Into the Wilderness (120 page)

It
hit him, then. "God Almighty. The court date."

"Yes,"
she said. "Tomorrow."

They
stared at each other for a moment.

Bears
said: "Maybe nobody needs to go. If Richard don't show up, the suit
against you gets dropped. That's what van der Poole said, wasn't it?"

"But
what if Richard is there?" Elizabeth said. "He could be."

"Then
I'll have to go." Nathaniel said. "If I leave now and ride hard I can
be there in time."

"You
cannot go," Elizabeth cried. "The men here will take justice into
their own hands if you are not there to stop them."

There
was a small silence, and she pulled herself up and looked him hard in the eye. "I
promised Liam."

"Does
it matter if Billy Kirby dies tonight or next week in
Albany
? Is it worth losing the mountain
over?" Nathaniel shot back, exasperated.

"Bears
can go and explain. If Richard is there, perhaps the judge will postpone again
when he hears what has happened."

"They
wouldn't let me in the courthouse," Bears said, presenting a simple fact.

Elizabeth
threw up her hands and her voice came hoarse, with effort or suppressed tears
or anger, Nathaniel could not tell. "Then I will go."

"No,"
Nathaniel said flatly. "You will not."

"Wait,"
said Bears, turning to Elizabeth. "You write a letter for the judge, I'll
take it to Schuyler, and he can go in your place."

Nathaniel's
stomach gave a lurch, a knot of anxiety unraveling. Elizabeth was lifting her skirts
and turning toward the cabin already. "I'll write as quickly as I
can," she said, and she was off, disappearing quickly in the darkness.
Nathaniel watched her go, and then he turned to Bears.

"It
may be a hard ride for no reason," he said. "I doubt Richard is
anywhere near Albany."

Runs-from-Bears
shrugged. His expression was blank, but his tone was hard—edged. "You
watch out for that treasury agent," he said. "He's too curious about
the north face."

Nathaniel
nodded, his thoughts moving away already and up the mountain. He grasped Bears
by the lower arm and then took off into the forest.

* * *

He
knew the mountain as well as he knew the cabin in which he had been born and
raised, as well as he knew the textures and planes of his daughter's face. It
was Hannah's face Nathaniel carried with him through the dark, the look in her
eyes when he pulled her through the schoolhouse window. He had rocked her while
she wept and sobbed and coughed, rocked her as he hoped her mother might have
rocked her, murmuring to her wordlessly. Unable to console her, Nathaniel had
wished for Elizabeth to help him with this, and looked up to see her flying
toward them, with Many-Doves and Falling—Day just behind. Just then Julian had
come bolting out of the schoolhouse with his hair on fire, to be knocked to the
ground by Bears.

The
sight of him had seemed to give Hannah a voice.

"I
tried to get out," she hiccuped. "The smell of it woke me up, and so
I tried. But it was locked. The door was locked."

Nathaniel
had known real rage only a few times in his life. On the battlefield he had
made his acquaintance with the pure, focused fury that lifted a man above fear.
It had come to him again, seeing what Lingo had done to
Elizabeth
and knowing that the man was beyond
a reckoning. As he walked toward the Southerns' cabin with Hannah in his arms,
the same kind of jagged, razor—edged rage overcame him. Billy Kirby had set the
schoolhouse to burning and locked the door.

He
had to ask. "Did he see you? Hannah, did Billy see you?"

She
trembled against him. "I don't know," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes
now. She had cried herself dry. He could almost feel the tension in her flowing
out and away; she seemed heavier now, looser in his arms. Falling—Day came up
and he passed the child over to her, following them into the cabin to have his
wounds tended. Thinking not of his own injuries, or the daughter who still
needed comforting, or his wife, who went pale and straight—backed to her
brother's deathbed, but of Billy Kirby, and how right it would feel to put a
rifle up against the man's head and pull the trigger.

Running
this mountain in the near total dark was not nearly as hard as it was going to
be to keep his promise to
Elizabeth
.

