When Matthew awakened, it was as any animal of the forest might: instantly alert, his senses questing, and with the memory of what Walker had just quietly spoken to him.
"He's coming."
There was no light but starshine and the poor candle of a quarter-moon. Everything was made up of shades of dark blue deepening to black, and Matthew could just see Walker kneeling at his side.
"One minute," Matthew answered, in an equally quiet, composed voice. He opened his shooter's bag and brought out his powderhorn. In his firearms training, Matthew had been required by Greathouse to several times load a pistol blindfolded. Matthew then thought it had been ridiculous, but now he grasped the wisdom of the exercise. He wished, indeed, that he'd practiced it more, instead of getting out the door and to the coffeehouse as soon as possible. But he would have to do the best he could, and if he made a mistake the gunpowder goblin-he who sometimes flashed bright and hot and sometimes fizzled and sputtered in the hands of greenhorns-would soon correct him most harshly.
He shook powder into the pistol's flashpan, after which he closed the pan's lid and thumbed the striker to half-cock. Now, he thought as he shouldered his shooter's bag and stood up to follow Walker, they were in it for blood.
Walker unsheathed his bow, took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. "Slowly and silently," he whispered. "Stay on my right side, shoulder-to-shoulder. He's coming in from the left, about sixty yards out."
"How do you know?"
"I got near enough to hear him. And to smell him. Are you ready?" "Yes." He had told bigger lies, but not many.
They left the sleeping girl and her mother, crossed the clearing and entered the forest on the far side. Matthew strained to see anything, and thought himself lucky not to immediately trip over a root or stumble into a thicket and fall face-first, alerting everything with ears between here and the City of Brotherly Love. But the moccasins helped his feet read the earth and he moved slowly, at Walker's pace. One step, and stop. One step, and stop. His heart was beating hard; in this silence, surely Slaughter could hear the drumming.
When Matthew took a pace forward and dead leaves crackled, the noise seemed as loud as the raucous laughter of ruffians in the Cock'a'tail tavern. Walker stood motionless, and so did Matthew. They stayed that way for what Matthew thought must have been at least a minute. Walker knelt down, making no noise, and leaned his head further toward the ground. Then, at last, he stood up again and eased onward, correcting their course a few more degrees to the left.
Blue upon black and gray upon black were the colors of the night woods. Matthew's eyes were becoming more accustomed to the dark; here the black stripes of tree branches were faintly seen across dark blue underbrush, and there a gray boulder rose up like an island in a sea of ink. The two stalkers, seeking to intercept the third, continued steathily into the forest. When thorns clutched at Matthew's buckskin jacket and scratched his face, he barely paused in his advance. His eyes sought movement among the massive trunks of trees and among the black patterns of vegetation. He kept the pistol low at his side, his thumb ready to pull the striker to full-cock. Though the air was chill, sweat rose at his temples and dampened his armpits. He was no hero born with iron nerves; every step he took, he thought he might pee in his breeches.
"Crouch down," Walker whispered, close to his ear.
He obeyed. Walker got on his knees, tilted his head and leaned forward, almost placing his ear upon the ground. The Indian stayed in that posture as if frozen, while Matthew scanned back and forth across the dark. It was very quiet at first. Just a hint of sound, before it became a sound. Dead leaves being crunched underfoot, almost directly ahead. The sound ceased, so quickly Matthew wasn't sure he'd heard it or not. Walker remained still.
The back of Matthew's neck crawled. If that was indeed Slaughter out there, and not just any noctural animal, he was moving as cautiously as they were. It called to Matthew's mind the unsettling supposition that Slaughter might have known they would be here, and he was listening for them as well.
The noise did not repeat itself. Walker waited a moment more, and then he silently and smoothly rose to his feet.
He took one step forward and stopped. Then one step, again, and stopped. His head went from side to side, the arrow ready for a target. Matthew eased up next to him, wincing as a small stick broke under his right heel.
Walker once more remained motionless, and Matthew with him. They listened, in the silence.
Matthew could only hear his heartbeat and the roaring of blood in his veins. If any of that got any louder, he would be deafened.
And now ahead again, but nearer was that the noise of a boot scraping across a stone? Or had it been a pistol's striker being drawn to full-cock?
Walker's elbow was planted firmly in the center of Matthew's chest. The message was clear: Wait.
Moving his head in small increments, Matthew looked back and forth across the woods. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.
Then, frighteningly and horribly, there came from the direction of camp a woman's cry. It was sharp and sudden, and became the noise of Faith calling for her mother. Matthew realized she had awakened in the dark, with all the terror it unlocked in her fragmented mind. In a few seconds the sound of her voice faded, as Faith had either drifted off again or Lark had been able to comfort her.
Walker's elbow moved from Matthew's chest. Slowly, carefully, Walker took a single step.
Something abruptly burst from the brush beneath the Indian's foot. Matthew, who thought his hair had just turned white, had the sense of a small dark shape scurrying off. Its clatter through the leaves sounded like a herd of deer, though the creature had probably been a rabbit or a woodchuck. Walker stood as solid as a rock, but Matthew was left trembling and instinctively felt at his crotch for any leakage there. Fortunately, he was still wearing dry breeches.
But was there a shape ahead of them, through the slanting blue and black bones of the night, that Matthew saw moving? Just a glimpse, and then gone if it had ever been there?
"Something moved," Matthew whispered, his voice raw. He started to point and thought better of it. "Ahead to the left."
Walker aimed his arrow toward that point, and when the Indian took his next step Matthew felt his guts twinge until it was evident there would be no more bursts from the brush. Matthew stayed alongside him, as they advanced among huge trees. In another moment Matthew was aware of a faint and hazy lumination on all sides: the green glow from dozens of mushrooms on the forest floor, or of fungus attached to rotting wood.
Matthew kept alert for any further movement. Walker stopped again and seemed to be sniffing the air. There was a long pause, during which Matthew thought his teeth might break, he was clenching them so hard. Walker whispered, with a hint of urgency, "He's close." A shape suddenly rose from a crouch through the thicket in front of them, but even as Walker let his arrow fly the shape flattened out once more and merged with the dark. There came the thunk of the arrowhead hitting a tree. Walker reached back, took a second arrow from his quiver and nocked it.
Matthew saw, to the left again, another fleeting motion. Whether it was part of a shoulder, or a back, or a head, he couldn't tell. It was just there one instant and the next not. The bowstring sang and the second arrow sped away. No cry of pain followed. There was only the silence and the stillness. Walker readied a third arrow. The Indian moved forward, the bow drawn and the arrow seeking a target. Matthew lifted his pistol and cocked the striker; it made a jarringly loud click. He followed Walker, staying just off his right shoulder.