Grace of a Hawk

by Abbie Williams

  She scurried to my side and began sawing, gnawing at her lips, working like a child-sized demon. She freed my hands and I shoved her aside, not intending to hurt her, but I meant to get to Malcolm. Forearms slick with blood, I used both hands to tug down the rope about my waist; it was at my knees when Aces could refrain no longer and jerked forward, unseating Malcolm.

  The roaring that shredded my throat I’d heard only in battle, when death is closing fast and a man knows it, and is unable to evade any longer. My brother fell – I watched it happen – and it was only the ineptitude of the noose that saved him. A properly-tied knot would have broken his neck on impact but instead he was jolted by the end of the rope and began to strangle, kicking and gagging, boots no more than a dozen inches above the ground. Cora screamed as though dipped into a vat of lye, running to him and wrapping about his lower legs, trying with all her scanty strength to provide lift.

  “Malcolm!”

  I freed myself from the rope tethering me to the trunk, brutal with resolve. My ankles remained bound but I crow-hopped forward, stumbling, dropping to my knees beneath his twitching legs with what seemed syrupy slowness, but then I had him in my grasp. I rose with a guttural, groaning sob, balancing on my bound feet by the grace of God, and lifted him up enough that the rope about his neck went slack. The choking sounds cut short and he wheezed a partial breath. Tears and sweat stung my eyes. I yelled to Cora, “Cut free my ankles!”

  I could conceive of no other way than to steady myself and summarily cut free the boy. Cora fell to her knees, attacking the last of the rope hindering my movements. The second she freed my feet, allowing a full range of motion, I demanded the knife. Malcolm slumped, awkward and weighty, on my right shoulder, hindering my frantic efforts. I reached up and begged, “Help me. Help me.”

  My brother ducked his head just enough and I sawed at the noose. The rope frayed, then split, and we three tumbled to the muddy ground.

  I LOVED SAWYER like a brother, and still I hadn’t wept this way over his recovery. I eased the rope over Malcolm’s head and cradled him, sobbing like a child. I kept asking if he was bleeding and he kept trying to tell me that it wasn’t his blood, but mine. Blood was everywhere, hot and wet on my feet, all along my lap. Malcolm’s voice emerged hoarse and raw, his breath in heaving chunks; my heart slammed like a butter dash at my ribs, churning them to liquid, and would not stop. Cora wrapped about him from the other side, laying her cheek between his shoulder blades and holding fast. Malcolm took both her hands into his right, the three of us knotted together.

  “Your knife saved us,” I told Quill later, once I’d regained a measure of control, using my fingertips to close the old cook’s eyelids; his jaw hung slack and undignified, no helping it. I whispered, “Your knife saved us and I could never be thankful enough.”

  I intended to bury Quill and Grady, even though I’d not yet determined the extent of the damage to my lower leg, shot at close range with a crossbow. Trouble was I didn’t know how I would manage the strength required for gravedigging; already I recognized I could not walk. I crawled to the edge of the buffalo wallow as dawn overtook the prairie, staring mutely westward, having left Malcolm and Cora slack with exhaustion beneath the oak. The sky brightened, appearing whitewashed, the prairie dripping after last night’s rain. The bastards had taken everything they could drive off or carry – the cattle, the horses, the mules, all of the bullets and much of the food contents from the wagon; they’d summarily smashed the front wheels, so even if one of us managed to survive there was no possibility of it hauling us to safety. The camp was divested of all but us and Aces High. I could not howl my rage to the empty sky; I was scraped raw, inside and out.

  After a time I heard Malcolm approaching.

  “Boyd.” His voice was a low bark, rasping over the single word; the hanging rope had left a crosshatching of red marks along his throat similar to the ones on Tilson’s neck. He coughed before whispering, “Your leg.”

  “It ain’t…” But I could scarcely finish the thought, let alone the bluff. I sank to my forearms and then listed to one side, the cold damp of the ground seeping through my tattered clothing. Small whitish dots skittered like mice across my vision. Malcolm dropped to a crouch and tugged at my pant leg.

  “I gotta take a look,” he said, clutching my knee, keeping me steady to examine the wound; even such a gentle touch was unbearable. “C’mon now, lie still. You’s beat up like I never seen.”

