by Thomas Locke
When Harshaw jerked his head, Kevin cut the tie and pulled the rag from his mouth. Harshaw coughed and drew a few hard breaths, then gasped, “You done killed that man!”
From behind him, Caleb demanded, “What were you planning on doing to me?”
“Hey, boy. I didn’t mean nothing by that!” His face was greasy-slick in the lantern light. “Come on now, cut me . . .”
Kevin held the blade directly before his eyes. “I ask, you answer. That’s how it’s going to be. Now tell me how you hooked up with the Greers.”
“I seen them around. I used to cart shine into the township. But . . .”
Caleb finished, “He got drunk on his own product, started a fight, spent a month in the lockup, and was banished from Charlotte and Overpass both.”
Kevin wondered if he’d come across the man before. “Go on.”
“They came looking for me. Said there was a bounty on you and your ma.”
“How much?”
“A hundred silver bars.”
Kevin rocked back. Caleb said, “What?”
“I didn’t believe it either. They showed me the paper. Hundred bars, but only if they brought you in alive. Somebody told them you’d been seen riding off in this direction.”
“Just like you suspected,” Zeke said.
Now that Harshaw was talking, the words tumbled out. “Me and some of the boys were ready to jump all over that. But Greer said they only wanted me.”
When he stopped, Kevin pressed, “Tell us the rest.”
“The old man said there was another bounty on the boy. Not him directly. His kind.” Harshaw swallowed hard.
“How much?” Zeke asked.
“Fifty silver bars for any what can do like him. I done seen that paper too.” Harshaw’s neck trembled as he searched out Caleb. His gullet jumped as he forced down a swallow. His voice raised a full octave. “Two quarter shares would set me up for life. It’s the only reason I hooked up with them Greers.”
Kevin knew it was time to end it. But his knife suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. He could not raise it from his knee. He tried to force himself to act. The strain caused him to pant softly.
Harshaw must have seen his struggle, for his voice rose to a high-pitched whine. “I done answered your questions. Now you got to let me . . .”
Zeke darted in, shockingly swift. The hilt of his knife came down hard on the back of Harshaw’s head. His eyes fluttered, then he slumped over. Zeke was already moving toward the two others.
11
They left the four men lashed to the trees but took their belts and boots and weapons and horses. Kevin assumed it would take the men a day or more to work free. Since they were weakened by the blows, weaponless, and barefoot, there was no telling how long the journey might take them.
They tied the four additional horses to their wagons and headed east. They traveled in silence, the loudest sounds coming from the wagons’ creaking wheels and the clop of horses along the broken asphalt trail.
Four hours later, they took the turnoff toward a meadow bordered on three sides by heavy forest. A creek ran along the far end, with several cold fire pits scattered along its length. While they hobbled the horses and let them off to graze, Caleb asked, “What will we do with these extra horses?”
“Tomorrow,” Kevin replied, as weary as he’d ever been.
They slept in shifts. When Kevin roused, it was late afternoon and the camp was empty. As he washed and shaved in the creek, Zeke returned to the clearing, dumped a load of fresh kindling, and began building a fire.
Kevin asked, “Where’s Caleb?”
Zeke pointed toward the forest. “Off gathering roots. His ma taught him everything she knows, and she knows more than anybody in the enclave. She’s been sick for a while now. Caleb’s taking it hard.”
It was the most Kevin had ever heard the guy speak. “I’ve never seen anybody move like you do. I’m glad you’re on our side.”
Zeke kept on breaking twigs and fashioning a tent of the kindling. “You ever killed a man?”
“Twice. Firefights. Used my rifle once, my pistol the other time.”
Zeke knelt and blew into the kindling until it finally caught fire. He settled back, his dark gaze on the flames. “I didn’t feel anything, striking those men and leaving them like that. I just did what needed doing.” He pointed at the quail sectioned and waiting in the pan. “I expect if it came down to killing somebody, I wouldn’t feel anything more than when I took the birds.”
