Fink turned around.
“There's a story I got to tell you before I go to sleep tonight,” he said.
Fink looked puzzled for a moment.
“Measure's under the curse,” said Armor-of-God. “He's got to tell you or he'll go to bed with bloody hands.”
“I came this close to being under the curse myself,” said Fink. “But you? How did you get under it?”
“He took it on himself,” said Miss Larner. “But that doesn't mean the same rules don't apply.”
“But I already know the story.”
“That'll make the telling of it easier,” said Measure. “But I got to do it.”
“I'll come back up when I've peed and et,” said Fink. “Begging your pardon, ma'am.”
There they were, then, looking at each other, Alvin and Peggy– but once again with Verily Cooper, Arthur Stuart, and Measure looking on.
“Don't the two of you get tired of playing out your scenes in front of an audience?”
“There's no scene to play,” said Miss Larner.
“Too bad,” said Alvin. “I thought this was the part of the play where I says to you, 'I'm sorry,' and you says to me–”
“I say to you, There is nothing to be sorry for.”
“And I say to you, Is so. And you say, Is not. Is so, Is not, Is so, back and forth till we bust out laughing.”
At which she burst out laughing.
“I was right, you didn't need to testify,” Alvin said.
Her face went stern at once.
“Hear me out, for Pete's sake, cause you were right too, if it came right down to it, it wasn't my place to tell you whether or not you could testify. It's not my decision whether you get to make this sacrifice or that one, or whether it's worth it. You decide your own sacrifices, and I decide mine. Instead of me bossing you about it, I should have just asked you to hold off and see if I could manage without. And you would have said yes. Wouldn't you.”
She looked him in the eye. “Probably not,” she said. “But I should have.”
“So maybe we ain't so bullheaded after all.”
“The day after– no, two days later– that's when we're not so bullheaded.”
“That'll do, if we just stay friends till we soften up a little.”
“You're not ready for married life, Alvin,” said Miss Larner. “You still have many leagues to travel, and until you're ready to build the Crystal City, you have no need of me. I'm not going to sit home and pine for you, and I'm not going to try to tag along with you when the companions you need are men like these. Speak to me when your journey's done. See if we still need each other then.”
“So you admit we need each other now.”
“I'm not debating with you now, Alvin. I concede no points to you, and petty contradictions will not be explained or reconciled.”
“These men are my witnesses, Margaret. I will love you forever. The family we make together, that will be our best Making, better than the plow, better than the Crystal City.”
She shook her head. “Be honest with yourself, Alvin. The Crystal City will stand forever, if you build it right. But our family will be gone in a few lifetimes.”
“So you admit we'll have a family.”
She grinned. “You should run for office, Alvin. You'd lose, but the debates would be entertaining.” She was turning toward the door when it opened without a knock. It was Po Doggly, his eyes wide. He scanned the room till he saw Alvin. “What are you doing sitting there like that, and not a gun in the room!”
“I wasn't robbing any of them, and they wasn't robbing me,” said Alvin. “We didn't think to bring guns along.”
“There was a break-in at the jail. A man claiming to be Amy Sump's father riled up the crowd and about thirty men broke into the courthouse and overpowered Billy Hunter and took away his keys. They hauled every damn prisoner out of there and started beating on them till they told which one of them was you. I got there before they killed anybody and I run them off all right, but they can't get far from town in one night and I don't know but what somebody's going to tell them where you are so I want you to sleep with guns tonight.”
“Don't worry about it,” said Miss Larner. “They won't come here tonight.”
Po looked at her, then at Alvin. “You sure?”
“Don't even post a guard, Po,” said Miss Larner. “It will only draw attention to the roadhouse. The men hired to kill Alvin are all cowards, really, so they had to get drunk in order to make the attempt. They'll sleep it off tonight.”
“And go away after that?”
“Make sure the trial is well guarded, and after that if Alvin is acquitted he'll leave Hatrack and your nightmares will be over.”
