Mister Slaughter (Matthew Corbett #3)

Mister Slaughter (Matthew Corbett #3) Page 19

They had penetrated possibly a mile and three quarters into the thick forest that lay alongside the road directly across from Constable abernathy's house before Walker said, "We'll stop here."

The decision had a strategic importance, because the place he'd chosen was among a group of large boulders in a slight hollow overhung by pines. Working quickly, Walker found a series of fallen treelimbs that, with Matthew's help, he placed overhead in a criss-cross pattern between a pair of the largest rocks. Smaller branches and handfuls of pine needles were then spread across this makeshift roof to provide further shelter from the drizzling rain. Matthew had no qualms about getting wet tonight, but he was appreciative of any measure of comfort.

Walker wasn't finished with their camp, though, for as soon as the shelter was done he went to work preparing a fire using broken-up pine needles and small bits of pine bark and papery white birch bark that were as dry as he could find. The tinder was sparked by not the rubbing of two sticks together, which Matthew had expected, but by the method any English trapper or leatherstocking might have used, the striking of a flint and a small piece of steel. Walker worked intently but patiently, adding more bark and then broken branches to the little tongues of flame. Soon, they had a not unrespectable fire and a decent amount of warmth.

The Indian had previously shed his bow and quiver, as well as his fringed knife belt and his rawhide bag. He sat with his back against a boulder, warming his hands, and then he opened the bag and removed from it a fist-sized, black and oily-looking hunk of dried meat. He sliced some off with his blade and gave it to Matthew, who didn't particularly care if it was beef, venison, bear meat or beaver tail. and it might have been beaver tail, for its pungence, but it was chewy in the mouth and went down just as well as brisket at Sally almond's. Walker ate some, cut Matthew another piece and himself a second, and then returned the rest of it to the bag.

"Is that alli" Matthew asked.

"It's enough."

Now Matthew knew why the man was so thin. But even though Matthew was still famished, there was no asking for anymore, and that was that. Now that he'd had some time to sit and stretch his legs out, he wondered if he could ever stand up again. Truly, the morning was going to bring a battle of mind over matter. Sitting in the warmth and the orange light, he felt how very tired he was, how very near the edge of absolute collapse. Yet he knew also that when he closed his eyes he would see the carnage in John Burton's cabin again, and hear the buzzing of the flies.

True to his claim, Walker had found the crushed place in the thicket where abernathy's mare had thrown Slaughter. The Indian had knelt down and found Slaughter's tracks among the dead leaves, and had announced to Matthew that their quarry was heading into the deeper woods on a southwesterly course. Probably wanted to avoid the road for awhile, Matthew reasoned; at least until a few miles had been put between himself, the constable and the men who were after his skin. Matthew assumed Slaughter would either veer his course to meet the road further ahead or might find some other backwoods route to Philadelphia.

"We go at first light," Walker said as he added a few more small broken sticks to the fire. "By that, I mean we're moving at first light."

"I understand."

Walker stared at him, his face impassive. "You did well today."

"For an Englishmani"

"Yes."

"Thank you," Matthew answered. Whether he would do so well tomorrow was another question entirely.

"We might catch up with him in the afternoon, if we're fast and he's slow. I had hoped he might have been injured in his fall, but he's not limping."

"Too bad," Matthew mumbled. It was all he could do to keep his eyes from sliding shut.

"Yes, unfortunate for us. But he didn't get the horse." Walker arranged the cloak around himself. "Listen to me, Matthew."

an urgent note in the man's voice made Matthew push back the dark.

"I'm going to sleep now. My demons will find me. You are not to awaken me, no matter what you hear. Don't touch me. Do you understand thati"

"Yes."

Walker said no more, but curled up beneath his cloak and for all intents and purposes disappeared within its folds.

Matthew sat up for a minute or two longer, until his chin dropped upon his chest. The fire still burned, its warmth soothing. Matthew stretched out alongside the flames, listening to the soft crackling of the wood and the softer sound of rain upon the shelter's roof. Behind his closed eyes he did again see the bloody horror of Reverend Burton's cabin, the broken dog and Tom's battered face, but the worst was that he saw in his mind's eye Slaughter out there in the night somewhere, going on and on, mile after mile, a monster moving across fields of carnage.

Then, mercifully, he dropped into sleep as off a precipice.

He woke up just as suddenly.

and lay there, very still, drowsy and fogged, listening to the night.

Far off, an owl hooted. Once, again, and a third time.

The rain had stopped, he thought. He couldn't hear it falling any longer.