  “Lemme see it,” I muttered, trying to sit but unable, smote by a familiar sensation, that of hovering apart, as though I’d become a shadow attached by only the thinnest of threads to my own body.

  Malcolm ordered in his husky voice, “Hold still. I’m awful sorry I gotta hurt you like this, Boyd, but that shaft gotta come out. It can’t stay in your leg.”

  “Don’t pull it out…the wrong direction,” I insisted, a cold sweat beading along my hairline. I pictured the field doc’s tent in Georgia, a rank, bloodstained patch of ground beneath a canvas covering, humid and reeking as a swamp choked with dead critters. Grafton had died in those miserable confines, bleeding like a stuck pig from the stump they’d made of his arm. I gritted my teeth against the memory.

  “I won’t.” He spoke with a tone of promise, pale face looming near, as white as milk skimmed of its cream. His eyes burned with purpose. I reminded myself that Grafton was dead, that this was my brother Malcolm; for a second, I’d grown confused.

  “Not backward,” I whispered, pinning him with my sternest stare. The arrow’s pointed tip was visible, poking out beside the long bone comprising my shin; by contrast, the entry wound was a deep gash in the muscle, crusted with dark blood and in which the broken-off wooden shaft protruded a good two inches from my flesh. Now that I’d focused on it, the wound hurt so bad I was fearful I’d lose consciousness. I clenched my jaw, recognizing that Malcolm would have to force the shaft forward so the two points forming the base of the triangular arrowhead would not further destroy my leg. Dizziness forced my skull back to the ground.

  As though there was a chance I might flee, Malcolm ordered, “You stay right here. I’ll return directly.”

  I jerked a nod as he hurried away at a clip, feeling the prickle of the hard ground, my chilled body overtaken by a shuddering tremble, as if the cattle were still running. Words played through my head in the manner of a prattling drunkard as I studied the white, sullen sky.

  I will kill you, Fallon Yancy. I will find you an’ kill you, an’ I’ll make it a slow death. Slow an’ painful. I know how, believe me.

  Grady. Quill. I am so goddamned sorry, I couldn’t be sorry enough if I lived ten lifetimes beyond this one.

  Malcolm nearly died. He nearly died.

  Oh Jesus, forgive me. Forgive me.

  You will not live long, the next we meet, Yancy. Nor you, Virgil Turnbull. Both of you will beg me for mercy.

  Fortune, my horse. My good girl. I am so sorry.

  Ain’t no place you can hide, Yancy. No place on this earth.

  Malcolm returned carrying a small bundle of supplies and a damp cloth, Cora with him, a saddle blanket folded over her arms. They knelt, and Cora set aside the blanket and cupped my face in her hands, her flesh warm against the ice of mine. She surprised me by leaning close and bestowing a gentle kiss on my forehead, her breath soft as it skimmed my eyelids, her hair brushing like wings against my jaws. She positioned the saddle blanket beneath my head, thereby offering what meager comfort was possible.

  “Run an’ fetch up that blanket from the wagon, we forgot it,” Malcolm instructed, briefly resting a hand on Cora’s elbow; she followed this order at once and Malcolm turned my way, explaining his intentions with uncharacteristic authority. “I’m gonna pull that arrow outta your leg an’ then we’ll patch it up. I got a stick for you to bite. Remember the time Mama pulled the prickle-pig quills from Graf?”

  “I surely do. You’s smart to think of that,” I whispered. My limbs shook with increasing violence and I clenche
d my muscles against it; the ground was so goddamn cold, I felt half-dead already. I allowed him to settle the kindling stick between my chattering jaws, the tree bark rough and bitter on my tongue.

  “I love you, my brother,” Malcolm whispered, leaning over me, blocking out the pasty heavens; his head appeared wreathed in light and he cupped a palm over my forehead, as though offering a benediction, or a last rite. I tried to tease him but could not manage a word. I wanted to say, I ain’t dead yet, stop that.

  Cora returned and draped the blanket over my midsection, tucking it about me as would a concerned mama.

  “Thank you,” I told her, and then held Malcolm’s eye. “Pull that arrow forward, boy, not back.”