“They broke into my jail,” said Doggly. “I don't know who your enemies are, boy, but if I was you I'd get rid of that golden plow.”
“It ain't the plow,” said Alvin. “Though some of them probably thinks it is. But plow or no plow, the ones as want me dead would be sending boys like those after me.”
“And you, really don't want my protection?” asked Doggly.
Both Alvin and Miss Larner agreed that they did not.
When Po made his good-byes and was ready to leave, Miss Larner slipped her arm through his. “Take me downstairs, please, and on to the room I'm sharing with my new friend Ramona.” She gave not so much as a backward glance at Alvin.
Measure hooted once after the door was closed. “Alvin, is she testing you? Just to make sure that you'll never turn wifebeater, no matter what the provocation?”
“I got a feeling I ain't seen provocation yet.” But Alvin was smiling when he said it, and the others got the idea he didn't mind the idea of sparring with Miss Larner now and then– sparring with words, that is, words and looks and winks and nasty grins.
After the candles were doused and the room was dark and still, with all of them in bed and wishing to sleep, Alvin murmured: “I wonder what they meant to do to me.”
Nobody asked who he meant; Measure didn't have to. “They meant to kill you, Alvin. Does it matter what method they used? Hanging. Burning alive. A dozen musket balls. Do you really care which way you die?”
“I'd like to have a corpse decent-looking enough that the coffin can be open and my children can bear to look at me and say good-bye to me.”
“You're dreaming then,” said Measure. “Cause even right now I don't know how no wife and children could bear to look at you, though I daresay they'll say good-bye readily enough.”
“I expect they were going to hang me,” said Alvin. “If you ever see folks about to hang me, don't waste your time or risk your life trying to save me. Just come along after they've given up on me so you can get me on home.”
“So you got no fear of the rope,” said Measure.
“Nor fear of drowning or suffocation,” said Alvin. “Nor falling. I can fix up breaks and make the rocks soft under me. But fire, now. Fire and beheading and too many bullets, those can take me right off. I could use some help if you see them going at me like that.”
“I'll try to remember that,” said Measure.
* * *
Monday morning behind the smithy, everyone was gathered by ten o'clock; but from dawn onward, heavily armed deputies were on guard all around the site. The judge arranged things so the whole jury could see, as well as Marty Laws, Verily Cooper, Alvin Smith, Makepeace Smith, and Hank Dowser. “This court is now in session,” said the judge loudly. “Now, Hank Dowser, you show us the exact place you marked.”
Verily Cooper spoke up. “How do we know he'll mark the same place?”
“Cause I'll dowse it again,” said Hank Dowser, “and the same spot will still be best.”
Alvin spoke up then. “There's water everywhere here. There's not a place you can pick where there won't be water if you just go far enough down.”
Hank Dowser whirled on him and glared. “There it is! He's got no respect for any man's knack except his own! You think I don't know there's water most ev
erywhere? The question is, is the water pure? Is it close to the surface? That's what I find– the easy dig, the clean water. And I'll tell you, by the use of hickory and willow wands, that the water is purest here, and closest to the surface here, and so I mark this spot, as I would have more'n a year ago! Tell me, Alvin Journeyman, if you're so clever, is this or is it not the same spot I marked, exactly?”
“It is,” said Alvin, sounding a little abashed. “And I didn't mean to imply that you weren't a real dowser, sir.”
“You didn't exactly mean not to imply it either, though, did you!”
“I'm sorry,” said Alvin. “The water is purest here, and closest to the surface, and you truly found it twice the same, the exact spot.”
The judge intervened. “So after this unconventional courtroom exchange, which seems appropriate to this unconventional courtroom, you both agree that this is the spot where Alvin says he dug the first well and found nothing but solid impenetrable stone, and where it is Makepeace's contention that there was no such stone, but rather a buried treasure which Alvin stole and converted to his own use while telling a tale of turning iron into gold.”