The owl hooted once more. The same one or anotheri It seemed to be from a different direction, and nearer to their camp.

Matthew opened his sleep-swollen eyes. The fire had burned down to the red-glowing embers. and then from beneath Walker's cloak came that keening cry again, rising up to end in what might have been a gasp of breath or a plea for mercy. There followed a period of silence, and then the cry rose up, grew ragged and hoarse and became in its last tortured notes a strangled moan.

The owl spoke. Walker was silent, but Matthew could hear the quickness of his breathing, as if he were running from something he knew he could not possibly escape.

Matthew gave an involuntary shiver. The night was colder, with the fire's dying. He carefully and quietly reached out to grasp a few of the broken sticks Walker had gathered to feed the flames, and as he dropped them upon the embers one of them gave a crack, a polite sound, nothing harsh, just a sound that might have been the trod of a stealthy boot amid the pines.

The dark green cloak whipped up. Startled speechless, Matthew looked into the face of the damned.

The skin seemed to have further tightened around Walker's skull, its pressure so intense that it had caused him to bare his teeth in anguish. Sweat sparkled on his forehead and cheeks. The thin slits of his eyes were fixed directly on Matthew, but then again they had an unfocused quality, a nightmare glaze about them, and so perhaps they could be just as much looking through Matthew at some distant vision as at him. He was up on one knee, his body quivering.

Matthew saw the gleam of the knife in the newborn firelight, and suddenly in a blur of motion the blade was right there at Matthew's neck.

"Walker," Matthew said firmly. He dared not move. The Indian's face came toward him, as if to make out whose visage was floating like an orange lamp in the dark. "Walker," Matthew said again, and this time his voice cracked and betrayed him. "I'm not one of your demons."

Walker's eyes searched his face. The seconds passed. and then Matthew saw the madness leave him, like a blanket of crows rising from a bleak field. It was there one second, and the next it had broken apart and whirled away and nothing was left but the memory of black wings beating the air.

Walker sat back on his haunches and looked at the knife in his hand. Matthew, as weary as he was, doubted he'd be getting back to sleep anytime soon. He sat up, rubbed his throat where the blade had threatened to cut him a dead man's grin, and stared into the fire as if to find in it some picture of comfort.

"ah," said Walker, his voice tired and raspy. He slid the knife back into its holder on the fringed belt. "Now you know."

"Know whati"

"Why I have no wife, and why I am unlikely to ever have a wife."

"That's happened beforei"

"Several times, in your land. Of course, they never let me have a knife. But I did try to attack some of the ladies who accepted me. It happened only once, here, but once was enough." Walker kept his head down, shamed by his lack of control. "You can imagine my " He thought for a word again, and Matthew decided that in these times of hesitation Walker was trying to recall words he had learned but that he didn't have much need to use and so had nearly forgotten. "Popularity," he finished.

Matthew nodded. "What do you dream abouti" he asked. Walker was silent. "Is it so terrible to speak ofi"

For a time Walker did not answer. He picked up a few sticks, broke them between his fingers and put them into the fire one after the other. "My demons show me things," he said at last. "Things only demons would be cruel enough to show a human being."

"That's saying a lot while not saying very much," Matthew observed. "What do they show you, exactlyi"

"The end of the world," Walker answered, and he let that linger before he continued. "That is to say, the end of my world. Yours will go on, but you might wish someday-someday-that it would not."

"I don't understand."

Walker opened his rawhide bag that held the dried meat as well as the flint and steel, and from it he brought a familiar object: the broken silver watch. He placed it in the palm of his left hand, and occasionally gazed at it as if to ascertain whether it was still lifeless or not.

"When I was eleven years old," Walker began, "a group of Englishmen came to our village, with a guide who spoke our tongue. Rich-looking men, they were. Wearing great cloaks and feathered hats. They brought bags of gifts with them. Bundles of bright cloth, glass bottles, bead necklaces and bracelets, woolen caps and the like. They were certainly rich men, and they wanted us to know it. They brought the chief's daughter a clay doll with blonde hair; I remember that very clearly, because all the children crowded around it wanting to see. and then these men said that they wished something for their gifts, and it would benefit both them and the tribe. They said they wanted three children, to take back with them across the dark divide, to show them what the world called England was like, and the great King's city of London."

"The agreement was made," said Walker, as he watched the fire burn. "To pick three children, and see them off on one of the flying canoe clouds that rested on the waters of Philadelphia. Nimble Climber was chosen, Pretty Girl Who Sits alone was another, and I was the third." He glanced at Matthew. "Back then, I was called He Runs Fast Too. My father is He Runs Fast. You met him. He and my younger brothers took your friend out of the well. He doesn't run quite so fast now, but he still gets around."