Nathaniel
pushed hard uphill, pausing only to listen. Twice he heard search parties and
saw lanterns, not too far off. He kept his own counsel, not because he didn't
need their help, but because he couldn't afford their company. Not where he
needed to go.

* * *

On
the edge of a ravine on a slope so steep that he could stand straight and chew
grass if he chose, Nathaniel caught a flash of movement above him. The wolves
who made this side of the mountain their own were watching him, eyes reflecting
red in the moonlight. It was a good sign.

He
skittered over a shoulder of scree accumulated over many years, feeling it
shift beneath him. Paying attention to the mountain now, because the mountain
was paying attention to him. The Wolf would toss him into the void like a
bucking horse if he let his mind wander. When the moon was lost behind cloud
cover he came to a halt and waited, because he had no choice. An owl called in
the darkness and nearby, a nightjar seemed to answer.

Stopping
often to listen, Nathaniel made his way along a narrow cliff and past the
silver mine. From what he could see through the tangle of juniper that grew out
of the cracks in the rock face, nothing had been disturbed; there were no
obvious tracks, although daylight might tell a different story. You could walk
past the spot a thousand times and never guess what was there: not just the
silver mine, tended so carefully these many years, but the strongbox that
Chingachgook had brought out of the bush back in '57, and the rest of the Tory
Gold.

Nathaniel
continued on up through the pines, switching back and forth where the incline
was too much for him. There was the deadfall, a hundred years and more of wood
downed by storm and wind, as dangerous as any bear trap. The cave was just
above him, but before that there was a cliff face he didn't dare scale in the night.
The long way around took him a good hour at a steady climb, until finally he
could look down on the cave. Under an outcropping of rock he hunkered down, to
wait and to think.

He
had played in the cave as a boy, hid there when he wanted to be on his own.
Right now Billy might be looking at the elk and deer he had drawn on the walls
with a burnt stick. His father had shown the cave to him when he was ten; he
would do the same for Hannah, when she was surefooted enough for the narrow
ridge that led to it. If they were still here. If they could still call Hidden
Wolf home. It seemed more and more likely to him these days that they might
actually lose the mountain, or simply walk away from it. Once he would have
sacrificed his own life to secure his daughter's birthright, but just yesterday
he had learned that the cost of staying might be too high.

In
the dark Nathaniel could not see the smoke rising from the mouth of the cave,
but he could smell it, along with roasting possum. Kirby was in there; he was
keeping himself warm and dry. With his rifle across his knees, primed and
ready, Nathaniel waited for Billy to show his face, or for the dawn when he
could go in after him. Whichever came first.

* * *

Just
before sunrise he made his move. From one side, he tossed in a torch, swung his
rifle up and went in with his finger testy on the trigger. It wasn't any
struggle at all: Billy simply got up wearily, dropped his gun, and stood
staring at the floor.

"You
ready to go?" Nathaniel asked.

Billy
raised his head and Nathaniel saw the ruined mouth and the flash of dark
resistance in his eyes. It took nothing more than a tap of the rifle stock on
the jaw to stop his lunge and toss him down. He clasped both hands to his face,
bent himself into a bow and howled.

"Shut
up," Nathaniel said. "If you don't want Axel and the rest of them on
your tail."

Spit
and blood ran down between Billy's fingers as he peered up at Nathaniel.

"Call
'em in," he said hoarsely, his torn mouth working in odd jerks. "Maybe
I can strike a deal."

And
he reached under the blanket that lay in a heap on the dirt floor and came up
not with the knife Nathaniel had half expected, but fists full of gold coin.

"Call
'em in!" Billy shouted. "Where's that treasury agent? O'Brien!"

He
coughed and laughed, and tossed the coins in the air. They clinked and rolled
on the ground; Nathaniel kept his eyes on Billy.

"The
judge will want to see that mine," Billy said, wiping his chin with the
back of a hand. "Nice little piece of work it is, too."

"The
judge is busy burying his son."

