Lost Nation (51 page)

Cooper turned to Sally and rose up silent on his elbow and leaned to look down at her. Their eyes open to each other. He said nothing. Just looking. Then sagged enough to kiss her forehead. Her eyes lost him a moment as he did this and then found him again as he lifted away from her. Then without speaking he slipped from the blanket covers and walked out to his brother.

“Fletcher,” he warned low.

Fletcher didn’t move at all, still peering into the dark beyond the near-dead fire. He said, “I heard you coming.”

“It’s time to trade.”

“I heard you wake up.”

Cooper stood behind his brother. He said, “I knew you did.” He moved forward and lifted the pistol and said, “You got to sleep some.”

“I can’t.”

“I slept a little,” Cooper admitted. “It idn’t easy. But, even if you just lay down, rest yourself some, you’ll be happy for it come morning.”

They were quiet a time. The one still seated, the other standing. Finally Cooper said, “What I’m going to do. Is walk out and pee. I come back, I want to see you stretched out under the blankets. You hear me.”

Fletcher gazed into the fire.

Cooper stepped past his brother into the dark. Then he turned back and was facing into the tent. Sally could see his face. He wasn’t looking at her. He reached his free hand and placed it on his brother’s good shoulder. He stood silent like that. Sally lay watching, privileged. It was a passage of time all three took part in, each connected and each alone. Then Cooper took his hand away and went out into the night. Fletcher sat a time and then swung around on the stone to face into the tent. He saw she was awake and turned away to study the dark night briefly before looking back at her.

“You want me in there?”

She nodded. And then was unsure if he could see or read such a trifling gesture in the dark. “Yes,” she said. “I surely do.”

He looked away again into the night and then in a rough hard hitch came up from his rock and paused for balance. Stretching his legs on tiptoe and shifting his lower back side to side. Then came in toward her. He was barefoot, just in breeches and bandages. As he came she reached and opened the blankets for him.

Men, alone or in small groups, melted along the trails. Oft going tree-shadow to tree-shadow. Watching the moon caught in the eastern treetops. Those with horses walked ahead, leading their mounts, a single hand draped behind to clutch tight the reins below the bit to keep the horse from surging. In such silence as the slippery wet frost-thickened land would allow. All in convergence.

* * *

It was still full dark when Blood awoke. Sudden. From deep sleep to blunt swift clarity. He lay alert not moving for a moment. Impossible to know if he’d been asleep for hours or twenty minutes. Then from the woods beyond the back of the tavern came a single note of a thrush, warning the night. He rose slow, stiff, and groped for the goad left against the wall, found it and supported himself. The day loomed, less a promise than the night before and he told himself this was just waking—some movement to limber him and some tea and he’d be in as fine a mettle as could be hoped. Just thinking this improved him so he made his way to the hearth, stirred the fire for hot coals and tipped split wood onto the mound. He pulled the crane out and peered at the kettle where only a skim of water rested on the bottom. He turned to the table and took up the bucket and it too was empty. So skip the tea or haul water? It wasn’t even a question—the fire was up and a stomach of hot tea would carry him farther than one empty.

He took up the bucket and goad and at the door had his hand on the bar when he paused and set the bucket on the floor, returned to the table and slid one of the horse pistols through the belt of his trousers. Back to the bucket and door. He took the bar away and stepped out.

It was lightening, a rare morning, cool but clear and lacking the usual fog from the lake. It would be a fine day. He went across the hard ridges of mud-frozen yard to the stream and let himself down the bank to kneel with his bad leg stretched and filled the bucket. Back up the bank to level ground and paused to steady himself, the weight of the bucket pulling at his left side. The oxen in the barn heard him and crooned for him and he reminded himself to go cut them free before he left. Again, almost a portent, he missed the dog.