“For all we know he hid my iron underground here!” cried Makepeace.
The judge sighed. “Makepeace, please, don't make me send you to jail again.”
“Sorry,” muttered Makepeace.
The judge beckoned to the team of workingmen he'd arranged to come do the digging. Paying them would come out of the county budget, but with four diggers it couldn't take long to prove one or the other right.
They dug and dug, the dirt flying. But it was a dryish dirt, a little moist from the last rain which was only a week ago, but no hint of a watery layer. And then: chink.
“The treasure box!” cried Makepeace.
A few moments later, after scraping and prying, the foreman of the diggers called out, “Solid stone, your honor! Far as we can reach. Not no boulder, neither– feels like bedrock if'n I ever saw it.”
Hank Dowser's face went scarlet. He muscled his way to the hole and slid down the steep side. With his own handkerchief he brushed away the soil from the stone. After a few minutes of examination, he stood up. “Your Honor, I apologize to Mr. Smith, as graciously, I hope, as he just apologized to me a moment ago. Not only is this bedrock– which I did not see, for I have never found such a sheet of water under solid stone like this– but also I can see old scrape marks against the stone, proving to me that the prentice boy did dig in this spot, just as he said he did, and reached stone, just as he said he did.”
“That don't prove he didn't find gold along the way!” cried Makepeace.
“Summations to the jury!” the judge called out.
“In every particular that we could test,” said Verily Cooper, “Alvin Smith has proven himself to be truthful and reliable. And all the county has to assail him is the unproven and unprovable speculations of a man whose primary motive seems to be to get his hands upon gold. There are no witnesses but Alvin himself of how the gold came to be shaped like a plow, or the plow came to be made of gold. But we have eight witnesses, not to mention His Honor, myself, and my respected colleague, not to mention Alvin himself, all swearing to you that this plow is not just gold, but also alive. What possible property interest can Makepeace Smith have in an object which clearly belongs to itself and only keeps company with Alvin Smith for its own protection? You have more than a reasonable doubt– you have a certainty that my client is an honest man who has committed no crime, and that the plow should stay with him.”
It was Marty Laws' turn then. He looked like he'd had sour milk for breakfast. “You've heard the witnesses, you've seen the evidence, you're all wise men and you can figure this out just fine without my help,” said Laws. “May God bless your deliberations.”
“Is that your summing up?” demanded Makepeace. “Is that how you administer justice in this county? I'll support your opponent in the next local election, Marty Laws! I swear you haven't heard the end of this!”
“Sheriff, kindly arrest Mr. Makepeace Smith again, three days this time, contempt of court and I'll consider a charge of attempted interference with the course of justice by offering a threat to a sitting judge in order to influence the outcome of a case.”
“You're all ganging up against me! All of you are in this together! What did he do, Your Honor, bribe you? Offer to share some of that gold with you?”
“Quickly, Sheriff Doggly,” said the judge, “before I get angry with the man.”
When Makepeace's shouting had died down enough to proceed, the judge asked the jury, “Do we need to traipse on back to the courtroom for hours of deliberation? Or should we just stand back and let you work things out right here?”
The foreman whispered to his fellow jurors; they whispered back. “We have a unanimous verdict, Your Honor.”
“What say you, etcetera etcetera?”
“Not guilty of all charges,” said the foreman.
“We're done. I commend both attorneys for fine work in a difficult case. And to the jury, my commendation for cutting through the horse pucky and seeing the truth. Good citizens all. This court stands adjourned until the next time somebody brings a blame fool charge against an innocent man, at least that's what I'm betting on.” The judge looked around at the people, who were still standing there. “Alvin, you're free to go,” he said. “Let's all go home.”
* * *
Of course they didn't all go; nor, strictly speaking, was Alvin free. Right now, surrounded by a crowd and with a dozen deputies on guard, he was safe enough. But as he gripped the sack with the plow inside, he could almost feel the covetings of other men directed toward that plow, that warm and trembling gold.
