‘Shut your goddam mouth.’ The big man hurled the words back. He forced Martha forward. ‘You know nothing.’ Spit and snot smothered his face now, dripping into his beard, clinging to the already matted fibres.
‘I know everything.’ Jack watched Martha’s eyes. She was ready.
‘You know shit. None of you does. You ain’t seen your mates butchered, your own brother ripped apart by Yankee bullets.’ The words spewed out of the man now, like vomit from a drunk. ‘You don’t know shit.’
Martha struck. She had turned the knife in her hand and now she rammed it behind her, driving it deep into the big man’s groin, slicing the blade back and forth, tearing it through his flesh until it was buried to the hilt.
The man screamed, the sound feral and full of agony. His hands clawed at the wound, frantically trying to hold himself together. Then the blood came. It rushed out, past the groping fingers and the buried blade. It sprayed out in a great rush, smothering the snow and turning it black.
Jack walked forward. He did not rush. There was no need. It was already over.
The big man’s scream died away. He fell to his knees, hands still clutched to the great tear underneath his belly. He looked at Jack then, eyes full of dumb surprise and terror. Martha’s strike had severed something crucial deep in his body, and the blood came without pause.
‘You all right, love?’ Jack asked, turning away from the dying man.
‘What do you want to do with him?’ She asked the question as if he were dead already.
Jack looked the man over. He was writhing in agony, his body shaking and juddering whilst blood poured out to stain the snow.
‘Leave him to bleed out,’ he said.
Martha nodded. She did not ask Jack to offer mercy; she simply walked away. In that moment she was as cold and hard as the frigid world around them.
Jack did not have to watch her to know she was heading towards Garrison’s body. He kept his eyes on the man grinding a blood angel into the snow, giving Martha a moment alone with her father.
He could choose to administer a clean death to the man who had tried to kill him. He had done it before. Then it had been out of mercy, a final gift to a friend. It was a part of the soldier’s creed. Brothers in arms should not be left to suffer. At the end, every man hoped to be spared the torment of an agonising wound, and trusted his comrades to do what had to be done to ease his passing.
He locked his gaze onto the big man’s eyes. They stared back at him, crazed with agony and terror. He was a stranger who had violated the place that had given Jack back his life. And he had killed a man Jack had come to think of as a friend. He deserved no mercy.
Yet his claims resonated in Jack’s soul. Unless he had been lying, the man had fought at the battle over the Bull Run river. No matter his crime, no matter his brutality, he was still a soldier.
Jack lifted the rifle to his hip. He held it there, letting the big man see the muzzle that now pointed directly at him. He waited for understanding to arrive in the man’s eyes, then he pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit true, shattering the big man’s skull and ending his torment. The sound of the single shot reverberated around the forest, then all was quiet and still once again.
Jack bent low and scooped up the man’s fallen revolver, then turned his back on the corpse and went to mourn a friend.
There was only a simple wooden cross to mark the grave. It would not stand the test of time. In a few years, or perhaps less, a passing animal would knock down the cross, and the grave would be forgotten. Except by the two people standing over the freshly turned earth.
Jack looked down at the patch of grey-brown soil. He could smell it clearly, the warm aroma easy to detect in the frozen, ice-clad world. The dark loam stood out against the snow, the low mound visible from yards away. Yet already fresh snow had started to cover it. In a few hours it would be hidden completely.
The cold was buried deep in his veins now. There had been heat pumping through him, the task of digging the frozen ground taking him several hours. He had been forced to halt half a dozen times, his strength failing him. When he had stopped, Martha had continued. It had not taken long for the shame of seeing her striking the ground to revive him and send him out into the cold once more. Together they had dug a hole deep enough to take the body that seemed so very small now that the life force had been stolen from it.
The four men had been treated with less ceremony, consigned to a single shallow, unmarked grave in the woods. Each had been searched for anything of value or use, the act done not out of greed but out of practicality. Jack had made sure to take every last round of ammunition from the bodies, even keeping their battered muskets for the time being. There had been precious few rounds for the revolvers the gang had used. Jack wondered if they had stashed their backpacks before walking towards the cabin.
‘There should be a preacher here.’
Martha had wrapped herself in furs. She stood next to Jack, contemplating the ground where the body of her father had been incarcerated for all eternity. A cloud of condensed air billowed around her mouth as she spoke for the first time in several hours.
‘Was he a godly man?’ Jack asked. He was reminded how little he knew of the friend he now mourned. Martha’s father had not struck him as being close to his God; more a man bound to the unforgiving world in which he had lived.
‘No.’ Martha’s eyes did not leave the mound of earth. She did not speak again for some time. When she did, her voice wavered. ‘I don’t like the idea of him lying down there in the cold.’
‘He’s not there.’ Jack almost felt the need to reach out to her. But Martha was not that sort of woman. He had not seen her embrace or kiss her father once in all the months he had shared their cabin. ‘He’s gone now. What’s left . . .’ he paused, trying to find the right words, ‘well, that’s not him. That’s just the bit left behind.’ For a moment he saw again the great heaps of the dead after Solferino. There had been so many bodies. The mauled, mutilated carcasses had been piled into corpse mountains, all notion of humanity lost.
