He let the horse have his head for about a half mile, then drew back on the reins as he saw wagon tracks. They were fresh, maybe two days old; Shannow dismounted and examined them. The wheels had bit deep into the dry earth — a family moving south with all their possessions. Silently he wished them good fortune and remounted.
By mid-afternoon he came upon the broken wheel. By now he knew a little of the family: there were two children and a woman. The children had gathered sticks and dried cattle droppings for fuel, probably depositing them in a net slung under the tailboard. The woman had walked beside the lead oxen; her feet were small, but her stride long. There was no sign of a man but then, thought Shannow, perhaps he is lazy and rides in the wagon. The broken wheel, though, was a mystery.
Shannow studied the tracks of the horsemen. They had ridden to the camp and changed the wheel, then returned the way they had come. The woman had stood close to one of the riders, and they had walked together to a boulder. By the wagon tracks Shannow found six brass caps, still with their fulminates intact. At some time during the encounter someone had unloaded a pistol.
Why?
He built a fire on the ashes of the old one and sat pondering the problem. Perhaps the caps were old and the woman — for he knew now there was no man with them — had doubted their effectiveness. But if the caps were old, then so would be the wads and charges and these had not been stripped clear. He read the track signs once more, but could make no more of them — save that one of the horsemen had ridden to the right of the main group, or had left at a different time.
Shannow walked out along the trail and a hundred paces from the camp he saw a hoofprint from the lone horse which had overstamped a previous print. So then, the lone rider had left after the main group. He had obviously sat talking with the woman. Why did they not all stay?
He prepared himself some tea, and ate the last of the fruit from Shir-ran's store. As he delved at the bottom of the sack his fingers touched something cold and metallic and he drew it out. It was like a coin, but made of gold, and upon the surface was a raised motif that Shannow could not make out in the gathering dusk. He tucked the coin into his pocket and settled down beside the fire. But the tracks had disturbed him and sleep would not come; the moon was bright and he rose, saddled the stallion and rode off after the horsemen.
When he came to their camp-site they were gone, but a man lay with his head in the ashes of a dead fire, his face burned. He had been shot several times and his boots and gun were missing, though the belt and scabbard remained. Shannow was about to return to his horse when he heard a groan. He could hardly believe life still survived in that ruined body. Unhooking his canteen from the saddle, he knelt by the man, lifting the burnt head.
The man's eyes opened. 'They gone after the woman,' he whispered. Shannow held the canteen to his lips, but he choked and could not swallow. He said no more and Shannow waited for the inevitable. The man died within minutes.
Something glinted to Shannow's right. Under a bush, where it must have fallen, lay the man's gun. Shannow retrieved it. The caps had been removed; he had no chance to defend himself against the attack. Shannow pondered the evidence. The men were obviously brigands who had shot down one of their own. Why? Over the woman? But they had all been at the camp. Why leave?
A group of men had come across a woman and two children by a wagon with a broken wheel.
They had mended the wheel and left — save one, who followed after. His pistol had been tampered with. But then surely he would have known that? When he arrived his… friends?… had shot him.
Then they had headed back to the woman. There was no sense in it… unless he had stopped them from taking the woman in the first place. But then, why would he unload his gun before returning?
There was only one way to find out.
Shannow stepped into the saddle and searched for the tracks.
'Why did God kill my Dad?' asked Samuel, as he dipped his flat baked bread in the last of his broth. Beth put aside her own plate and looked across the camp-fire at the boy, his face white in the moonlight, his blond hair shining like silver threads.
'God didn't kill him, Sam. The Red Fever done that.'
'But the Preacher used to say that nobody died unless God wanted them to. Then they went to Heaven or Hell.'
'That's what the Preacher believes,' she said slowly, 'but it don't necessarily mean it's true. The Preacher used to say that Holy Jesus died less than four hundred years ago, and then the world toppled. But your Dad didn't believe that, did he? He said there were thousands of years between then and now. You remember?'
'Maybe that's why God killed him,' said Samuel, "cos he didn't believe the Preacher.'
'Ain't nothin' in life that easy,' Beth told him. 'There's wicked men that God don't kill, and there's good men — like your Pa — who die out of their time. That's just life, Samuel; it don't come with no promises.'
Mary, who had said nothing throughout, cleared away the dishes, carrying them beyond the camp-site and scrubbing them with grass. Beth stood and stretched her back. 'You've a lot still to learn, Samuel,' she said. 'You want something, then you have to fight for it. You don't give ground, and you don't whinge and whine. You take your knocks and you get on with living. Now help your sister clear up, and put that fire out.'
'But it's cold, Ma,' Samuel protested. 'Couldn't we just sleep out here with the fire?'
"The fire can be seen for miles. You want them raiders coming back?'
'But they helped us with the wheel?'
'Put out the fire, snapper-gut!' she stormed and the boy leapt to his feet and began to kick earth over the blaze. Beth walked away to the wagon and stood staring out over the plain. She didn't know if there was a God, and she didn't care. God had not helped her mother against the brutality of the man she married — and, sure as sin, God had never helped her. Such a shame, she thought.
It would have been nice to feel her children were safe under the security of a benign deity, with the faith that all their troubles could be safely left to a supreme being.
She remembered the terrible beating her mother had suffered the day she died; could still hear the awful sounds of fists on flesh. She had watched as he dragged her body out to the waste ground behind the house, and listened as the spade bit into the earth for an unmarked grave. He had staggered back into the house and stared at her, his hands filthy and his eyes red-streaked. Then he had drunk himself into a stupor and fallen asleep in the heavy chair. 'Jus' you an' me how,' he mumbled. The carving-knife had slid across his throat and he had died without waking.
Beth shook her head and stared up at the stars, her eyes misting with unaccustomed tears. She glanced back at the children, as they spread their blankets on the warm ground beside the dead fire. Sean McAdam had not been a bad man, but she did not miss him as they did. He had learned early on that his wife did not love him, but he had doted on his children, played with them, taught them, helped them. So devoted had he been that he had not noticed his wife's affection growing, not until close to the end when he had lain, almost paralysed, in the wagon.
'Sorry, Beth,' he whispered.
'Nothin' to be sorry for. Rest and get well.'
For an hour or more he had slept, then his eyes opened and his hand trembled and lifted from the blanket. She took hold of it, squeezing it firmly. 'I love you,' he said. 'God's truth.'
She stared at him hard. 'I know. Sleep. Go to sleep.'
'I… didn't do too bad… by you and the kids, did I?'