Kevin recalled sitting with Gus and a couple of the other senior officers after his first shoot-out. The closeness of death had drawn them together in a way he had never known before. “My old boss, he talked about people like you.”
“What’d he say?”
“You sure you want to hear?”
“Tell me.”
“Gus said they made the best killers. The problem was how to control them, keep them from going dark. He meant—”
“I know what he meant. Did he say how?”
Kevin nodded. The act of remembering his old life was painful. “Partner up with somebody you trust. Someone who’s got a solid grip on right and wrong. Accept that you’re gifted to be a warrior, and accept the responsibility that your gift brings.”
“Your sheriff sounds like a wise man.” Zeke slowly fed the fire, then pulled out a coffeepot and filled it from Kevin’s bucket. He opened two sacks, ladled in a handful of coffee and half as much sugar. “It’s not just this. I watch people in love sometimes. I just don’t get it.”
“Give it time.”
Zeke shrugged and set the pot on the flat stone beside the fire. Caleb returned then, carrying a bundle of herbs. As he washed them in the bucket, Zeke offered, “Caleb’s got women everywhere.”
“Now that’s just a load of old bullwhacky.”
“You wait,” Zeke said. “We’ll show up at that place you said . . .”
“Overpass.”
“There’ll be this sweet little thing come running up. ‘Oh, Caleb, I missed you so. Give me a kiss.’”
“You want to eat your dinner spiced with wet ashes,” Caleb said, “you just keep on.”
When they’d finished eating, they broke camp with the ease of three men who’d been traveling together for years. They doubled up the horses tied to the wagon gates, harnessed the others, then pulled down the trail a ways. Kevin went back and swept the camp like he had the clearing. There was no reason he could give for taking such care, but it seemed like the right thing, and the others did not complain.
They rode another fifteen miles and had the road to themselves. The moon cast a silver net over the moss and weeds that flecked the highway’s surface, giving it a complimentary sheen. Finally Kevin called a halt and walked back to say, “About five miles ahead, there’s an old homestead the scallywags took over. It’s been empty since Gus and some deputies drove them off. We should hold up here until daylight.”
“Fine by me,” Caleb replied. “I never thought I could get so tired just sitting on a wagon and letting horses do the work.”
Kevin led them onto a clearing he had used before. They ate a cold meal and Kevin offered to take first watch. But when Caleb was snoring softly, Zeke rose from his bedroll and joined Kevin on the wagon seat. They sat in silence for a time, easy with each other and the night.
Abruptly Zeke tensed and cocked his head. A few minutes passed. Then he relaxed.
Kevin asked, “What was it?”
“Deer.”
He had heard nothing. “How far out can you go?”
“Depends.”
“Say horses were coming this way.”
“Not enough detail,” Zeke replied. “Are they shoed, riding hard or ambling along, what terrain. All that matters.”
“Four horses that are shoed and saddled,” Kevin said. “Riding the road at an easy pace. If we were back at the camp with the well, would you hear them out on the road?”
Zeke was nothing but a vague silhouette in the s
tarlight. “A lot farther. Especially if they’re jawing, like those four were.”
“Is it your ears?”
“I . . . Some of it is. But there’s . . . I don’t know how to describe it. I sense things.”
“The deputy who taught me trail craft, he spent all his life tracking. Fugitives, feral beasts, it was all the same to him. He once told me the best trackers could taste the wind and say who had tasted it before them.”
Zeke shifted around. “Can I meet him?”
“He’s gone now.” Kevin’s memory carried a bitter taint. “Hollis shot him. Claimed it was an accident.”
“Did he . . .” Zeke turned back to the night. “Did he feel anything?”
Kevin took his time answering. He knew this absence of guilt really bothered Zeke. He wished his mother was with them. She would have known how to help heal with words. Which pushed him to say, “You remember what Abigail told me before she and Marsh headed out?”
