Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter mc-3

by Robert R. McCammon

  He was holding James in both arms, at about chest-height. The dog lay on its right side. Matthew saw that it was breathing shallowly. It was bleeding from the mouth and nose and its visible eye had rolled back into its head.

  When Walker came into the house, Tom gave a start and dropped the dog a few inches. What could only be called a scream of agony came from James' mouth, and instantly Tom lifted the dog up again to chest-height. Gradually, its piercing cries subsided.

  "He's with me," Matthew said to Tom, as the boy gave an involuntary shiver; his voice sounded unrecognizable to him, the voice of someone speaking beyond the door through which he'd just walked.

  Tom just stared blankly at him.

  Walker eased forward. He leaned down and lifted the Bible.

  "He's dead," Tom said. A spool of bloody saliva unraveled from his mouth over his injured lip and down his chin. His voice was listless, matter-of-fact. "I touched him. He's dead."

  Matthew could not bring himself to look at the reverend's face, but he saw how bad it was by looking at Walker's. If an Indian could ever go pale, this one did. Matthew saw an incomprehension in Walker's eyes, a statement of horror that was made more terrible because it was silent. A muscle jumped in Walker's jaw, and then the Indian put aside the Bible and gazed upward-not to Heaven, but at the sleeping loft. He climbed up the ladder.

  "That man came back," Tom said. "That man. This mornin'." He shook his head. "Yesterday. Knocked the door down. He was on us 'fore we could move."

  Walker returned with a thin blue blanket, which he used to wrap around the misshapen mass that had been John Burton's face and head.

  James gave another sharp cry, and Tom adjusted his arms because they'd begun to drift down. "I think " Tom swallowed, either thick saliva or blood. "I think James' back is broke. That man brought a chair down on him. Right 'cross his back. There wasn't anythin' could be done."

  "How long have you been sitting there?" Matthew asked.

  "All night," he said. "I can't I can't put James down. Y'see? I think his back is broke. He cries so much."

  Walker stood over the corpse. Flies were spinning in the air, and the place smelled of blood and a darker sour odor of death. "No human," he said, "could do this."

  "What?" Matthew hadn't understood him; his own mind felt mired in the mud of corruption. He stared at a hayfork that leaned against the wall near the door.

  "No human could do this," Walker repeated. "Not any human I've ever met."

  James shrieked again. Tom lifted his arms. Matthew wondered how many times he'd done that over the course of the long night to keep the dog's body evenly supported; the boy's arms must feel like they were about to tear loose from the sockets.

  "His back is broke," Tom said. "But I've got him. I've got him, all right." He looked up at Matthew, and gave a dazed, battered half-smile that made fresh blood drool from his mouth. "He's my friend."

  Matthew felt the Indian staring at him. He avoided it, and ran the back of a hand across his mouth. Tom's eyes were closed, perhaps also avoiding what he must certainly know should be done.

  "Belvedere," Walker said quietly. "It won't come to us."

  "Shhhhh," Tom told the dog, as it whimpered. The sound became a low groaning noise. "I've got you," he said, his eyes still closed, and possibly more tightly shut than a few seconds before. "I've got you."

  Walker said to Matthew, "Give me your neckcloth." The cravat, he meant. Matthew's brain was fogged. He heard a blood-gorged fly buzz past his ear and felt another graze his right eyebrow. He unknotted the cravat, removed it from around his throat and gave it to the Indian, who tore from it a long strip and handed the rest of it back. Walker twisted the cloth for strength and began to wrap the ends of the strip around each hand. When Walker took a forward step, the boy's eyes opened.

  "No," Tom said. Walker stopped.

  "He's my dog. My friend." The boy lifted his arms again, and now winced at the supreme effort of holding them steady. "I'll do it if you'll hold him so he don't hurt."

  "All right," said the Indian.

  Walker unwound the strangler's cloth from his hands and lay it across Tom's left shoulder, and then he knelt down before Tom and held out his arms like a cradle to accept the suffering animal.