  Malcolm worked as fast as could be expected and made a clean job, but no amount of care could staunch the flow of blood, nor lessen the agony. With dutiful purpose he examined my leg, concluding that rather than clutch the arrow’s deadly tip with his bare fingers he would have to force it forward enough to grasp the shaft beneath the arrowhead itself. Malcolm’s light touch sent stabbing pain through my leg; sweat streaked the sides of his familiar face, now gone gray as yesterday’s ash pile, but he set his jaw as one determined to complete a nefarious, but necessary, task.

  He muttered, “I’ll do it fast, hold tight, Boyd,” and caught my knee in one hand and the broken shaft in the other, driving it forward through the torn muscle. I cried out against the stick between my teeth, tears rolling down my temples as I bent my head against the ground, my throat bowed like the Yankee’s from last night. Malcolm issued a moaning gasp, reaching now for the front of the shaft and, inch by agonizing inch, tugging its length free of my leg. I felt I might die before he finished the job.

  At last he gasped, “It’s out…”

  He and Cora staunched the flow of hot blood, the little girl rallying her strength and assisting with all the grit of a field nurse. My gut heaved and I lurched to the side, spitting out the stick not a moment too soon. Malcolm bolstered me through the vomiting; he would not stop repeating apologies. I cursed my weakness, vision skittering and blurring, and willed myself to regroup, to understand that the worst of it was over now. My nose but inches from the contents of my innards, I bit back a cry and gasped, “You done… good work.”

  “We gotta stop this bleeding,” Malcolm understood. “I got one of Grady’s shirts to use as a bandage.” Coldness leached from the ground and into my bones; wetness struck at my face and I realized the sky was shedding bits of ice. Malcolm muttered, “Goddammit,” fumbling in his task of tying the makeshift binding about my leg.

  This accomplished, he bent to tuck his shoulder beneath my right arm. With considerable effort he hauled me upright; I refused to let my weight burden him as we hobbled at a halting pace. Cora stuck close as Malcolm led the three of us back to the oak, settling beneath its protection; Aces was tethered nearby and whickered at us, exposing his teeth. Malcolm had arranged Grady and Quill as best he could, unable to bury them without the use of shovel or trowel, but taking care to wrap their heads and shoulders in what were surely the remainders of their shirts. I tucked my arms about my brother and the girl, drawing them around the far curve of the tree and away from the sight of the dead, propping my spine against the trunk.

  “It’s snowing,” Cora whispered, pressing close, wilting against my ribs. She reached to touch Malcolm. My brother caught her hand into his and kissed her knuckles, before tipping his face to my shoulder. My arms soon grew numb, trapped between them and the rough bark of the trunk, but their warmth eventually served to still my shaking; both dozed. I rested my jaw against Malcolm’s tangled hair and drifted with eyes half-closed, unwilling to watch as the prairie took on a flour-dusted appearance. I felt detached, terror so near the surface that my heart beat too rapidly; I imagined blood pumping out of the wounds inflicted on my leg at the speed of my heart, draining my life. I floated through a haze of pain, the cold and the snowfall bringing to mind the battlefield at Murfreesboro, in January of ’sixty-three…

  Riding hard around a ragged column of burning supply wagons, pushing my mount, choking on thick black smoke as I clear the line to see Ethan astride his dapple-gray gelding, Arrow. I’m no more than twenty yards away, closing fast on his position as Ethan swings his rifle like a sword, clutching the barrel, teeth bared in a snarl. I watch him unseat a mounted Federal; the man tumbles from saddle to rocky ground but Ethan has not a second to lose, as another Federal grasps for Arrow’s reins.

  Coming abreast, sleet slick on my face, I raise my pistol. The Federal lurches sideways as my shot takes him in the left side, falling to his knees in the fray with blood darkening the indigo of his overcoat, felted hat slipping from his head – the first man I ever kill, whose face I can’t recall from a hundred others – yet I’ll never forget the sight of his hat sliding askew. My first instinct is to reach to help him right it. No more than seconds after that moment Ethan’s throat is shot out, from behind; I look up from the fallen soldier and it is the very next thing I see.

  Ethan! I bellow. The sound carries over the battle and then echoes in the trees beyond as if Ethan’s name is stuck in the low, empty branches.

  My uninjured leg jerked.