Zeke cocked his head again, only this time it was with the effort of recollection. “About you working toward a higher cause.”
“What if the same is true about you? What if you’re made the way you are to fulfill a purpose? What if you’re made to do what we can’t? Because I’ve got to tell you, I can’t imagine a time when a warrior is needed more than now.”
Zeke took his time digesting that. Then he said, “I think maybe I’ll stretch out for a while.”
“Sleep well.”
Zeke settled into his bedroll and soon was breathing deep. Kevin returned his attention to the night. For the first time since he’d left Charlotte Township, his heart was not eaten by the acid of bitter regret.
12
Caleb rose the next morning feeling pinched at both ends. He had not been able to sleep again after his pre-dawn watch. Three times he had reached out, hoping to make contact with Maddie. Her absence gnawed worse than the lack of sleep. As they were loading up, he noticed how Kevin had become a different man. Tighter now. More intent. Exactly as Caleb knew he should be himself.
They returned to the road and set off in the same order as before. Kevin led because he knew the road. Zeke protected their rear. They settled into the journey without discussion. Like they were a unit.
Around midmorning the forest drew back like a veil, revealing a flat expanse of tilled earth and well-tended farms. Most of the structures were set away from the road but within shouting distance of their neighbors. Some were more isolated, and several times Caleb spotted wooden towers holding armed guards.
Gradually the road picked up a bit more traffic. Nothing Caleb saw about the other travelers reassured him. Most were heavily armed. Some of the travelers studied Caleb’s wagons with predator gazes. Kevin took to riding with the rifle set across his lap. No one challenged them, though a few looked tempted. Twice Zeke dropped down, tied the horse’s reins to the gate of Caleb’s wagon, and vanished. The second time, he returned with a small deer draped over his shoulder.
At midday they pulled into an empty clearing set beside yet another desolate farmhouse. Kevin tied the reins around the wagon’s brake and walked back. “I know it’s early, but this may be our last chance to talk alone. By nightfall there will be others gathering. We’ve got an hour or so to ourselves. And we need to make some plans.”
They built a fire and cooked a meal of fresh tubers and herbs and strips of venison. Kevin noticed Caleb’s frown and asked, “Still nothing?”
Caleb realized he meant Maddie. “No.”
“Can you, I don’t know, call out to her?”
“I’ve been trying. I’m not even sure . . .” The worry he had been trying to ignore almost swamped him. “I wish I knew what to do.”
Kevin gave that a respectful pause, then said, “About eight miles ahead is the outlying farm the deputies have used to hide refugees. If you intend to split your product, now’s the time.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because if there’s trouble with the militia, that way we don’t lose everything.”
“I thought they didn’t operate this far out.”
“Usually they don’t. I could be worrying over nothing. But if the militia does show up, I’ll need to run. And one thing more. If you ever need a hideaway, the farm is a good place to have allies.”
Caleb looked at Zeke, who nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
Kevin went on, “Give them the extra horses. Ask the chief farmer—his name’s Enoch Maskell—to handle their sale and hold your extra produce. Agree to his price. Enoch doesn’t dicker.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I can’t. He and almost everybody working there know me from . . . before. If the militia ever found out I’d been back, they’d raze the farm.”
Caleb nodded. “Let’s do this.”
They planned while they ate. Kevin took a journal from his pack, tore out a page, and drew the symbol of the fish. He then carefully filled in the Greek symbols, only in reverse, like he was writing in a mirror. He folded the sheet and handed it to Caleb. “Show this to whoever stops you.”
Caleb pocketed the paper, rose to his feet, and said, “There’s something you need to see.”
Kevin glanced at the sky. “Maybe we should hold off—”
“This can’t wait.” Caleb scrambled under the second wagon and unlatched the hidden cover behind the fore axle. The first of three lockboxes thudded to the earth. He scrambled back out, dragging the case behind him. “Zeke?”
“We’re alone.”