  James cried out terribly as the exchange was made, but Tom said, "Shhhhh, shhhhh," and perhaps the dog even in its pain understood the sound of deeper agony in its companion's voice. Then James whimpered a little bit, and Walker said, "I have him."

  "Thank you, sir," answered Tom in a distant, dreamlike tone, as he began to wrap the cloth between his own hands, which Matthew saw bore razor cuts.

  Matthew stepped back. Tom eased the taut cloth around James' neck, trying to be tender. James began to whimper again. Its pink tongue came out to lick at the air. Tom leaned forward and kissed his dog on the head, and then very quickly he crisscrossed one hand over the other and fresh blood and mucous blew from his nostrils as he did what he had to do, his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth grinding down into the wound of his lower lip.

  Matthew looked at his feet. His moccasins stood in the pool of the reverend's blood. The indignant flies swarmed and spun. Matthew backstepped, hit the remnants of a broken chair, and almost fell. He righted himself, swayed unsteadily, felt sickness roil in a hot wave in his stomach. He had seen murder before, yes, and brutal murder at that; but Slaughter's work had been done with so much pleasure.

  "Don't shame yourself," he heard Walker tell him, and he knew that not only were his eyes swimming, but that his face must have been as white as his cravat had been only yesterday morning.

  Slowly, his eyes still downcast, Matthew busied himself with winding the cravat around his throat again. After all, it had been very expensive. It was the mark of a gentleman, and what every young man of merit wore in New York. He carefully knotted it and pushed its ends down under the neck of his dirty shirt. Then he stood very still, listening to the patter of rain on the roof. Tom turned away from Walker. He went to a bucket of water on the floor that had survived the violence, got down on his knees with the slow pained grace of an old man and began to wash the blood from his nostrils.

  "His tracks head to Belvedere," Walker said, speaking to the boy. A small black-haired carcass with a brown snout lay on the floor in front of the fireplace, as if sleeping there after a day fully done. "We intend to catch him, if he hasn't already gotten himself a horse."

  "He'll want a horse," Tom agreed. He splashed water into his face and rubbed life back into his shoulders. "Maybe one or two to be bought there, not many."

  "One would be enough."

  "He can be tracked, even on a horse," said the boy. "All we have to do is get us some horses, we can find him."

  We, Tom had said. Matthew made no response, and neither did Walker.

  Tom took their silence for another reason. "I can steal us some horses, if I have to. Done it before. Well one horse, I mean." He started to stand up, but suddenly his strength left him and he staggered and fell onto his side.

  "You're not in any shape to be stealing horses," Walker observed. "Can you walk?"

  "I don't know."

  "Decide in a hurry. Matthew and I are leaving."

  "I can walk," Tom said, and with a show of sheer willpower over physical distress he stood up, staggered again, and then held his balance. He looked from Walker to Matthew and back again, the bruised and bloodied face defiant.

  "How fast can you walk?" was the next question.

  For that, Tom seemed to have no answer. He blinked heavily, obviously in need of sleep as well as medical attention. He held his hands up before his face and looked at the razor cuts there as if he had no memory of having been wounded. Then he turned his attention to Matthew. "You're a Christian, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you help me, then? You bein' a Christian, and the reverend bein' a Christian. Help me bury him?"

  "There's no time for that," said Walker.

  "I promised. Said I'd stay with h
im 'til he died, and then I'd bury him. I won't go back on a promise."

  "We can't lose time. Do you understand that?"

  "I understand it. But I won't go back on a promise."

  "Do you want to play at catching Slaughter?" Walker asked Matthew, with a flash of anger behind it. "Or do you want to really try?"

  "We're talkin'," Tom said, "when we could be buryin'. I want to put the reverend under, and James, too. There in that cemetery, with the other ones. After that, I'll show you how to get to Belvedere through the woods. Cuts about four miles off goin' by the road."

  "I already know that way," said the Indian.

  "I reckon you do," Tom replied, and he winced at some pain and blew a little bloody snot out of his nose.

