Peter Loon (14 page)

“Give her back!” roared Barrow again.

“I would say she's not overfond of you, Mr. Barrow.” Parson Leach had lowered his gun so that the pan might possibly remain dry beneath his arm, but the expression on his face was near to warlike.

“She's been given over by her father himself!” shouted Barrow. He nudged his horse a little closer. One of the other riders came up along side of him, though with less certainty.

“He wouldn't be the first father do wrong by his child,” said the parson, hardly audible to Barrow over the rain.

“It's the letter of the law,” growled Barrow.

“You've declared the law your enemy,” replied Parson Leach, his voice rising again. “And there's no law leads a man to ruin his own.”

“Give her over, Leach! She's under my wing!”

“Your wings are under the sites of two bores, which is a good deal more to the point.”

The man behind Barrow squinted up at the rain with almost a smile, as if he thought those two bores would prove of little use. “Her father said to get her back, Mr. Leach,” he called as he edged his horse forward a pace or two.

“I didn't take anything,” said Nora, almost conquering the wail in her voice. “I never took so much as a coat, so they wouldn't say I stole.”

Peter shook himself from his daze and pulled her onto her feet where she tottered against him.

“Her father wants her back, Mr. Leach,” said the other horseman again.

“Her father
doesn't
want her back, as far as I can tell,” said the preacher, “or he would've come for her himself.”

This new spokesman looked to Barrow, then said, “We'll see she comes to no harm.”

“Not like you chased her down, then,” said Parson Leach evenly, “like dogs on a deer.”

There was no answer to this, and in fact some of the men hung their heads.

The rain increased between them, and Barrow stiffened on his horse as he stood in his stirrups. “There are only four of you and but three armed!” he bellowed. “We'll storm over you like perdition!”

“No gun out here,” said Manasseh, squinting into the rain, “will be good for anything but a club,” though he held his own firing piece as if he might get one more shot from it.

“I can't believe,” called out Parson Leach, and he nodded to Barrow's mob, “that any of these men care to be a party to murder, and that's what I promise it will fall to, before you wrest this woman from my protection. On the other hand,
I
may
just
be angry enough to pick you off that horse, Mr. Barrow; and looking at you, at this juncture, is not pacifying me in the least.”

“You heard the threat!” declared Barrow, but the rider beside him leaned close to the man, rain dripping from his hat brim, and quietly reminded Mr. Barrow that he had threatened first. Barrow shot an angry glance at his cohort, and the man straightened in his saddle, giving Barrow as good a look in return.

“What's it to be then, Mr. Leach,” said this second in command. He seemed a reasonable enough fellow, now that everyone but Barrow had calmed somewhat.

“I don't want you following us, sir,” said Parson Leach. “It might be too tempting for Mr. Barrow to try and take her from us, and it will end in tragedy, I promise you. You may be no happier than ourselves if one of us were to be killed in such circumstances, for the law would surely hunt you down.”

“His
law!” snarled Barrow.
“His
Great Men and
his
Congregational . . .” but the other man gave him such a look, that Barrow fell to muttering.

“I am no kidnapper, you know that,” continued the parson, and when the man beside Barrow nodded, the parson said. “She fled her situation of her own accord, and it's the law will determine things now. I am a law-abiding man, on the whole, and I will deliver her to decisive powers when we reach the next settlement.”

“How are we to know, if we can't follow you,” said the rider.

“Word will be sent, but I am not sure Mr. Tillage will want to appear for his daughter, at any rate, Lot and Sodom notwithstanding.”

This reference was so keen and so final, that several gasps rose from the mob of men. Some looked a little horrified, suddenly, to be a part of such a business. It was amazing to Peter, how one sentence from Parson Leach could reverse the view these men took of their own behavior. Without much further hesitation, the pursuers turned about and headed for the point along the shore where Manasseh first detected them. By association, Barrow was tugged along with his mob, but he craned his head back and looked over his shoulder at the parson and his companions, till his horse mounted the far bank and carried him into the field beyond the forest and out of sight.

“THIS DOESN'T LOOK TO BE STOPPING VERY SOON,” SAID MANASSEH
Cutts, as he considered the rain. He might have thought the storm's intentions immaterial if not for the shivering young woman among them. Her pale shift was flimsy enough, and her undergarments were in such short supply, that the severe soaking she had undergone rendered her appearance slighter still, adhering her clothes to her in such a manner as to be considered indecent. She seemed unaware of her pitiable state beyond the obvious fear for the consequences of her recent flight, and it was yet difficult to know the division of physical and emotional effects that caused her to shake so. She clung to Peter without motive, besides the desire to stay upright. Peter himself held her with less motive than he might have credited; he was greatly unnerved by the confrontation with Barlow and his followers.