For a
moment the certainty in Billy's face wavered, and then it cleared. "You're
lying."

Nathaniel
shook his head.

"But
not in the fire." Billy's voice cracked and wobbled. "That wasn't the
idea at all."

"What
was the idea?"

Billy
just stared at him.

"We'll
head down to the village and ask, if you don't believe me."

"You
can't afford to take me down there."

"It's
you that stinks of fire and spilled blood," Nathaniel said. "Get
up."

Suddenly
much paler, Billy said: "You'll have to hand that gold over to the
treasury."

"What
gold?" Nathaniel said. "By the time they get back up here, there
won't be any gold. They'll think it's a story you made up, desperate to save
your hide."

Billy
stood up slowly. "The judge will take the mine away from you."

"And
if he did," Nathaniel said, "
Elizabeth
is his only heir now." He pushed the idea of Kitty and her newborn son out
of his head. "We'd get it back in the end. So let's you and me go on down
there and ask him what sits worse, the loss of a mine he never knew he had, or
the loss of his son."

"You're
lying!" Billy whispered.

"Am
I? Let's go find out."

* * *

He
made Billy shake out his boots and strip down to the skin, losing a few gold
pieces along the way. Then Nathaniel let him dress again and he prodded him out
of the cave at the end of his rifle. His face was as calm and impassive as he
knew how to make it, but his mind was racing. There was no one who could come
take the gold off the mountain now; Bears was gone to Albany, and none of the
women were strong enough to manage the strongbox. He wasn't even sure he could
handle it on his own, half empty as it was.

On
the cliff edge Billy hesitated in the first rays of the rising sun. Squinting,
he glanced up at the sky, and then over the gorge below. He scuffed with one
toe and a cascade of pebbles disappeared.

"Gotta
piss."

Nathaniel
waited.

"Aren't
you going to ask about your brother?"

Billy's
head jerked around, surprised. "What about him?"

"You
don't know if he's alive or dead," Nathaniel pointed out.

Billy
shrugged, pulling his breeches back into order. "I was beat harder than
that once a week when our folks was alive," he said. "Never killed
me. No other way to knock sense into a thick head, Pa always said." He ran
a hand over his jaw and winced. "Anyway, they can only hang me once. That
is, if Julian really died in the fire."

Nathaniel
blinked at him and said nothing, feeling the rage rising in his gorge.

"Stupid
bastard, to go in there," Billy muttered.

"Maybe,"
said Nathaniel, watching closely. "Maybe there was something worth saving
inside."

Billy
studied his boots.

Nathaniel's
rifle hummed in his hands, speaking to him. He gripped it hard and focused on
what he could see of Billy's face, bruised and bloody. To the right the sun was
rising in colors of fire. Ahead of him was the wilderness. Somewhere out there
his father was living rough, because of Billy Kirby. And there was Liam—alone
in the world, except for this man. The world narrowed down to this, everything
in the balance because of a man like this.

"Why'd
you lock the door?" Nathaniel asked, hearing his own voice low and even
and far away.

The
shaggy blond head came up slowly. A struggle on his face, the bruised mouth
puckered. The expression of a man weighing bragging rights against the little
bit of common sense he called his own.

"It's
like Pa always said." Billy cocked his head to look out over the
wilderness. "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing all the way."

"That's
damn good advice," Nathaniel said, and his rifle stock took Billy in the
gut and shoved him backward. There was an explosive grunt of air, Billy's eyes
bulging with the shock of it. Nathaniel watched his arms pinwheel once, twice,
and there was a furious scrabble and shuddering of loose rock as his boots
skittered over the edge. He flung himself forward to grab at the rifle barrel,
Nathaniel's shirt, his legs, the fringe on his moccasins. Then the cliff edge
snapped off in his hands with a crack like bone breaking—
like Liam's bones breaking
—and Billy Kirby fell a hundred screaming
yards to strike the cliff face headfirst, fell again, silently now, to strike
again, careening down the mountainside until he was lost in a vast sea of
juniper and hemlock.