  How the boy was even standing up, Matthew had no idea. He might have a broken nose or even a broken jaw, by the looks of him. Probably missing some teeth, too. But he was alive, and that was more than most of Slaughter's victims could claim. Matthew thought that this boy probably had the hardest bark of anybody he'd ever met, including Greathouse himself. Of course they had to get to Belvedere, and they had to get there before sundown.

  But still a promise was worth something, in his book.

  "What's your say?" Walker prodded.

  Matthew realized he was in charge. He was the only member of the New York office of the Herrald Agency who could stand on his feet, and make the decisions. He was Greathouse now, for better or worse. What would Greathouse do, was the question?

  But no, it was not, he decided. The question was, what was right?

  Matthew looked squarely at Tom. "Do you have more than one shovel?" he asked.

  Eighteen

  Matthew had lost all calculations of time and distance. He knew they'd been travelling through the woods for what seemed like several hours, but exactly how long and how many miles they'd come, he had no idea. A light rain was falling from a sky more twilight than afternoon, which further distorted his senses. His legs, usually a reliable informant as to distance, had passed through ache and pain into numbness. No longer either could he feel any sensation in his feet. The woods were thick, and the path through them-windey-twistey, as Greathouse might have said-led up over rocky hillsides and down through swampy hollows. It was sometime during the descent into one of these hollows that Tom's knees gave way and he went down into the thicket. It was a quiet falling, like the rain, and if Matthew had not glanced back at the boy and seen him already on the ground he would not have known it.

  "Wait!" he called to Walker, who was about thirty yards ahead and already going up the next hill. Instantly the Indian checked his progress and stood among the golden-leafed birch trees with his dark green cloak wrapped around himself, resembling nothing more than a black-eyed, fearsome and feathered head floating amid the questionable beauty of nature.

  Matthew went back the fifteen yards or so to where Tom was trying to get his feet under him. It was obvious the boy, as hard barked as he might be, was running low on wood to feed his fire. His bruised face was ghastly purple, one of his eyes swollen shut and the other nearly so. The razor cuts across his chest were as scarlet as whipstrikes. It had astounded Matthew, back in the sad cemetery of New Unity, how Tom with his slashed hands had gripped hold of one of the two shovels and started feverishly digging in the wet earth. Matthew had joined in the work, as Walker had watched from a distance. They must have made a sight, Matthew thought. Both of them with wounded hands, staggering around in the cold rain trying to do the Christian thing. After the boy had fallen down twice and twice picked himself up with mud on his knees, Walker had taken the shovel from him and told him to go sit down under a tree. In time, they had two graves, as Tom had asked; one large, one small. Neither was very deep, and this had been at Walker's insistence for, as he'd said before the work had begun, Belvedere was not going to come to them. They left the cemetery, which now held forty markers. The last two were boards taken from a crumbling cabin and pounded into the ground. When Tom turned his back to the graves he had so carefully maintained, Matthew noted that it was without emotion. But Matthew thought he understood why: a show of emotion would be a use of resources that Tom needed to get through today. Either that, or the boy had iron control over what he revealed or did not reveal.

  In any case, the three travelers departed from New Unity, and left its occupants and their stories for some future generation to ponder.

  Now, in the deeper forest some number of miles distant from Belvedere, Matthew reached Tom and offered his hand to help the boy up.

  Tom angled his head so his better eye looked at the hand. "If I'd wanted your help," he said, his voice distorted by his injured lip, "I would've asked." So saying, he hauled himself to his feet and staggered past Matthew, who turned to find the Indian standing there right beside him.

  "How do you do that?" Matthew asked.

  "Do what?"

  "Never mind." He watched Tom fall again, get up once more and keep staggering onward, up the hill where Walker had just been standing. "Should we rest awhile?"

  "No." Walker turned and began striding rapidly after the boy, while Matthew quickened his pace to catch up. "Boy!" Walker called.

  "I've got a name."

  "Tom," Walker amended. He'd heard Matthew call him that, in the cemetery. "How is it you know this way to Belvedere? It's a Seneca trail."

  "How is it you speak such good English?"

  "I've lived with the English. Have you lived with my people?"

  "No. I was lookin' for a shorter way to Belvedere one day, and I found it."