“God bless you for standing with us,” said Parson Leach to Manasseh Cutts and Crispin Moss. The rain ran off the tip of the preacher's long nose like water off an eaves. “Peter,” he said, brushing the slick from his face before raising his hood again, “you acted admirably. And Nora Tillage, I could have wished it happened under more clement circumstances and with less distress to yourself, but it was a brave deed coming after us and fleeing that man.” He considered Peter with an interested expression, as if the young man might have known something about her flight beforehand.

The parson went to a large leather sack that hung behind one of Mars's saddlebags, and from this he eventually wrestled his blue greatcoat. Nora seemed hardly big enough to carry it on her shoulders, and when he wrapped her in it, she all but disappeared with her small face and bedraggled russet hair peering out from between the collars; but she clasped it around herself thankfully and seemed almost to leave off her shivering.

Then the preacher found a beautiful red apple in one of his bags and gave it to Mars, apologizing to the animal for using him so dangerously and stroking the horse's nose as he held the soft brown muzzle to his cheek. Mars appeared to forgive him, and he nudged the parson's head with his own while he made quick work of the offering. The preacher walked Mars off the granite shelf and called to Nora. “Now, Miss, let me help you up and Mars will warm you as well as rest your feet.” In her shift, Nora could sit none too gracefully upon Mars's back, but the parson's great coat covered her like a quilt, and she was so exhausted that it was an obvious pleasure for her to lie forward and hug the horse's neck.

“We'll be heading south,” said Parson Leach, who had already made his decisions. All his motions and words had the same innate sense of deliberate haste that Peter had perceive when they left the tavern. “I won't bring this young woman to New Milford, where trouble brews,” the preacher was saying, “and I know of someone in Newcastle who will take her in for a time. Peter, you will come with us?” he asked, though the force of the sentence gave it the sound of a statement.

“Yes, Parson.”

“We'll go with you, if you like,” said the older woodsman, and Crispin agreed.

“I think it unnecessary,” said the clergyman. “The sooner cool heads arrive in New Milford, the better. Certainly you're welcome, but. . .”

“We'll head west, then,” said Manasseh Cutts. “And if someone
does
follow, it'll be less clear which direction you went. They don't know who
we
are, but you made it pretty plain, it seems, that your interests lay west of here.”

They followed the shore road, which rose up to a bank above the lake where it was bordered by a thickening forest and here they found the track west, which was hardly more than a deer path.

“We'll wait here some,” said the old woodsman, “and be sure Barrow doesn't change his mind.”

“If he does,” said Crispin Moss, “I'd wager he does so alone.”

“They didn't seem too happy with themselves, his fellows,” agreed Manasseh.

“I'm none too happy with land agents and proprietors, just now,” pronounced Crispin, “but if Barrow's the sort of man I'm siding with, I'll not need to be so particular
which
direction I point and fire.”

“Come,” said Parson Leach to Nora and Peter. “We have only half as far to go now as we have already traveled, and you, Miss, need not walk a step. Peter?”

“Yes, Parson.”

“Are you fit to go?”

Peter nodded. He hardly looked fit, drenched to the bone and as pale as Nora. Parson Leach may have been conscious that he looked little better himself. He took Mars's reins and led him off; they left the woodsmen by the trail west to New Milford, where the forest crowded the traveler with fern and root and sagging wet limbs; and so parted company with little ceremony beyond “God speed.” Peter was glad to know that Manasseh Cutts and Crispin Moss lingered behind them.

Parson Leach, for his part, was not lingering. For all his manner, they might have been on a walk from church on Sunday, but his pace was quick and his stride was long, and Peter caught the parson stealing more than one glimpse over his shoulder at the road behind them. Sometimes the gaunt man turned about-face and walked backwards for a moment, concealing his true motives by speaking to Peter, and always in the most genial tone, but he never slacked off the sharp pace he set for them at the start, and Peter, who was long-legged himself, half-ran to keep up.

The road south followed the length of Damariscotta Pond; and as the water narrowed, the further shore grew clearer through the wet atmosphere. The forest to their right hovered close by, a dour presence on the slopes of the river valley. They heard crows jarring under cover of the trees.

Peter trudged along, to one side of the horse, glancing occasionally at Nora, whose face was turned away from him. She had pulled the collars of the parson's greatcoat over her head, but her wet tangle of hair fell from beneath the cover and he was mesmerized by the color of it; that dark red brown
belonged to
fall, it seemed, and shared something melancholy with the oak leaves and maple and elm that fell, stripped from the trees in the rain. And yet again her hair was almost the color of Mars's coat, which was strong and supple and glad. One thin hand reached from beneath the blue coat and pressed against the horse's neck, looking as white as bone.