Mending Horses (5 page)

“An uneasy mind makes for an uneasy stomach.”

Or was that “An uneasy stomach makes for an uneasy mind?”
“Damn it all,” Jonathan muttered to himself. He took another puff on his segar and let the smoke out slowly, as though he expected the smoke to shape itself into the proper words, silvery and soft-edged against the black velvet sky.

The air had a bit of a chill to it, making Jonathan walk a little faster along the road. He'd never held with those who believed that inhaling the night air was a sure invitation to a consumptive death. There was nothing like a brisk evening walk to settle the stomach, and nothing like a good segar to clear the head.

But tonight Jonathan had walked a fair piece and found himself no more easy in mind or stomach than when he'd left the house. The uneasy stomach had a ready explanation: too much of Sophie's fine cooking and too much of Eldad's fine wine and brandy. A man could get accustomed to fine things if he wasn't careful, and then where would he be? Unable to fend for himself on the road. Unable to make his way alone in the world.

Alone
.

Why did that word all of a sudden send a shiver down his spine? He'd been more than content with his own company—well, his own and Phizzy's—for how many years now?

“Getting soft in your old age, Jonny boy?” he grumbled. “You got what you wanted, ain't you?” The bee that he'd placed in Sophie's bonnet was likely buzzing around in there as she slept. Jonathan had seen the yearning in her eyes the moment Billy had started to sing. As for Billy, well, Billy had liked Sophie's cooking
and marveled over her clean white sheets and feather mattress. Liking Sophie would come soon enough. Yes, Sophie would win the child over and then that bee would have a whole hive full of honey for Sophie, Eldad, and Billy.

Damn it all, though, Jonathan would miss the music. He'd never known a body so hungry for song as Billy. The most leaden tune could pour into those ears, and it would come out of that mouth sounding like gold. And there was nothing like a good song to make folks more willing to part with their money and buy a tray or pan or teapot they didn't need. Folks had been happy to pay for the singing and fiddling alone, and never you mind about the tinware. He and Billy had gotten so they just needed to look at each other to start out on the same song. Yes, he'd miss the music, all right.

Still, it'd be better all around if the child stayed with Sophie. Having Billy just made Jonathan lazy. He'd grown too accustomed to having help to set up the wares, to feed and harness Phizzy. And Phizzy was getting too damn used to being spoiled and fussed over.

As he finished his segar, Jonathan noticed a pair of lights bobbing in the distance and picked out a group of men stumbling across a pasture. Drunk, he guessed, and holding each other up as they made their way home.
You get to depending on somebody, Jonny, and you'll be just like that, unable to stand on your own two feet
.

Besides, too much companionship made a man prideful. He was already growing puffed up from having somebody around who listened to his stories and believed more than half of them, somebody who laughed at his jokes, even the stale ones. It was a powerful temptation to vanity when somebody watched everything you did and copied your ways as if there were nothing finer in the world than to be just like you.

He shuddered to think of anybody looking to him as a model. What kind of sorry life could he offer a child? He'd spent most of his life wandering around as aimlessly as . . . as . . . well, as that bunch of drunkards. One of them fell, and the others set upon him with kicks and blows.

“There's companionship for you,” Jonathan muttered, crushing the stub of his segar under his heel. Give a man enough drink, and he'd turn on the very mother that bore him.

As the fallen man's companions yanked him to his feet, Jonathan noticed that he seemed to have no arms, or at least seemed unable to move them. There was something peculiar about his head, too. It looked more like an understuffed pillow than a proper head. The armless man lurched into step, like an unwilling calf tied by the neck and led to market.

With a knot in the pit of his stomach, he guessed who the armless man was and what was liable to happen to him. He'd been run out of enough towns to feel a kinship for the man, criminal or no. And so he ran. Damn, his old body was slow and heavy.

He was sweating rivers and aching in every joint by the time he staggered into the house. Perspiration fogged his spectacles, and he groped for the rail as he clomped up the stairs. “Eldad!” he tried to holler, but barely had breath to wheeze out something that sounded like “Da-da-da.” It felt as though a giant fist squeezed his chest.

Nightshirt flapping, Billy dashed out of the bedroom. “Mr. S.! What is it? Are you sick?”

Jonathan let Billy guide him to a chair and sit him down. Yanking his spectacles off with one hand, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket with the other. He wiped the foggy lenses, then rubbed the cloth over his dripping face. The vise around his chest finally let up enough for him to get real words out. “Get Phizzy. Put his bridle and saddle on. Hurry.” Billy disappeared, bare feet slapping down the stairs and across the floor.

Jonathan staggered to his feet at the clatter of a door opening. He slipped his spectacles on, bringing the hallway into focus.

“Jonny, what's wrong?” Sophie's candle cast ghoulish shadows on her face and Eldad's.

Jonathan gripped Eldad's shoulder. “Get dressed. Get Aines-worth and as many sober, sensible men as you can find. You'll need horses. Guns, too, if you have 'em.”

“My God, what's happened?” Eldad asked.

“It's Chester's prisoner.”

Eldad and Sophie exchanged glances. “Escaped?” Eldad said.

Jonathan shook his head. “He's out, but it ain't his own doing. If we don't hurry, the poor fool might not live to see his trial.”

It wasn't bloody fair, Daniel thought. He hadn't been free long enough to even know how to be free. And now it looked as though he never would.