  "How is it you didn't get yourself lost in the woods?" Walker asked, slowing his stride to remain alongside Tom. "Or did you?"

  "I can tell my directions, if that's what you're askin'." Tom shot him a quick dark glance from his better eye.

  "Who taught you?"

  Tom suddenly stopped, so abruptly that Walker also stopped and Matthew narrowly avoided a collision with the both of them. "Who taught me?" There was acid in the boy's brogue. His mouth twisted. "I'll tell you who, then. My father, partly. Taught me how to read the ground and the sky. Taught me my directions. How to build a fire. How to hunt, and lay a snare. But after he died, and I was on my own then there were lots more things I had to best learn in a hurry, and I knew if I didn't learn 'em right the first time, I wouldn't get no second chance. So I stole when I had to, and I hid out when I had to." He glanced at Matthew, as if marking him as an intruder in this brutal paradise. "See," Tom continued, "I learned real quick that the way to stay alive is to keep movin'. I forgot about that, and I got soft and liked an inside bed, and a house with a table you ate off of, and readin' the Bible to an old man, and pretendin' I had some kind of family again. That's why they're dead, 'cause I forgot that at any minute this world can kick your door down and come in swingin' a razor." He nodded. "Look what I let happen, back there." His eye found Walker again. "Who taught me, you're askin'? My father, some. But in this world, it's the Devil teaches you the lessons you never forget."

  "You couldn't have stopped Slaughter," Matthew said. "No one could've."

  Tom thrust his face toward Matthew's. "Maybe you could've," he answered. "I told you, maybe you should've killed him when you could. But don't fret about it, don't you fret." He held up a finger of his razor-slashed right hand. " I'm gonna kill him, so don't you fret."

  Matthew almost recoiled from the cold ferocity in the boy's voice. It was hard to remember that he indeed was a boy, of thirteen or fourteen years, because his sentiments and expressions were those of a older man mauled by life. Scarred by life, would be the more correct phrase. To see what lay behind those eyes, Matthew thought, would be a frightful view. A desolation, perhaps; a loneliness, for certain. Anger was holding him together, a rage against the world. And who could blame him, with all the death and misery he'd witnessed? So he might be young in years, Matthew thought, but it was an illusion, for his trials had left him withered within.

  Tom was through talking. He turned and starte
d up the hillside again, but halfway up his remaining strength failed him, for he staggered against a boulder and slid down to the ground. He put his hands to his face and sat there, hunched over and otherwise motionless.

  "He's almost done," Walker said quietly. "He's fighting it, but he knows it too."

  "What are we going to do with him?"

  After a silence in which Walker was obviously deliberating the question, the Indian approached Tom, with Matthew following behind. "I suppose, if you can read the ground so well, that you've seen the tracks?"

  Tom lowered his hands. Matthew had expected to see the tears of either loss or frustration on Tom's cheeks, but there were none. The boy was again sealed up tight. "I have," Tom replied. "Good-sized bear about two hours ahead of us, movin' slow."

  Matthew felt a start of alarm; his own scars had been left by a meeting with a bear, three years ago, and he didn't wish for another encounter.

  "That's why I'm not running us faster," Walker said. "I'm going on ahead, to scout. You two meet me at the stream, and don't dawdle."

  Tom nodded, familiar with the landmark Walker specified, and then the Indian took off running at a steady pace up the hillside, among the trees, and out of sight.

  "Give me a minute," Tom said, as Matthew waited. He reached into his mouth and worked a loose tooth, after which he spat red on the ground. Then, with a soft groan that spoke volumes, the boy pulled himself up and stood unsteadily, balancing with a hand against the rock. "Maybe find myself a walkin'-stick," he said, his voice slurred. "I'll be all right."

  At the top of the hill, a slim branch from a fallen tree was found to suit Tom's purpose, and he hobbled on it while trying to walk as fast as he could go. Matthew thought that Tom's revelation of his sense of the world's evil had sapped some of the strength the boy had been hoarding, and even Tom's depth of willpower had its bottom.