"Three for your approval, sir! Lizzie, show the man!"
Lady Dovehart leaned down, opened a box on the floor and brought up, one after the other, three flintlock pistols in various stages of decay. Two looked to be more dangerous for the firer than for the target, but the third-a little brown bullpup of a gun, hardly a handful-appeared to be in fairly decent shape but for the green patina on all exposed metal parts.
"Twelve shillings, an excellent choice!" said the master. "But for you, seeing as how you're a friend of a friend, ten!"
"I have no money, but I have this." Matthew brought out the first trinket that came to his fingers; it was the silver brooch with the four black stones.
"Hmmmm." Dovehart picked the brooch up with his good left hand to examine it more closely. Before he got it up to his face, his wife snatched it away.
She held it near a lantern. "Ohhhhh," she crooned. "It's pretty! You know, my favorite color's black. Kinda royallike lookin', ain't it?" She elbowed her husband in the ribs. "Sell the young sir his pistol, Jaco."
"Including the same items you sold the man we're after?" Matthew prodded. "Flints, powderhorn, powder, patches and a dozen balls?"
"All right. Very well. Sold."
"Including also a pair of stockings?" Matthew had seen a few on one of the shelves. How clean they would be he had no idea, but he needed a pair anyway. "And," he continued, "I'd like that, if it fits." He pointed to another item that had caught his eye; it was a fringed buckskin jacket, hanging from a peg next to the waistcoat Walker had been ogling.
"Well, sir." Dovehart frowned. "Now, I'm not so sure that we can-" "Try it," the lady said. "Go on, it looks about right."
"God A'mighty!" Dovehart fumed as Matthew shrugged into the jacket, which was on the large size across the shoulders and had a burn mark along the left arm as if a torch had been passed over it. Otherwise, it was fine. "I'm tryin' to run a business here!"
The lady was already pinning her brooch on, and she picked up a little oval handmirror that was cracked down the middle to admire her new acquisition.
"Jaco?" Walker had come up to the counter again. "Do you have another spyglass?"
"Huh? No, that was our one and only. Lizzie, stop grinnin' at yourself! God save us from prideful wives!" That comment was directed at Walker, but Matthew saw Dovehart quickly shift his gaze as if it had been originally meant for hi m. Obviously, the matter of Walker not havi ng a wife was a thorny subject, best left alone.
"One more thing," Walker continued calmly, as if the comment had never existed. "He'll need a carry-bag for all that."
"Got anythin' else to trade?"
Matthew started to reach for another item from his pocket, but before he could get there Walker said with a hint of steel in his voice, "Good will is a valuable commodity. I'd expect you could find something." He stared across the counter into Dovehart's eyes and became utterly immobile, as if nothing on earth could shift him from the position.
"Well " Dovehart glanced nervously at Matthew and then back to the Indian. "I suppose there's an old shooter's bag up on the top shelf over there. Ought to do."
Walker found it and gave it to Matthew. It was made of deerskin with the hair still on it and had a drawstring closure, as well as a braided leather strap that fit around the shoulder.
"Alrighty! You through robbin' me?" asked the master, with a measure of heat in his face.
"I'll remember your good will," Walker answered, "the next time the pelts come in."
"And I hope it's soon! Been waitin' for a good load of 'em nearly a month now!"
In his buckskin jacket and new stockings, with his bullpup pistol and the necessaries in the shooter's bag around his shoulder, Matthew bid good-bye to the Doveharts-the master still fussing about lost business, the mistress fixed on her mirror-and followed Walker out into the darkening afternoon. A drizzle was falling again, proclaiming a nasty night. Matthew's stomach rumbled; he looked toward the single little tavern, identified by the sign Tavern, and said, "I'll buy us a meal." Surely the tavern-keepers would accept the engraved silver ring for two bowls of corn soup and a few slices of whatever meat was available.
"I am not allowed in there," said Walker, who did not slow his pace past the tavern. "It's for Englishmen and Dutchmen only."
"Oh. I see."
"They think we smell. It upsets their appetite." He went on a few more strides before he spoke again. "Constable Abernathy's house is around the bend there. I can find where Slaughter was thrown, and where he entered the woods. I can find his track, and his direction. But it has to be done before dark. We can make another mile, maybe two. Are you able?"
Am I? he asked himself. The lights in the tavern windows were fading behind them. It seemed to him that it was the last call of civilization, before whatever lay out there, ahead.
Slaughter. In the dark. With a razor and a pistol. Settling his accounts. "I am," Matthew said.
Walker began to move at a slow run, and Matthew grit his teeth and kept up.
Nineteen
They had penetrated possibly a mile and three quarters into the thick forest that lay alongside the road directly across from Constable Abernathy's house before Walker said, "We'll stop here."
The decision had a strategic importance, because the place he'd chosen was among a group of large boulders in a slight hollow overhung by pines. Working quickly, Walker found a series of fallen treelimbs that, with Matthew's help, he placed overhead in a criss-cross pattern between a pair of the largest rocks. Smaller branches and handfuls of pine needles were then spread across this makeshift roof to provide further shelter from the drizzling rain. Matthew had no qualms about getting wet tonight, but he was appreciative of any measure of comfort.
Walker wasn't finished with their camp, though, for as soon as the shelter was done he went to work preparing a fire using broken-up pine needles and small bits of pine bark and papery white birch bark that were as dry as he could find. The tinder was sparked by not the rubbing of two sticks together, which Matthew had expected, but by the method any English trapper or leatherstocking might have used, the striking of a flint and a small piece of steel. Walker worked intently but patiently, adding more bark and then broken branches to the little tongues of flame. Soon, they had a not unrespectable fire and a decent amount of warmth.
The Indian had previously shed his bow and quiver, as well as his fringed knife belt and his rawhide bag. He sat with his back against a boulder, warming his hands, and then he opened the bag and removed from it a fist-sized, black and oily-looking hunk of dried meat. He sliced some off with his blade and gave it to Matthew, who didn't particularly care if it was beef, venison, bear meat or beaver tail. And it might have been beaver tail, for its pungence, but it was chewy in the mouth and went down just as well as brisket at Sally Almond's. Walker ate some, cut Matthew another piece and himself a second, and then returned the rest of it to the bag.
"Is that all?" Matthew asked.
"It's enough."
Now Matthew knew why the man was so thin. But even though Matthew was still famished, there was no asking for anymore, and that was that. Now that he'd had some time to sit and stretch his legs out, he wondered if he could ever stand up again. Truly, the morning was going to bring a battle of mind over matter. Sitting in the warmth and the orange light, he felt how very tired he was, how very near the edge of absolute collapse. Yet he knew also that when he closed his eyes he would see the carnage in John Burton's cabin again, and hear the buzzing of the flies.