The sight of those corpses had been a reminder to Jack of the fate he faced. All that he was and all that he could be would be forgotten, and his bloated, stinking carcass would be left to rot wherever he happened to die. There would be no mourners at his graveside, no one to tend his grave or to think on his life. For he had lost everyone who had ever touched him. He was quite alone in the world.
‘He’d be angry at me if he saw this.’ Martha broke the silence. She sniffed as she spoke, then wiped a gloved hand across her face. The fur came away damp. ‘He’d say we’d done a poor job of digging his grave.’
Jack grunted in acknowledgement of the wry remark. ‘He would.’
‘He liked you, you know.’ For the first time, Martha turned to look at Jack. ‘I ain’t ever seen him with anyone like he was with you. Not even with my John.’
‘He told me your John is a good man.’ Jack was uncomfortable and sought to divert the conversation.
‘He is.’ Martha’s answer came quickly. ‘He is a good man.’ The words were repeated, but there was little conviction in them.
‘You must miss him.’ Jack watched Martha’s face closely. Her eyes were puffy and moist, and there were trails of half-frozen tears on her cheeks. A crust of snot was smeared under each nostril, and a thin tendril of it streaked across one blotchy cheek. She did not care that she looked a mess.
‘I miss a lot of things.’ Her lips moved as if about to form a smile, but it never came. She glanced at Jack and saw him looking directly at her. Her chin lifted, a hint of defiance in her gaze. ‘But missing something never solved nothing. It’s what you do that matters. There ain’t no use pining like a damn dog over what might have been. You got to get on with your damned life and find a way to fill it until it’s your turn to lay down and die.’
Jack acknowledged the hard wisdom with a grunt. Martha glared at him, almost daring him to challenge her. He knew she was ta
lking of him, of his quest to find Rose’s killer.
‘You think that’s what I’ve been doing?’
‘What you going to do now?’ Martha dodged the question and fired her own back at him.
‘Go inside and try to get warm.’
Martha’s eyes narrowed. ‘You still going to kill that Lyle man?’
‘Yes.’ Jack did not evade her question.
‘Then it’s time you left. Snow will thaw soon enough. You’ll be all right.’
Jack nodded. ‘Very well.’
‘You know it won’t fix nothing?’ Martha sniffed hard, then cuffed her face to wipe away the tears.
‘No. No, I don’t know that.’
‘Then you’re a fool.’
‘Maybe.’ Jack was too cold to feel anger. ‘Maybe not. But I’m still going to do it.’
Martha said nothing more. She looked him in the eye for several long moments before she turned away to face her father’s grave once again.
‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.’ She spoke softly, her eyes screwed tight shut. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and staff they comfort me.’
Jack had heard enough. He knew what it was to walk in the valley of the shadow of death, and he had done so alone, with no God to comfort or guide him. He took one last look at the mound of soil, already half covered by fresh snow. Then he turned away.
‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.’ Martha opened her eyes and looked at Jack’s back as he left her. ‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’
She finished speaking. There was no sound other than the soft patter of falling snow.
Jack sat at the table in the cabin. Pinter’s rifle lay in front of him. He had thought to strip it down and clean it, but he was too numb with cold and too tired.
The door to the cabin opened, a burst of cold air streaming inside for the span of a few heartbeats before the door was barred shut against the elements.
Martha stood at the threshold. Her boot scuffed at the dark stains in the planks near the door that told of the desperate struggle they had fought to stay alive. Then she walked straight to where Jack sat.
‘I want to come with you.’ She made the statement in a voice as cold as the air she had let in.
Jack studied her face. Her eyes were red raw. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I’m going to find my John.’
Jack did not reply immediately. It was a time for carefully chosen words. ‘You know where he is?’
‘Fort Donelson.’ Martha was standing as still as a statue.
‘And where is that exactly?’
‘Way west of here. It’s near enough to Nashville. Ain’t that where you’re headed?’
Jack watched her closely. ‘What’ll happen to this place if you leave it?’
‘Nothing. It’ll sit quiet. People round here know whose it is. They’ll leave it be. It ain’t going no place.’
‘What if another group like the one that came by this morning find it?’
‘You’ve suddenly got a whole lot of questions.’ Martha’s voice was as hard as the ground that now shrouded her father. ‘How about we make this nice and simple? We’re both headed in the same direction, so we can go together. Way I see it, that doubles our chances of finding the people we’re looking for.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘You make it sound easy.’ Jack tried to find the right words to dissuade her. He did not want company. He wanted to be alone. The stay in the cabin had been a mistake. He should have taken his chances and left the moment he was strong enough to stand. He had allowed himself to get involved with other people. People he neither wanted nor needed. Life was simpler if he were alone.
