lived over a mile away; if things became messy, there’d be no one to interfere.
    Regardless, they stopped the wagon a safe distance from the cabin and went the rest of the way on foot. They walked in silence, each keeping her thoughts to herself. As the sun just began to brush the horizon pink, the cabin came into view.
    The place Chester and Mary lived was pitiful. Boards of many different shapes and sizes were nailed haphazardly together creating a small frame. Most of the windows contained broken glass and some no glass at all. The front door had been hung crookedly; it looked as if it were leaned shut. Hallie’s heart sank at the thought of her friend spending her days and nights in such squalor.
    When they were no more than a stone’s throw from the cabin, Pearl spoke. Her words chilled Hallie all the way to the bone. “I’ll kill him if I have to,” Pearl promised, tightening her grip on the