The sack they'd thrown over his head reeked of musty dank barns and cellars. The smell drove away any hope of retreating to his safe place. It was gone now, and he'd likely not find it again this side of the grave.

They'd stripped him naked. He tried to convince himself that was what made him shiver, rather than stark terror. But the churning in his belly betrayed him for a liar. He clenched his abdomen tight with every scrap of will he had left. He'd be damned if he'd let his bladder and bowels give way in front of this lot. They'd bloody well enjoy that, wouldn't they? No, he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing him soil and piss himself from fear. His stomach rebelled, tried to drive his last meal up into his throat, where it would be stopped by the rag they'd stuffed in his mouth to silence him. He forced himself to push it all back down and keep it there. He'd be damned, too, if he let himself die that way, choking on his own puke.

Though maybe that would be better than whatever they had in store for him. He thought of all the cattle and sheep and swine he and Silas had slaughtered and skinned and butchered, how the beasts had come up quiet and trusting until that last moment. Was this how they'd felt before the butchering?

No. It wouldn't have been like this at all. Silas had always been careful to stun each beast and slit its throat quickly, so it would feel only a moment's pain and fear. Daniel was sure it wouldn't be that way with him. Not with this lot. The butchering would come first, before the killing.

Jonathan's nostrils twitched at the smell of fire where no fire should have been. He eased Phizzy to a walk, halting in the woods just beyond the reach of fire and torchlight. Not counting the prisoner, there were a dozen men, mostly drunk, he guessed. A keg sat near the fire, and bottles glimmered in some of the men's hands. Some were armed with sticks, lashes, farm tools, but he saw no guns. A kettle hung from a tripod that straddled the fire. Jonathan shivered as he caught the smell of hot tar.

The prisoner was naked except for a sack they'd thrown over his head to blind him to their faces. Or perhaps to blind them to his. It was easier to torment a man when you didn't have to see your own fears in his face.

No. Not a man, but a boy. The prisoner's pale bony frame had the unfinished look of a boy just starting his last growth, all knobby bones and hairless skin. They'd put a rope around the boy's neck and flung the end over a branch to tether him while they tormented him. Their game for the moment was to pelt him with rotten vegetables and fruit, clods of dirt and stones. He staggered in a ragged dance until the rope jerked him upright like a marionette. Jonathan winced as a stone caught the boy in the chest.

“Well, Phizzy,” he whispered, “at least we ain't too late.” He drew out Eldad's ancient pistols. There'd only been enough powder for one shot, if the damned thing worked at all. One pistol for noise and the other for show, and he prayed nobody called his bluff. He knotted the reins and let them fall on Phizzy's withers. With one pistol in each hand, he gave Phizzy his head and pressed him into a trot, then a canter.

Phizzy scattered the men and whirled to a stop next to the staggering boy. Jonathan fired the first pistol over the men's heads. Phizzy let out a bloodcurdling scream and reared, hooves pawing the air. The fire's glow made the misshapen gelding look like the devil's own horse. Pride warmed Jonathan's heart. Phizzy was old, but he still remembered his playacting days.

“Christ!” one of the men called out.

Jonathan dropped the discharged pistol and leveled the second one at the crowd. “A fine lot of murderers you are to be calling on the Lord.” Phizzy pawed the ground with his front hooves as if he couldn't wait to tear into the mob. The men fell back a pace. At Jonathan's signal, Phizzy bared his teeth and snapped them together with a sharp click.

The men retreated farther. Two dozen drink-blurred eyes tried to fathom who the strange rider was. The smith solved the puzzle first. “It's Sophie Taylor's cousin, that peddler fella.”

Jonathan focused on the blacksmith, who was no doubt the leader of this pack of idiots. “Who do you think you are, almighty God, to be killing folk outside the law?”

Fairley said, “We're only giving him what he deserves: a little tar, a few feathers . . .”

“It's better than he gave them folks in—in—” The speaker hesitated. Bleary-eyed, he glanced around for somebody to finish his sentence for him.

“In where?” Jonathan demanded.

More than half a dozen towns were named and quarreled over.

“And what did he do in wherever it was?”

Arguments broke out over the number of folk the boy had slaughtered and how he'd done it.

Jonathan edged Phizzy between the prisoner and the crowd. When the gelding's shoulder brushed the boy's, Jonathan grabbed the trembling boy's arm and pulled him closer. “My, my, such a dangerous boy,” Jonathan shouted. “He must'a depopulated half'a New England.” The prisoner tensed as Jonathan's fingers
groped for the noose and eased it loose. “I'm glad to see he didn't hurt you none. He must weigh all of a hundred pounds.”

“A small man can be just as dangerous as a big one,” said a brawny ox of a fellow.

“Seems to me there's a good lot of small men here.” Jonathan worked the rope free and slipped it from the boy's neck. He reached for the hood, but the boy collapsed to the ground in a shuddering heap.

The prisoner's fall galvanized the mob. With a cry, they surged forward. Jonathan leveled the empty pistol and coaxed Phizzy into another show of snapping teeth and pawing hooves.

The blacksmith was the only who stood his ground. “What's he to you, peddler?”

Jonathan shrugged. “Nothing. Only I hate to see a good man hanged.”

“Good?” The men repeated the word almost as one, then burst into angry laughter.