‘I don’t care that it won’t be easy.’ Martha had still not moved. ‘I don’t care what happens to this place. I don’t care about nothing no more. I’m going to find my John. You and me can go together, or we can go separately, I don’t mind. ’Cept without me, you ain’t going to get out these woods.’
‘What would the old man say? About his daughter leaving this place.’ Jack changed tack.
Martha did not so much as blink. ‘This was his place. Never mine. And like you said, he ain’t here no more.’
Jack moved his hands. They closed over the rifle. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I travel alone.’ His voice was like granite.
Martha held his gaze. ‘I gave you your life. You would have died if I hadn’t kept you alive. You owe me.’
‘So I have to risk my life to repay you for saving it. That seems a little ironic, don’t you think?’
‘You owe me.’ Martha was unconcerned by his refusal. ‘And you need me.’
‘I need you?’
‘To show you the way. You ain’t from round here. You leave this here cabin and you could wander in these woods for the next month without ever seeing sight of the turnpike.’
Jack laughed then. He did not mean to, but the sound escaped him nonetheless. He was not laughing at Martha. There was nothing funny in her grief. He laughed because fate had him in its grasp and would not let him go. No matter how hard he tried, he was not to be left to his own devices. For a reason he could not fathom, fate had a habit of attaching him to all manner of waifs and strays.
‘You laughing at me?’
‘No.’ Jack looked at her then, as if seeing her for the first time. He had thought her meek, her blind obedience to her father revealing a weak character with little spirit or fight. He had been wrong. She had killed the man who had threatened her. She was tough and deserved better than the hand life had dealt her.
‘So that’s what you want?’ His hand left the rifle and he stood up so that he faced her. ‘You want to ride off not knowing where the hell we’re going or what we’ll find when we get there?’
‘Yes.’
Jack nodded. He had tried to fight fate and he had failed.
‘So be it.’ He said nothing more.
Jack stood next to his horse and looked back at the cabin. The windows were boarded up, and he had nailed the door shut with stout planks of wood across its front. The place was as secure as he could be bothered to make it. It would have to do. He had plenty of concerns. The fate of the cabin was not one of them.
‘Are you done?’ Martha’s tone was waspish. She was keen to get away.
Jack sighed, then looked up at her. She was already mounted on her father’s grey mare. Garrison had looked after the animals well through the winter. Both horses appeared fit and ready for the journey ahead. He wished he could say the same for their riders.
‘You not going to say a goodbye?’ He summoned his strength, then hauled himself into the saddle. The fight, and the digging of the graves that had followed, had drained what little reserves he had. But it was time to leave, no matter what the state of his health. He had delayed too long already.
‘I’ve said all I’m going to say.’ Martha glanced once at the mound where her father lay buried, then gathered her reins. When she spoke again, there was no trace of emotion in her voice. ‘If you’re done lollygagging, we can be on our way.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Jack gave the reply through gritted teeth, then gathered in his own reins. He was beginning to miss the meek Martha who did what she was told.
He had done all he could do to prepare for the journey ahead. Both horses carried saddlebags full of rations, and behind their saddles he had tied as many blankets as he could find. Into his own knapsack he had packed every ounce of ammunition he possessed and as few items of clothing as he thought he could get away with. He had taken the time to
search the woods for any backpacks the men who had attacked the cabin might have hidden. He had found nothing.
‘You’d better lead.’ He gave the instruction without looking at Martha. ‘Make yourself useful.’
There was a short tut of disapproval, then Martha geed her horse up and walked it forward. They would take their time, saving the animals’ strength.
Jack watched Martha as she rode away. She was dressed for the journey, her bony frame wrapped in a thick layer of furs. For his part he wore a liberal swathe of Martha’s husband’s furs. Both of them were armed. He had Pinter’s rifle in a sheath attached to the saddle next to his leg, and the revolver he had taken from the man who had killed Garrison, a battered but serviceable Navy Colt, sat in a holster on his hip. Martha had a single carbine taken from the Confederate soldiers Jack had killed and a revolver from one of the men who had attacked the cabin. The rest of the weapons had been left behind.
They were as prepared as he could make them. Only time would tell if they had what they needed to find the two men they were looking for.
‘Hold yourselves there.’
The instruction came from the picket who had emerged from a cabin close to the turnpike. It was one of a dozen like it. The rudimentary structures had likely been built just to last the one season, the soldiers ordered to make their winter quarters across the turnpike making themselves as comfortable as the situation would allow.
It had been early one morning when they had finally left the trees behind. After so long lost amidst the dense, confined spaces of the mountain woodland, the sight of the rolling, snow-free hills of the Virginian countryside flowing all the way to the distant horizon had quite taken Jack’s breath away. The patchwork of fields and woods with their warm mix of greens and browns spoke of life and comfort, something he had half forgotten existed.
They had taken their time, riding slowly or leading the horses, as they left the mountains behind and made their way towards civilisation, or at least what meagre civilisation they could find as they steered clear of any major towns or cities.
THE REBEL KILLER Page 15