Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (16 page)

By noon, south
of Alton, MacVie recovered enough mettle to gripe.
 
Since they were approaching Mack Beans Swamp, he said, they ought
to use the road and give the horses a break.
 
He ought to get his weapons back, too.
 
And didn't they trust him enough yet to tell him their destination?

With the
noontime sun beating down, the group headed toward the road.
 
Half a mile from it, while the rest of the
party dismounted in an oak grove and ate more jerky and dried fruit, Runs With
Horses and Standing Wolf set off to scout the safety of the road.

MacVie claimed
a patch of grass near the horses, stretched out in the sultry cicada-song, and
snoozed, hat covering his face and just visible above the long grass.
 
David, Jacques, and Mathias conversed in
quiet tones, weapons in hand.
 
Holding
her loaded musket, Sophie walked to and fro to ease the stiffening of muscles
in her inner thighs.

David and
Jacques meandered to the periphery of camp, the brown of their hunting shirts
blending with the bark of trees.
 
Mathias migrated over to her.
 
"Muscles sore from riding?"
 
She nodded.
 
"Give it a
couple days.
 
You'll feel better."

"You're
not trying to talk me out of this journey anymore."

"Rather
late for that."
 
He glanced over
her shoulder, and she, following his glance, glimpsed MacVie's black hat.
 
Mathias lowered his voice and infused it
with humor.
 
"When you set your mind
to something, stopping you is like halting a runaway horse team."

"The pot
calling the kettle black indeed."

"True, and
as I join the ranks of cantankerous old men like my uncle, I shall be entitled
to ever-increasing stubbornness."
 
After a mutual chuckle, the amusement on his face faded, replaced by
sobriety.
 
"Sophie, now see here
—"

The report of a
firearm bounced off the trees.
 
She
clutched her musket, and Mathias pushed past.
 
"MacVie, on your feet — ah, damn his eyes!"
 
She swiveled to see the black hat left as
decoy in the grass.
 
Then she dashed for
the horses.

David yelled,
and another shot sounded much closer.
 
Several more close shots, and she reached Samson, who, with the other
horses, shied about.
 
Out in the woods,
she heard Creek battle whoops.
 
Jacques
exulted, "
Vive le Montcalm
!" and followed it with his own
whoop.
 
Mathias sprinted past the horses
and discharged his rifle.
 
A man
screamed.
 
Alerted by peripheral vision,
she pivoted to spot MacVie, his right arm recoiled, an eight-inch knife in his
hand.

She hit the
dirt.
 
In passage, the knife clipped her
hat from her head and pinned it to a tree not far behind her.
 
Terror rebounded her to her feet, musket in
hand, to find him gripping a tomahawk.
 
"Will can't help you now, wench.
 
This is between you and me."
 
Yellow teeth bared, he charged her.

She shrieked,
hauled up her musket, and fired point-blank into his pelvis.
 
Hot blood spewed everywhere, including her
arm, and he flopped on the ground, screaming.
 
Horses whinnied.

A tattooed blur
of rancid bear grease wielding a tomahawk leaped over him and vanished into the
dense tree growth, followed by a man's screech of terror from the trees and
another Creek whoop.
 
MacVie began
bleating his epitaph, his dark eyes imploring, agonized.
 
Sophie threw down her musket and gagged at
the sight of death and the stenches of blood and burning black powder.
 
The pulse of blood from his severed pelvic
artery slowed. A rattle took up residence in his throat.
 
She backed into Samson, spun about, and leaned
against the horse, drinking in his familiar warmth and smell.
 
Grabbing the saddle, she gagged again and
almost vomited.

She heard a
final, distant report from a firearm.
 
Then the forest, including MacVie, quieted.
 
Her right sleeve, sprayed with blood, grew sticky.
 
She clung to Samson's saddle, and they
calmed each other.

In the
distance, David yelled, "Sophie!
 
Sophie!"

Mathias sounded
at least as frantic.
 
"Near the
horses!"

Fowler in hand,
David crashed through underbrush and emerged at the horses.
 
"Ye gods — Sophie!"
 
He dragged her around and clutched her.
 
"How much blood on your arm is
yours?"

"None,"
she squeaked into his shoulder.
 
Beneath
the stink of sweat, blood, and black powder, she smelled David's familiar
scent.
 
She started trembling
again.
 
Two years earlier, she'd fired
pistol shots out her dining room window to chase bandits off her property.
 
She'd heard the pain of one hit by a ball,
but she hadn't
smelled
it.
 
And
she hadn't killed him.
 
Her stomach
lurched.

David set her
out at arms' length.
 
The sight of sweat
spiking his hair and runneling through dirt and powder on his face pitched her
from nausea into a burst of hysterical laughter.
 
Never before had she seen her brother in such disarray.

Mathias bounded
onto the scene, drew up short at the sight of the body, and sprinted for
her.
 
He caught her up in an embrace
made awkward by the fact that it included his rifle.
 
"Your arm — you're hurt!"
 
He dropped the rifle and took her face in his hands.
 
"I shouldn't have left you.
 
I promised, gave my word.
 
Forgive me."

An elemental
tremor grazed her at the touch of his callused hands on her face, the first
time in all her life that a man had held her face.
 
From the earnestness in his black eyes, she doubted Mathias had
needed
any
convincing from Will a month before.
 
It led her to wonder: What had her father
intuited all these years that caused him to assign Mathias as her
protector?
 
David, however, required no
guesswork.
 
Wiggling his eyebrows, he
ambled away.

After a moment,
flustered, she guided Mathias's hands off her face.
 
"I'm all right.
 
Really."

David stood
over the body and grimaced.
 
