Joseph tossed another branch onto the flames and shrugged. “Who is out here to see it, other than our friends?”
“We don’t know who is out here,” Charlotte insisted. “That is the whole point of being careful.”
Joseph sighed. It was easier to humor Charlotte than to argue with her, much easier. He knew that. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that fact, however.
“We’ll let the fire burn down,” he said. “I wanted some hot food tonight. All this running and hiding and living like animals … it gets wearisome, Charlotte.”
Her expression softened, and when it did, some of the beauty that hardship had drained out of her returned, if only momentarily.
“Of course it does,” she said. “I’m sorry, Joseph. But we must stay alive and free if our cause is to have any chance of succeeding.”
She sat down on a slab of rock on the other side of the fire. The light from the flames painted her face with red shadows.
Joseph Marat was aware that his sister was a beautiful woman. She should have been in an elegantly appointed drawing room somewhere, wearing a fine gown, instead of hunkered in a forest clearing in boots, denim trousers, and a flannel shirt. Her thick, dark brown hair should have been piled on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls instead of drawn back and tied behind her head so that she could tuck it more easily under her hat when she was riding.
But neither of them had asked for their fate. The Indian blood that mingled in their veins with the French meant that they would always be half-breeds, pitiful creatures to be scorned and looked down upon, despite the fact that both of them were more intelligent and better educated than the English and the Scots who had driven their people out of their homeland.
Joseph took the skillet from the fire, divided the beans and bacon in it among the two of them. His rifle was close at hand, and even while he was heating the food, he had paid close attention to the woods around them.
What he had told Charlotte was true, as far as it went. They had no enemies out here that he knew of.
But it was what a man didn’t know that often wound up killing him, Joseph reflected. Charlotte was absolutely right. He shouldn’t have built such a big fire.
The objection she had raised didn’t keep her from eating eagerly. They washed the food down with sips of hot coffee. After a while, Charlotte said, “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?”
Joseph shook his head. “I don’t know. Duryea wasn’t sure when the guns would arrive. Sometime this month.”
“We’ve been waiting for a week already.”
“I know. We’ll wait another week if we have to. However long it takes.”
Joseph’s tone was a little sharper than he’d intended. He saw the flash of hurt in his sister’s eyes and wanted to apologize to her. He suppressed the impulse.
A man who was tough enough to lead a revolution didn’t start saying he was sorry every time his bossy little sister got her feelings hurt.
A little noise in the brush caught Joseph’s attention. A small animal might have caused it … but it might be something else, too.
Moving casually so as not to alarm anyone who was watching, he reached over and put his hand on his rifle. Charlotte noticed the movement, and her eyes narrowed. Joseph knew she was about to ask him if something was wrong. To forestall that, he stood up and said, “I think I’ll take a little walk.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I don’t demand explanations from you when you have personal business to conduct, do I?”
Her face turned even redder in the firelight. He felt bad about embarrassing her, but better a little embarrassment than tipping off a possible enemy that he was aware of them lurking near the camp.
He tucked the rifle under his arm as if he didn’t have a care in the world, then stepped out of the circle of light cast by the campfire. Instead of heading toward the sound he had heard, he moved off in another direction.
As soon as the thick shadows underneath the trees had enfolded him, he turned and shifted the rifle so that it was in his hands, ready to fire. He began working his way around the camp.
When Joseph was a boy, his father had been friends with Gabriel Dumont, the famous hunter and plainsman who was Louis Riel’s second-in-command. Dumont had taught Joseph how to track game, and that involved being able to move silently through the woods, even in darkness.
Joseph used those lessons now, taking care each time he put a foot down not to make any noise. It was slow, painstaking work, but such caution could save a man’s life.
He paused frequently to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything except the faint crackling of the fire as it burned down. Had he been too suspicious? Was there really nothing dangerous out here?
“Joseph?” That was Charlotte calling out to him. “Joseph, are you all right?”
Blast it, Joseph thought bitterly. He couldn’t answer her without giving away his position, but if he failed to respond and there really was someone out here watching the camp, that silence might warn the lurker that he had been discovered.
Joseph was trying to decide what to do when the brush crackled again, right in front of him this time. His eyes, adjusted to the darkness since he had been away from the fire for several minutes, saw a patch of deeper darkness shift and reveal itself to be the rough shape of a man.
Certain now that something was wrong, Joseph lunged forward and thrust the barrel of his rifle into the stranger’s back. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “Charlotte, stay where you are!”
Instead of obeying the order, as would any sane man who had a rifle barrel prodding him in the back, the stranger suddenly twisted around and threw himself out of the line of fire. Joseph started to pull the trigger anyway, but his finger froze on the trigger as he realized the rifle was pointing toward the camp. If he fired, he might hit Charlotte by accident.
That second of indecision was enough. The man grabbed the rifle barrel and wrenched upward. That move made Joseph jerk the trigger involuntarily. The shot was deafeningly loud under the thick canopy of tree branches.
The stranger drove the rifle toward Joseph, ripping the weapon from his hands and slamming it into his chest. The impact made Joseph stagger backwards. He felt stunned, as if the blow had caused his heart to stop beating. He couldn’t seem to get his breath. While he was off-balance and struggling, the man barreled into him and knocked him off his feet.
Joseph landed hard on the ground, stunning him even more. A knee dug painfully into his belly and pinned him there. The next second, he felt the cold, hard bite of steel as the stranger pressed a gun muzzle into the soft flesh of his neck.
“Don’t move, mister,” the man warned, “or I’ll blow your head off.”
He was about to die, Joseph thought, and things couldn’t get any worse.
But then they did, as Charlotte’s voice, tight with fear, said, “No, m’sieu, it is you who should not move, or I will blow your head off!”
Chapter 8
Joe Palmer had been threatened plenty of times in his life. He had a pretty good feeling for when somebody actually meant to kill him, and for when they didn’t.
The gal who had just called out might think she meant the threat, but she really didn’t. When it came down to the nub, she wouldn’t pull the trigger.
He was betting his life on that.
Palmer didn’t take his gun away from the man who’d tried to jump him. Instead he said, “Lady, you better be careful. Even if you shoot me, you can’t do it fast enough to stop me from killin’ your husband.”
“He is not my husband,” she said. “He is my brother. And all I have to do is pull the trigger—”
“All that’s holding back the hammer of this revolver in my hand is my thumb,” Palmer interrupted her. “You shoot me, and the hammer falls. Your brother dies. Simple as that.”