"For that I'm grateful," Matthew replied.

"It would please him to hear it, but not from me, since he and I no longer speak. I am a source of great shame to him, being insane."

"Insane howi Because you have bad dreamsi"

"Let me go on. We three children, and the tribe, were told we would see the world of England and the city of London for ourselves and when we were returned-within two years-we would be able to explain to our people what we had witnessed. In hopes, the men said, of forming closer ties as brothers. But you'll note in my story that the men wanted only children, and there was a reason for that." Walker nodded, his eyes still directed to the fire. "Children are so much easier to handle. They're so trusting, so unaware."

"You mean the men didn't do as they saidi"

"We were taken to England, yes." a muscle worked in his jaw as if he were chewing bitter hardtack. "What a journey that was. and all that time, through heavy seas and sickness, knowing your home is falling further and further away behind you, and to get back home you have to come the same way again. My soul withers at the memory of that trip. How you English do it again and again, I'll never know."

Matthew managed a faint smile. "Maybe we're a bit insane, too."

"You would have to be. But I suppose that's the nature of all men. To be a bit insane, for a purpose or a cause." Walker turned the watch over in his hand, and ran his fingers across the silver. "Nimble Climber did not survive the trip. The sailors began a wagering game, betting how fast he could get up the rigging to fetch a gull feather fixed to the mast with a leather strap. and they kept putting it higher and higher. The captain warned them to stop, and the gentlemen who were travelling with us forbade it but an Indian boy of nine years can't be stoppered in a bottle, or locked below a deck. They were paying him with peppermint candies. He had one in his mouth when he fell. and when I stood beside Pretty Girl and looked at him lying on the deck, I thought of the clay doll with the blonde hair, and I hoped it didn't break as easily as Nimble Climber."

One of the owls hooted a few times, far off in the woods. Walker listened to it, his head tilted to the side as if hearing the sweetest music. "When we reached England," he said, "I stood on the deck in the dawn light looking at a forest of flying canoe clouds around us. Ships, of course. Hundreds of them, it seemed. all shapes and sizes. I thought how many men must there be in this world, to have made all those canoesi It was an incredible view, one I shall never forget. and then directly when we left our ship Pretty Girl Who Sits alone was taken away by two men. I held onto her hand as long as I could, but they pulled us apart. They put her in a horse box. a coach. She was carried off, somewhere. I never found out. Some men put me into another coach, and I was not to see my people again for almost ten years. When they finally were done with me, and let me go home, I was insane."

"When they were done with youi" Matthew asked. "What happenedi"

"I became a star," the Indian replied, with his own wistful smile. "a celebrity, I think is the word. I was dressed up in feathers and animal skins, with a golden crown on my head, and put upon the London stage. The signs out front advertised me as the 'Noble Young Savage', or 'Jonathan Redskin'. The plays-I was in several, over a number of years-were all the same: romantic dramas pitting the gallant Englishmen against the wicked or misguided savages, building to the moment when I stepped upon the stage and with sign language alerted the hero to the oncoming attack. Some such thing. as time went on and I grew older, the novelty of my stoic silence wore off, and I was required to speak a few lines. I remember one: Beware the wrath of the Iroquois, as they shall strip your scalps " He frowned, searching for the rest of it. " as surely as the locust strips the cornplants, yonder in the field." He solemnly raised his right hand, toward the paper cornplants in the painted field.

Matthew thought that the low firelight might indeed pass for the footlamps. On the boulder behind Walker his shadow was thrown as upon a canvas backdrop. "and that was enough to drive you insanei Playing a part on the stagei"

"No, not that. In fact, it was a very interesting experience. I was tended to, fed and watered very well, and I was taught your language by some very capable teachers. People came to see me by the hundreds. The thousands, I suppose. I was shown off at garden parties and in grand ballrooms. I was may I say the object of affection from a few daring ladies. But that was then. Later when first a new Indian was brought to the stage, and then another, and another yet Jonathan Redskin's days of valor were numbered. I was cast as the villain in a new play, which served to prolong my career, but the truth was I could not act. My finest scene was a death sprawl, in which I lay motionless at center stage for three minutes with my eyes open. But I was no longer a boy, and I was no longer a sensation. I was simply one of many."