MacVie's
blood had attracted blowflies.
 
Sophie
looked away in haste, her nausea returning.
 
"H-he threw a knife at me and missed, then came at me with a
tomahawk, so I —"
 
So she killed
him, a human, her neighbor, someone she'd bartered and danced with.
 
"I shot him."

David sounded
on-edge, disgusted.
 
"I took care
of Donald Fairbourne."
 
He hadn't
enjoyed killing.
 
"Charley Osborn
and Pete Whitney ran afoul of Uncle Jacques's tomahawk."

"I shot
Measure Travis."
 
Mathias retrieved
his discharged rifle, his teeth jammed together.
 
He hadn't enjoyed killing, either.

Alton's rebels
had been disbanded — almost.
 
David
glanced at Mathias.
 
"Sam Fielding
ran away eastward.
 
Sehoyee Yahuh gave
chase."

Standing Wolf —
where was he?
 
The expression on David's
face mirrored her realization that Jacques and the two brothers were
missing.
 
Twigs snapped.
 
They spun about, Mathias reaching for his
tomahawk, David ready with a knife.

Jacques and
Runs With Horses walked into view towing the Indians' horses.
 
Standing Wolf limped, bloody-legged, between
them.
 
Dark satisfaction filled
Jacques's eyes when he spied MacVie's body.
 
"Excellent.
 
We need not
worry about that one escaping."
 
His ropy neck rotated to allow him sight of Sophie's hat pinned to the
tree.
 
He scowled, freed the hat, and
tossed it to her.
 
"That dog MacVie
stole my extra knife — and my second tomahawk!"
 
He knelt, whisked MacVie's purse from his waistcoat as if purse
cutting were second nature to him, and retrieved his tomahawk.
 
"I presume that is not your blood,
belle
Sophie.
 
You are using your arm much too
well."

Still shaky,
she approached Standing Wolf with Mathias.
 
"Did you find Sam Fielding?"

The warrior
scowled.
 
"His feet and dagger were
too quick."

David gestured
dismissal.
 
"He isn't worth hunting
at this point.
 
If we don't intercept El
Serpiente by tomorrow night, we'll have to wait for him in St. Augustine.
 
Let's get out of here before scavengers
assume we're trying to compete."

Standing Wolf
leaned against a tree, his expression stoic, the gash in his thigh oozing.
 
Mathias and Sophie inspected the wound, and
she straightened to look in the Creek's dark eyes.
 
"We'll dress it quickly so we can leave.
 
You may need stitches later."
 
He nodded, impassive over his injury.

Mathias
muttered to her, "Why did they ambush us?
 
Can it be that they did help El Serpiente murder Will and Jonah?"

That theory
held water better than others, but it still contained too many holes.
 
Little would make sense until they tracked
down and interrogated the man known to them only as El Serpiente.

Chapter Twelve

PICKETED NEAR
THE road, the mounts of Donald Fairbourne, Peter Whitney, Measure Travis, and
Charley Osborn grazed.
 
Churned grass,
hoof prints on the road, and a dropped haversack testified of Sam Fielding's
frantic flight northward on horseback.
 
Having confiscated the dead men's supplies, the travelers divided their
money.
 
Then they took the road south
after a detour into the thicket to discourage pursuit, the extra horses plus
MacVie's roped behind them, the empty saddles discarded.

Mathias scouted
a mile ahead in the sweltering afternoon, warning the party into concealment
from marching militiamen and, later, from several families with wagons.
 
Runs With Horses ranged a mile behind to
verify lack of pursuit.
 
By dark, they'd
put more than thirty miles between them and the noontime carnage.

The drenching
of afternoon rainstorms was a mixed blessing, washing away evidence of their
passage, yet promoting activity of insects.
 
Camped a mile from the road on Perkins Bluff, they ate a meal from their
stores and banked down the campfire after it provided light for Mathias to
stitch Standing Wolf's thigh.

Sophie
collapsed on her bedroll, exposed skin smeared with bear grease.
 
Her inner thigh muscles felt like throbbing
jelly, and bruises and insect bites mottled her skin.
 
Although she'd changed shirts and washed the blood off, her right
arm still felt sticky.
 
Most of the dead
men had families.
 
Three nights earlier,
she'd danced with MacVie.

Every time she
closed her eyes, she saw blood spray, heard screams and moans, and smelled
death.
 
Revulsion and regret pirouetted
through her soul and ground at her stomach.
 
The worst part about it was realizing she'd make the same choices again.

For an hour she
listened to men's snores before she pushed her blanket off and stood.
 
From the direction of the road, a red wolf
howled.
 
She hobbled a circle around the
coals and swung her arms, wishing her mind would quiet.

Jacques
materialized from the surrounding foliage.
 
"A problem, belle Sophie?"

"I'm too
tired to sleep.
 
I'll take your watch
for you."

Chuckling, he
cradled his musket and meandered to her.
 
"
Non
.
 
I am
wide-awake.
 
I have relived the times
Pierre, Jean, Auguste, Claude, and I made a glorious team for Montcalm, cutting
down the English pigs.
 
Back in '58 we
built a rockslide.
 
When the pigs
triggered it, those who were not swept off the mountainside screaming were
crushed beneath boulders."
 
He
chuckled again.

"We were
reunited at the side of Colonel Prescott near Breed's Hill five summers ago,
but we had claimed our most excellent victory days before that.
 
We discovered the route some pigs were taking
to Boston, and we disguised a pit in the road filled with sharpened
sticks.
 
While we watched, a half-dozen
pigs marched into it and impaled themselves."
 
He sighed, enraptured, oblivious to the disgust filling her face.