True to his claim, Walker had found the crushed place in the thicket where Abernathy's mare had thrown Slaughter. The Indian had knelt down and found Slaughter's tracks among the dead leaves, and had announced to Matthew that their quarry was heading into the deeper woods on a southwesterly course. Probably wanted to avoid the road for awhile, Matthew reasoned; at least until a few miles had been put between himself, the constable and the men who were after his skin. Matthew assumed Slaughter would either veer his course to meet the road further ahead or might find some other backwoods route to Philadelphia.
"We go at first light," Walker said as he added a few more small broken sticks to the fire. "By that, I mean we're moving at first light."
"I understand."
Walker stared at him, his face impassive. "You did well today." "For an Englishman?"
"Yes."
"Thank you," Matthew answered. Whether he would do so well tomorrow was another question entirely.
"We might catch up with him in the afternoon, if we're fast and he's slow. I had hoped he might have been injured in his fall, but he's not limping."
"Too bad," Matthew mumbled. It was all he could do to keep his eyes from sliding shut.
"Yes, unfortunate for us. But he didn't get the horse." Walker arranged the cloak around himself. "Listen to me, Matthew."
An urgent note in the man's voice made Matthew push back the dark.
"I'm going to sleep now. My demons will find me. You are not to awaken me, no matter what you hear. Don't touch me. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
Walker said no more, but curled up beneath his cloak and for all intents and purposes disappeared within its folds.
Matthew sat up for a minute or two longer, until his chin dropped upon his chest. The fire still burned, its warmth soothing. Matthew stretched out alongside the flames, listening to the soft crackling of the wood and the softer sound of rain upon the shelter's roof. Behind his closed eyes he did again see the bloody horror of Reverend Burton's cabin, the broken dog and Tom's battered face, but the worst was that he saw in his mind's eye Slaughter out there in the night somewhere, going on and on, mile after mile, a monster moving across fields of carnage.
Then, mercifully, he dropped into sleep as off a precipice. He woke up just as suddenly.
And lay there, very still, drowsy and fogged, listening to the night.
Far off, an owl hooted. Once, again, and a third time.
The rain had stopped, he thought. He couldn't hear it falling any longer.
The owl hooted once more. The same one or another? It seemed to be from a different direction, and nearer to their camp.
Matthew opened his sleep-swollen eyes. The fire had burned down to the red-glowing embers. And then from beneath Walker's cloak came that keening cry again, rising up to end in what might have been a gasp of breath or a plea for mercy. There followed a period of silence, and then the cry rose up, grew ragged and hoarse and became in its last tortured notes a strangled moan.
The owl spoke. Walker was silent, but Matthew could hear the quickness of his breathing, as if he were running from something he knew he could not possibly escape.
Matthew gave an involuntary shiver. The night was colder, with the fire's dying. He carefully and quietly reached out to grasp a few of the broken sticks Walker had gathered to feed the flames, and as he dropped them upon the embers one of them gave a crack, a polite sound, nothing harsh, just a sound that might have been the trod of a stealthy boot amid the pines.
The dark green cloak whipped up. Startled speechless, Matthew looked into the face of the damned.
The skin seemed to have further tightened around Walker's skull, its pressure so intense that it had caused him to bare his teeth in anguish. Sweat sparkled on his forehead and cheeks. The thin slits of his eyes were fixed directly on Matthew, but then again they had an unfocused quality, a nightmare glaze about them, and so perhaps they could be just as much looking through Matthew at some distant vision as at him. He was up on one knee, his body quivering.
Matthew saw the gleam of the knife in the newborn firelight, and suddenly in a blur of motion the blade was right there at Matthew's neck.
"Walker," Matthew said firmly. He dared not move. The Indian's face came toward him, as if to make out whose visage was floating like an orange lamp in the dark. "Walker," Matthew said again, and this time his voice cracked and betrayed him. "I'm not one of your demons."
Walker's eyes searched his face. The seconds passed. And then Matthew saw the madness leave him, like a blanket of crows rising from a bleak field. It was there one second, and the next it had broken apart and whirled away and nothing was left but the memory of black wings beating the air.
Walker sat back on his haunches and looked at the knife in his hand. Matthew, as weary as he was, doubted he'd be getting back to sleep anytime soon. He sat up, rubbed his throat where the blade had threatened to cut him a dead man's grin, and stared into the fire as if to find in it some picture of comfort.
"Ah," said Walker, his voice tired and raspy. He slid the knife back into its holder on the fringed belt. "Now you know."
"Know what?"
"Why I have no wife, and why I am unlikely to ever have a wife." "That's happened before?"
"Several times, in your land. Of course, they never let me have a knife. But I did try to attack some of the ladies who accepted me. It happened only once, here, but once was enough." Walker kept his head down, shamed by his lack of control. "You can imagine my " He thought for a word again, and Matthew decided that in these times of hesitation Walker was trying to recall words he had learned but that he didn't have much need to use and so had nearly forgotten. "Popularity," he finished.
Matthew nodded. "What do you dream about?" he asked. Walker was silent. "Is it so terrible to speak of?"
For a time Walker did not answer. He picked up a few sticks, broke them between his fingers and put them into the fire one after the other. "My demons show me things," he said at last. "Things only demons would be cruel enough to show a human being."
"That's saying a lot while not saying very much," Matthew observed. "What do they show you, exactly?"
"The end of the world," Walker answered, and he let that linger before he continued. "That is to say, the end of my world. Yours will go on, but you might wish someday-someday-that it would not."
"I don't understand."
Walker opened his rawhide bag that held the dried meat as well as the flint and steel, and from it he brought a familiar object: the broken silver watch. He placed it in the palm of his left hand, and occasionally gazed at it as if to ascertain whether it was still lifeless or not.
"When I was eleven years old," Walker began, "a group of Englishmen came to our village, with a guide who spoke our tongue. Rich-looking men, they were. Wearing great cloaks and feathered hats. They brought bags of gifts with them. Bundles of bright cloth, glass bottles, bead necklaces and bracelets, woolen caps and the like. They were certainly rich men, and they wanted us to know it. They brought the chiefs daughter a clay doll with blonde hair; I remember that very clearly, because all the children crowded around it wanting to see. And then these men said that they wished something for their gifts, and it would benefit both them and the tribe. They said they wanted three children, to take back with them across the dark divide, to show them what the world called England was like, and the great King's city of London."
"The agreement was made," said Walker, as he watched the fire burn. "To pick three children, and see them off on one of the flying canoe clouds that rested on the waters of Philadelphia. Nimble Climber was chosen, Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone was another, and I was the third." He glanced at Matthew. "Back then, I was called He Runs Fast Too. My father is He Runs Fast. You met him. He and my younger brothers took your friend out of the well. He doesn't run quite so fast now, but he still gets around."