He wasn't thinking of that, however. He was looking over at Margaret Larner, whose arm was around young Ramona's waist. Someone was speaking to Alvin-it was Verily Cooper, he realized, congratulating him or something, but Verily would understand. Alvin put a hand on Verily's shoulder, to let him know that he was a good friend even though Alvin was about to walk away from him. And Alvin headed on over to Miss Larner and Ramona.
At the last moment he got shy, and though he had his eyes on Margaret all the way through the crowd, it was Ramona he spoke to when he got there. “Miss Ramona, it was brave of you to come forward, and honest too.” He shook her hand.
Ramona beamed, but she was also alittle upset and nervous. “That whole thing with Amy was my fault I think. She was telling me those tales about you, and I was doubting her, which only made her insist more and more. And she stuck to it so much that for a while I believed maybe it was true and that's when I told my folks and that's what started all the rumors going, but then when she went with Thatch under the freak show tent and she comes out pregnant but babbling about how it was you got her that way, well, I had my chance then to set things straight, didn't I? And then I didn't get to testify!”
“But you told my friends,” said Alvin, “so the people who matter most to me know the truth, and in the meantime you didn't have to hurt your friend Amy.” In the back of his mind, though, Alvin couldn't shake the bitter certainty that there would always be some who believed her charges, just as he was sure that she would never recant. She would go on telling those lies about him, and some folks at least would go on believing them, and so he would be known for a cad or worse no matter how clean he lived his life. But that was spilled milk.
Ramona was shaking her head. “I don't reckon she'll be my friend no more.”
“But you're her friend whether she likes it or not. So much of a friend that you'd even hurt her rather than let her hurt someone else. That's something, in my book.”
At that moment, Mike Fink and Armor-of-God came up to him. “Sing us that song you thought up in jail, Alvin!”
At once several others clamored for the song– it was that kind of festive occasion.
“If Alvin won't sing it, Arthur Stuart knows it!” somebody said, and then there was Arthur tugging at his arm and Alvin joined in si
nging with him. Most of the jury was still there to hear the last verse:
I trusted justice not to fail. The jury did me proud. Tomorrow I will hit the trail, And sing my hiking song so loud, It's like to start a gale!
Everybody laughed and clapped. Even Miss Larner smiled, and as Alvin looked at her he knew that this was the moment, now or never. “I got another verse that I never sung to anybody before, but I want to sing it now,” he said. They all hushed up again to hear:
Now swiftly from this place I'll fly, And underneath my boots, A thousand lands will pass me by, Until we choose to put down roots, My lady love and I.
He looked at Margaret with all the meaning he could put in his face, and everybody hooted and clapped. “I love you, Margaret Larner,” he said. “I asked you before, but I'll say it again now. We're about to journey together for a ways, and I can't think of a good reason why it can't be our honeymoon journey. Let me be your husband, Margaret. Everything good that's in me belongs to you, if you'll have me.”
She looked flustered. “You're embarrassing me, Alvin,” she murmured.
Alvin leaned close and spoke into her ear. “I know we got separate work to do, once we leave the weavers house. I know we got long journeys apart.”
She held his face between her hands. “You don't know what you might meet on that road. What woman you might meet and love better than me.”
Alvin felt a stab of dread. Was this something she had seen with her torchy knack? Or merely the worry any woman might feel? Well, it was his future, wasn't it? And even if she saw the possibility of him loving somebody else, that didn't mean he had to let it come true.
He wrapped his long arms around her waist and drew her close, and spoke softly. “You see things in the future that I can't see. Let me ask you like an ordinary man, and you answer me like a woman that knows only the past and the present. Let my promise to you now keep watch over the future.”
She was about to raise another objection, when he kissed her lightly on the lips. “If you're my wife, then whatever there is in the future, I can bear it, and I'll do my best to help you bear it too. The judge is right here. Let me begin my life of new freedom with you.”
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