“Okay.” He pulled the key from around his neck and unlocked the box. Inside were lumpish bricks wrapped in burlap and bound in twine. He cut the twine, unwrapped a brick, and held it out. “Trust for trust.”
Kevin’s eyes were round. “Is that . . .”
“Gold. Go on. Take it.”
Gingerly he handled the metal. “How much do you have?”
“A hundred bricks at a quarter-pound apiece. Another sixty waiting for us to set up in Overpass. Back before the Revolutionary War, gold was discovered in the Catawba streams. America’s first gold rush was there in our enclave. It ran out almost three hundred years ago, and nowadays most people never knew it happened. Then eleven months ago Zeke’s uncle was mining for copper and struck a new vein.”
Kevin turned the brick over in his hands. “What is it worth?”
“Near as Pa can figure, about thirty thousand silver bars. But he says we’ll be lucky to get half that.”
“No one can ever know,” Kevin said. “If the mayor or Hollis ever heard about this . . .”
“Don’t even talk about it.”
Together they slid back underneath the wagon. Kevin helped lift the box and held it in place while Caleb refitted the latches, then rubbed sand over the cover so that it melded with the rest of the wagon’s underbelly.
Kevin said, “I hope someday to show you what it means that you’d trust me like this.”
Caleb followed him back into the sunlight. He rose to his feet and made a process of dusting himself off. For the first time since waking to the silent scream, he had a reason to hope.
They were a team.
The next day dawned hot for May. The air was very still. Dust sparked the air above the road. They descended into a narrow valley that ran north to south, not deep, but still it trapped the heat and left them all panting. When they arrived at the creek meandering along its base, the horses balked at their harnesses. They took the wagons across one at a time, two of them holding the leads by the metal bits and shouting at the horses to move. When they were across and the horses had drunk, they took turns walking down a ways and bathing.
There was traffic now, not steady, but enough to keep them on constant guard. When they dried and dressed in fresh clothes, Caleb and Kevin rode one wagon to a copse of cottonwoods midway up the eastern slope. As they unharnessed the horses, Kevin went through the instructions a final time. Caleb shook his hand, then walked back down the road. Leaving Kevin with the gold.
Wh
en Caleb climbed into the wagon seat next to Zeke, he turned and waved up the slope, marveling at how calm he felt about trusting this former stranger.
Kevin’s instructions were very precise. Caleb followed them to the letter. He and Zeke took the trail running along the valley’s northern ledge, paralleling the creek. It was little more than a game trail, a narrow ledge with two tracks of paler, flattened weeds. Caleb guessed the clan sent out teams once or twice each season to scythe the growth. Even so, he would not want to try this path in a storm.
When they crested the rise, the apple orchard was a mile or so directly ahead of them, just as Kevin had said. The blossoms turned the trees into earthbound clouds.
Midway across the meadow, Caleb reined in and said, “Go ahead and signal.”
Zeke stood on the wagon seat, cocked his rifle, and fired off a round.
The report echoed off the trees ahead of them. There was no farmhouse in sight, nor a single living soul. Just the fluffy white cloud of blossoms, beautiful as a myth.
Then someone emerged from the grove. Caleb assumed it was a woman because she wore a skirt. She held the rifle with practiced ease and kept it aimed steady at them as he clicked the horses and rolled forward.
Caleb handed the paper to the woman, just like Kevin had told him to do. She examined it closely, then left, but only after three armed men had emerged from the trees.
Half an hour later, she returned with a tall, lean man. Caleb knew him instantly as a farmer. Though he was probably not out of his thirties, his leathery face was seamed deep as spring furrows. His eyes were tightened into a permanent squint. The hand holding the sheet of paper was broad as a shovel and iron-hard. “Where did you get this?”
Caleb answered as Kevin had instructed. “Abigail Ritter sends her regards.”
“She tell you my name?”
“Enoch Maskell.”
“Word is the militia captured Abigail.”
“They tried. She escaped. Kevin too.”
“Where are they now?”