A half-dozen men came like wraiths from the clump of sumac and alder and fanned before him, all armed, gray in the dawn. He did not pause to learn faces or consider speech but underhanded threw the bucket which sent an arch of river water over two of the men, a silver thing almost solid in the dim light, the bucket striking hard the stomach of a third as Blood drew out the pistol and shot one of the men closest. The impact broke open his chest and brilliant crimson blood spattered the air as the man went down. Blood already moving forward, his legs both working as he gripped the goad a third of the way down and jabbed hard a face, then swung it sideways to crack ribs and jabbed up again, knocking away
a rifle. There was one man dead and two down and others scrambling. A rifle was fired and he heard the peculiar extraordinary suck of air as the ball passed his head. He ducked and came up with the goad and struck again and again, holding it now by the end and swinging it as a flail. He was frenzied and the oxen in their stalls were bellowing. Then he realized it was himself bellowing. The men remaining before him fell away, feinting toward the goad but backing away. He lunged and struck once more and saw a split open across a man’s face and then Blood turned and ran. Ran still bellowing across the yard and made the door and did not shut it but on hard for the table, grabbed up the other pistol and turned to face the door behind him. It was empty.

He advanced slowly, going around the table along the wall toward the door by degrees and the yard revealed itself. He could see two men down, the one shot and one of the others he’d struck. A couple of men leaned over them. When he appeared in the doorway a rifle went off and he dodged back but heard the bullet strike the log wall outside the door. He stepped back into the door and sighted the horse pistol at the two men over their comrades. He fired and heard a yelp and again a rifle fired. He stepped back and kicked the door shut and got the bar up.

He was panting and his lungs ached and there was powder burn under one eye but his leg didn’t hurt at all. He went to the table and recharged both pistols. Then stood thinking. That last rifle fired, that had not been either of the men still standing. Or the shot before that. It could be the other two or three but them he imagined back in the bushes. He’d caused some harm with the goad. What it was, he decided, was more than what he saw. More men beyond that initial handful. And clear as sight he saw more on the way.

His first thought was he’d missed it. That yesterday he should’ve loaded himself before going up the trail to the marsh to warn the children. And gone from there in the last golden light of day off into the woods where all he needed was the sun or stars to lead him.

Aloud he said, “Fuck these bastards. Let em come.” There was not a man among them equal to him on his worst day. Blood was far from his worst day. He left his loaded weapons on the table and went to the tavern and cursed the locked storeroom and the lost-forever keys but worked the fullest of the hogsheads from the counter and rolled it
across the floor and through the doorway where he bent and heaved to push it upright and press against the door—a barricade of weight against the bar already in place.

He pulled the ladder to his loft away from the wall and went up to push back the trap door and back down for his long rifle and the horse pistols and the pouches of powder and shot. Working without hurry but steady, focused. He wanted everything laid out beside him. He built up the fire so the heat would rise and warm the loft. Last thing he took the kettle and filled it with coals so he would have fire to light the match-fuses for the small cannon. If he needed it. He doubted he would. It was the only way to think.

In the loft he stretched on the floor and listened. His leg throbbing now, a bright cry of his body to keep him fully alert. He wouldn’t open the gunport until he had to. Until he did, no one outside would know where he was. So he sat listening to the wrinkle of the stream and the fluting birdsong of morning. Beyond that, under it, he heard the lilt and tilt of voices. Once the bristled cry of a horse greeting another and the curse and slap of a man stilling the horse. Blood grinned. He thought You out there. You’re already out of surprise.

At the marsh they were up and moving about to break camp and load the horses when they heard the gunfire, clear as if it were at the edge of the marsh in the unmoving morning air. A smattering of barrage, then silence then three final shots, spaced evenly each a breath apart. All three looked to the others, halted in their tasks.

“That was right down to the stream,” Fletcher said.

“No,” Cooper said. “That was to the tavern.”

Sally said, “Oh. No.”

Both boys looked at her, not speaking what each thought.

Cooper said, “All right. What we got to do. Is keep right on. Make sure everything is packed tight just how we want it. The last thing we need is to tear off down there and have something come loose or forget where something is.”

“I’m ready,” said Fletcher.

Cooper turned to him. “Well good for you. Now you can just double-check yourself and we’ll all be set.”

Sally said, “I’m most ready also.”

Fletcher said, “I’m riding down there.” He turned and caught up the reins of his horse and turned his back to mount when Cooper took him by the shoulder. Fletcher turned.