Walker paused to add a few more sticks to the fire. "One of many," he repeated. "In a foreign land." He took a long breath and let it slowly out. "I was sold," he said flatly. "To another acting company. They toured the countryside. I was required to do the same as I had done, in town halls, pastures, barns and warehouses. Wherever we might set up. Of course the people flocked in, to see oh, I was called 'The Savage adam' that time around. Things were good for awhile, but soon there was always another Savage adam, it seemed, who had just passed that way and played a week's engagement. In one village I was accused of being an Englishman in makeup, because I'd spoken to a man there who thought my speech was too civilized. So I was sold again. and sold again, about a year after that. Then, sold once more within six months. Until at last " He looked directly at Matthew. "Have you ever seen a mishap of naturei"

"a mishapi"

"a person," Walker corrected, "who is a mishap of nature. a malformed human being. a dwarf, or a man with claw hands, or a woman with three arms. a boy who sweats blood. Have you ever seen any of thosei"

"No," Matthew replied, though he could certainly relate to any boy who sweated blood.

"I was the Demon Indian," said Walker, in a quiet, faraway voice. "The Lucifer of the New World. The sign on my cage said so. The red paint on my face, the horns on my head those said so, too. and Mr. Oxley, the show's owner-poor old drunken Mr. Oxley-told me to make sure I rattled the bars of my cage, to throw myself against them, and holler and growl like a fiend from Hell. Some nights I had part of a chicken to gnaw upon. Then when the people had gone, I came out of my cage and took off my horns and all of us-all of us mishaps of nature-packed up to go to the next town. and there stood Mr. Oxley with his silver watch-very much like this one-telling everyone to hurry, telling everyone that tomorrow night in Guildford there was a fortune to be made, or the next night in Winchester, or the night after that in Salisbury. He said, hurry there! Hurry up! He said we had to hurry, through the night along the little roads, because time was wasting, because time was money, and because time never stops for an Englishman."

Walker turned the watch in his hands. "Mr. Oxley," he said, "hurried himself to his death. He was already worn out. It was the gin that finished him off. The rest of us divided what money we had and that was the end of the show. I dressed in my English suit, went to Portsmouth and bought passage on a ship. I came home. I went back to my people. But I brought my insanity and my demons with me, and they will never let me be."

"I still don't understand what you mean."

Walker closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again. "From the first moment I saw the city of London," he said, "the demons came to me. They began their whispering in my ear, day and night. In my dreams I see them as high-collared Englishmen with gold coins and jewels in their fists. They have eyes like fire-pits, and they say, Look upon what will be. all those buildings, roads, coaches, and people. a hundred thousand chimneys, spouting black smoke. all that noise, like the beating of great drums that you can never find nor understand. all that confusion, and constant rushing like mad human rivers. The demons whispered: this is the future. Of everywhere. Not only of the English New York, and Philadelphia, and of every town the English build upon the earth. But for the Seneca, or the Mohawk, or any of my nation there will be no place left, among all those buildings and roads and noise. Oh, we'll fight for a place, yes, but we won't win. That's what my demons tell me; that's what they've shown me, and to make me insane they have ensured that no other of my tribe will believe it, because it is beyond belief. The world will be strange. My nation will no longer be part of it. all we have created all that is important to us gone, under the buildings and the roads, and all we hear will be lost to the noise."

He looked at Matthew and nodded. "Don't think you shall escape it. Someday you'll see your world and not know it, and think it strange monstrous, even. and you and your Englishmen will yearn for what was lost, and never be able to find it again, for that is the demon's trick. To point the way forward, but to close the way back."

Matthew ventured, "I suppose that's called progress."

"There is progress," Walker agreed, "and there is rushing toward an illusion. The first takes wisdom and a plan, the second can be done by any drunken fool. I know how that story ends." He regarded the watch again. "I will think of Mr. Oxley whenever I look at this. I will think of him hurrying through the night, toward a fortune that never existed, with a wagon full of mishaps of nature. and I will think that the greatest thing for a man-and maybe the hardest thing-is to make peace with the passage of time. Or the stopping of his own time." He returned the watch to the bag, and gathered up his cloak, his bow and quiver, and the belt with his knife. "It's not raining anymore. I'll find another place."

"You can stay here."

"No, I can't. I won't be far away, though. I believe we have four or five hours before light, so there's still plenty of time to sleep. Take it while you can."

"all right. Thank you." It was all Matthew could think to say. He watched as Walker strode off into the dark beyond the fire, which seemed a familiar place for the Indian to be. at last Matthew lay down and tried his best to relax, if that would ever be possible again. But weariness is weariness, after all, and slowly he began to drift off. His last sense of anything was hearing the voice of a nightbird far away in the woods, which stirred some memory that did not linger, but departed on silent wings.