“Around here we do our own killing,” she said. Then she wheeled about and strode into the barn. At the base of the stump, the creature’s dead eye was wide open.
Marc scrubbed his boots in the snow and carried on. At the door to the back shed, he noted the probable cause of Winnifred’s scorn, if that’s what it was. Standing just inside, obscured by shadow, Mary Huggan was twisting a cotton hanky in her fingers and doing her best to hold back her tears.
“It’s all right now, Mary,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “You can go on over there. Beth’s expecting you.”
Mary sped away, carefully skirting the blood-drenched path beside the coop.
After a midday meal of cheese, cold ham, and bread, Marc and Erastus Hatch walked down to the barn, where Hatch asked Thomas Goodall to saddle their horses. They continued on to the mill and sat smoking in the tiny office the miller kept there, more as a sanctuary than a place of business.
“I could go out there on my own,” Marc said.
“I’m sure you could, son. But this ain’t England, you know. That tunic of yours is more likely to raise the bull’s hackles than to instill fear, or even generate a modicum of respect.” He was chuckling but nonetheless serious.
“I do know that,” Marc said. A mere eight months in the colony had taught him to disregard the graces and rules of the society he had been raised in. In Great Britain there were dozens of offences for which a man who forgot his place in the unchangeable scheme of things might be hanged-and frequently was. Here in Upper Canada, you had to murder a man in front of ten unimpeachable witnesses before the scaffold was brought into play. And dressing down an insubordinate or an offending citizen was just as likely to get you a string of retaliatory oaths as a cap-tugging apology. Even women who professed to be ladies smoked pipes in public and were known to utter a curse or two when provoked. It was only at Government House and at the few mixed gatherings of the officers’ mess that his scarlet tunic and brass set tender hearts aflutter or elicited respect amongst the enlisted men and servants. That he had been the son of a gamekeeper was neither here nor there, especially if no one were ever to find out.
“I’ll just ride on out ahead of you,” Hatch said, “and let Wicks and Hislop know you’re coming, and why. Then I’ll leave you to them.”
“That’s extremely kind of you.”
“Still, even if they accept you as an advance man for the quartermaster, I don’t quite see how you’re likely to bring the conversation around to a death almost everybody in the township believes to be an accident.”
“I don’t rightly know myself,” Marc said. “But I think I’ve learned enough to improvise something. It shouldn’t be hard to start a discussion of Joshua’s accident: there’s certain to have been lots of gossip and speculation about it. All I need is a cue to ask whether or not these people ever knew or met him. I might suggest that I knew him a bit back in Toronto. None of these men will know precisely when I came here or how long I’ve been in the garrison at Fort York.”
“You could even mention you’re going to make an offer for the two hogs Elijah is fattening up for the spring.”
“Am I?” said Marc.
“I’m sure your quartermaster would approve,” Hatch said, laughing.
Half an hour later the two men were riding up the Farley Sideroad towards a group of farms locally dubbed “Buffaloville.” Hatch had just suggested that Marc pull his horse into the protection of some cedars while he went on up to the Stebbins place to prepare for Marc’s arrival and secure his cover story, when onto the road in front of them swung a two-horse team and cutter. Moments later, the vehicle went whizzing past them at full trot. A curt wave from the fur-clad driver was all the greeting they got as he raced down the concession line.
“Azel Stebbins,” Hatch said. “Prime suspect.”
“Where would he be going in such a hurry at one in the afternoon?”
“By the looks of that harquebus sticking up behind the seat, I’d say he was going hunting. Some deer were spotted up that way yesterday.”
“Is everyone around here armed?”
“Well, they all hunt.”
“I take it we can write off Stebbins for the day?”
“Unless you’d like to spend the afternoon watching young Lydia Stebbins bat her big eyelashes at you.”
As good as his word, Hatch did go on ahead to the farm of Israel Wicks to prepare the ground for an official visit from the regimental quartermaster’s emissary. When Marc rode up the lane alongside a windbreak of pines, he spotted a tall, bearded fellow sporting an orange tuque waiting for him in front of a low but extensive square-log cabin, onto which a number of ells and sheds had been added over time. Behind it stood an impressive barnboard structure, several smaller coops and hutches, and a split-rail corral where a pair of matched Percherons idled in the cold sunshine.
Wicks held out a friendly hand when Marc dismounted, and led him into the house. “Erastus says you’re from the garrison in Toronto, scoutin’ for grain and pork.”
“That’s right,” Marc said. “I’m authorized only to line up potential supplies, to save Major Jenkin time when he makes the rounds of the eastern counties next month.”
“We’ll have some coffee and a shot of somethin’ stronger before we talk business,” Wicks said, pulling off his coat and scarf. He hollered towards the partitioned area at the rear of the house, “Moe, come out here. We got company!”
Wicks appeared to be about forty-five years of age. He had a grizzled beard, grooved brow, and deep-set eyes that revealed the confidence and the anxiety that comes from prolonged experience of life’s vicissitudes. He took Marc’s greatcoat and draped it carefully over a chair beside the fire blazing in the hearth, above which a brace of Kentucky shooting guns were on display.
“Ah, Maureen.”
Marc turned to be introduced to Mrs. Wicks, a spare, fretting little woman who reminded him of a nervous songbird that’s forgotten to migrate and seems perpetually puzzled by the consequences. She stopped abruptly when she sighted him, as if bedazzled by the blast of scarlet before her.
“Say hello to Ensign Edwards, Moe.”
“Ma’am,” Marc said, but his bow was missed by the averted eyes of his hostess.
“We don’t get much company out here-in the winter,” Wicks said.
“I’ll fetch us some coffee,” his wife said. She scuttled back into the safety of her kitchen, and the clatter of kettles on an iron stove was soon heard.
“You’ve no children?” Marc said.
“Two lads,” Wicks said, in a voice strong and rich enough to grace a podium or the hustings in the heat of a campaign. The vigorous health that is the gift of an outdoor life shone through his movements and ease of bearing. Marc suffered a pang of envy and felt suddenly ashamed of his deception. “They’re both out doing road duty for a couple of days.”
Maureen Wicks flitted in with a tray of coffee and biscuits and flitted back out again. Wicks tipped a generous dollop of whisky into the mugs, and the two men drank and ate.