Cooper said, “You given any thoughts to how a one-armed boy’ll ride in to whatever it is and be much good?”

Fletcher stood silent.

Cooper nodded. He said, “Just check your rigging one last time. Make sure your knots is tight. Let that horse get the wind from his belly and I’ll cinch that saddle one more notch. All right?”

“All right.”

Cooper turned so he addressed Fletcher and Sally at once. “We got three guns between us. I figure we ride down close by, then Fletcher and I’ll ride ahead and scout it. We got no idear however many men there is. If Father’s dead they’ll all be congregated at the tavern I expect. But if he idn’t, men could be strung out a ways. So each one of us gets a gun. I’ll take a long rifle since I can ride and shoot and load at the same time. That fancy pistol will do Fletcher more good than a long gun.” He looked at Sally. “You can handle a rifle?”

“Blood showed me. But I ain’t about to set back hiding while you fellers ride in.”

Cooper said, “You’re looking at it wrong. We ain’t planning to hide you out. Just you set up the road a piece and let us see what’s there. If Fletcher and me run into trouble, we’re heading right back up that road. Where you’ll be waiting.”

She turned and finished tightening her bundle on the cantle. Then without looking swung up onto the bay. She reined the horse in a sharp circle to calm it and brought it up short. “I don’t like it,” she said. “But there idn’t time to argue it.” Cooper studied her a pause as if she complied too easily. She met that gaze. He handed up the rifle and the pouches.

Fletcher mounted also. Once up he said, “Pass me the pistol.”

Cooper took up the pistol, checked the charge and handed it to Fletcher. Who said, “Pass me up the axe too. I want it.”

Cooper looked at him. “How do you expect to carry it?”

“That’s my business.”

Cooper took the axe from where it leaned against a young beech and handed it up. Fletcher took the pistol for a moment between his teeth and
used his free hand to rein tight the horse and transferred the reins to his bound-up hand, wrapping them hard and knotting them onto his wrist. So he could guide the horse no-handed. He took the axe by the heft under the head and gripped it in the same hand as held the reins. So the long handle rode down along his right leg and the bit of the axe was riding on the knuckles of his right hand. Where he could get it easy with his left hand. He reached up and took the pistol from his mouth and said, “I got every intention of being a warrior if it’s called for.” His face grim.

Cooper then mounted his own horse and took a last look about the camp. He held the long rifle across his chest, crooked in the elbow of his reining hand. He turned to the others and said, “We ride down slow and look sharp all the way. Nobody hurries. All right?”

Sally said, “Let’s go.”

Fletcher said, “You lead us brother. Set the pace.”

It was quiet in the loft. Less quiet outside. Blood straining hard to hear. From time to time he heard a murmur of exchange, once the splash and curse of a man misstepping a rock in the stream, the ring of metal as a rifle barrel struck another, even the slithery wet swipe of a ramrod driving home a charge. The muffled snorts of horses and the creak of leather as a man stepped either off or onto a horse. He was far from alone but the men outside, impossible to number, had at least one dead and some wounded to consider. However many there were of them, Blood imagined they considered the tavern a considerable daunt. Briefly he worried they’d consider fire and then ruled it out—they were men after all and their grudge against him would be measured hard against greed for his stores. So far he considered himself in the superior position.

After a time he heard bootsteps breaking in the softening mud of the warming day as they crossed the yard: one man. Blood lay without moving.

Below he heard the man heave against the door.

Knock, Blood thought, and smiled.

The man pounded on the door.

Again in his head Blood said I’ll be right there. You fucking idiot.

The man called out. Blood’s name, twice. Blood thought he knew the voice.

More silence.

Blood thought Pick your words.

After a bit the man cried, a tone both defiant and solicitous, “All we’re after is talk, Blood. There idn’t a one of us that don’t mistrust you but you know us all. Blood, we want to hear your side of things. We come first thing in the morning because we was afeard of just this sort of misunderstanding. Now you killed one man already and grievous wounded two more. It all adds against you but we been talking and we can see how from your view it looked like mischief of the worst sort. But all we’re after right this moment is talk. Talk. Blood? You hear me? Blood?”