  I opened my eyes to the empty prairie beyond the oak, silent but for the whisper of snowfall; the white flakes sifted onto the river and became part of it, icing its rocky banks. A sickness gripped my bowels, the sense that had I opened my eyes a fraction faster I would have caught a glimpse of Death lurking close by, watching with a fixed and unblinking stare, waiting for us to succumb.

  Not yet. I tightened my grip on my brother and Cora; I’d been badly damaged but I would not let Death claim the two of them. Not goddamn yet.

  There ain’t no hope.

  You know this. You ain’t half-witted.

  We’s a week away from any settlement.

  No food, no rifle. Aces can’t carry the three of you.

  You got water an’ nothin’ else.

  You ain’t gonna last a night.

  I woke sometime later to find Cora wrapped in my arms; the movement of her head dragged me to consciousness. At first I could not make sense of the noises I heard, those of a grunting struggle, and in the attempt to leap to my feet I sent Cora tumbling. Unable to manage standing, I crawled over a crunching layer of snow to the opposite side of the tree to spy Malcolm with a two-handed grip on the hanging rope still dangling from the oak, yanking for all he was worth. A stubborn grimness altered the set of his mouth. He worked with purpose, refusing to acknowledge my presence, winding the bristly length about his palms, tugging with renewed strength. He heaved and grunted; sweat stained his shirt. At last the limb could no longer resist the assault and cracked loose, striking the ground in a violent spray of splintering wood. Without a word, breathing heavily, my brother wound the rope about the broken branch, carried both to the riverbank and heaved the burden into the flowing water.

  THERE WAS the matter of food.

  We hadn’t yet spoken of last night’s events; as the murky afternoon advanced, Cora and Malcolm worked together in silence to lay out Quill and Grady, hauling rocks from the riverbank and covering their bodies, attempting to offer the dead men as much dignity as possible. I remained braced against the oak, now short one of its branches; I wished to help them but I could not stand, despite my stubbornest efforts. I might have rested in the wagon but since the front wheels were smashed the entire thing was pitched at a cockeyed angle; the few remaining supplies within all lay in a pile at the front end, where they had tumbled.

  You will die here, I realized. The two of them’ll be hauling stones to cover over your body, right quick.

  Aces High remained tethered near the tree. Of the supplies still in our possession there was little of immediate value to us, stranded as we were – Malcolm’s saddle, Quill’s throwing knife, two corncakes my brother had stashed for a snack from yesterday’s breakfast, a dented tin of milled flour. As I watched Quill and Grady slowly disappear beneath layers
of stones, some no bigger than pebbles, I tried for all I was worth to remember when I’d last heard Grady mention a settlement, or our proximity to the fort on the Missouri River. I figured there were other settlers and homesteaders somewhere on this expanse of prairie, but finding them would be similar to searching for a grain of salt in a bucket of sand. I recalled Grady saying the fort was built on the west side of the Missouri; he’d once wintered within its stockade walls.

  Due west, Grady had said and it was a start, some small hope to cling to.

  Malcolm an’ Cora might be able to reach it. We can’t be more’n a week’s ride. Aces High won’t have no trouble carrying the two of them. We’s goddamn lucky to have him, there’d be no chance otherwise. You can save them.

  There was no sense in resuming our original course, or of attempting to reach Royal Lawson’s homestead. Besides having no history with the man, I did not know the exact location of his acreage; I could not send Malcolm across the prairie on what amounted to a wild goose chase, nor would I risk putting him in the potential path of our attackers. The devil alone knew what story Virgil would concoct to justify his lone presence when Lawson expected Grady, or how Virgil would explain the small contingent of men he now traveled with.

  I hope they decide you ain’t worth the trouble, Turnbull, an’ slit your worthless gullet right there along the trail. Goddamn traitor.

  I had not asked Malcolm if Virgil was the one to pull the trigger on Grady, and would not; Malcolm would tell me when he was able. I knew I was a goner – no point in denying the fact – but I wouldn’t let Malcolm believe this. I would instead keep up my spirits until he and Cora were safely away. Malcolm would never leave me behind if he thought I would die in the meantime, or if he thought he could save me by staying. But I would make my last act that of saving him, I vowed here and now.