She smiled. “I don’t think it will come to that. And yes, I will be careful. Any questions?” She waited for a moment, then clapped her hands. “Okay, let’s get packed up. I want us in Richmond before lunch.”
Everyone rose. Most went to their tasks. Only Ned hesitated. He walked up to Lisa. He led her a short distance away from the rest. “I know the other reason why you’re going,” he told her in a low voice.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You’re a woman.”
Lisa didn’t reply immediately. It wasn’t something she wanted to bring up. The vast majority of her group, including most of Ned’s followers, had lived pretty secure lives. The dark and sordid side of the present was beyond their experience. Allie was an orphan, but that happened when she was too young to remember such things. Jane and Alek had been outcasts, but not from their families. Dan and Doug had an abusive father, but they found a new, more caring “family.”
Somehow, though, Ned knew. Lisa wasn’t sure if she wanted to know how he knew. Or what he knew, for that matter. That was for later.
“That’s right,” she said. “So’s Donna.”
“You’re prettier.”
“Thanks.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. Who should I put in my place? Allie’s too young. Jane’s scouted Butler and Poplar Ridge. The others have children. Or do we find some young woman in Richmond who’s pretty and stupid?”
Ned frowned and shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled about it, either. I don’t want to be bait. I’ve given this lots of thought, Ned. Food, even lots of it, might not be enough to bring out those thugs.”
He was quiet. He seemed to mull over her argument. Finally he said, “You just make damn sure you fight, and fight hard. You won’t be able to talk your way out if they get you.”
She inhaled, stiffened her back. “I told you once, I bite.” She smiled, somewhat maliciously. “Besides, they won’t know I’m in charge. They see me barking out orders, maybe they’ll hesitate. Confuse them, and crush them.”
“You hope.”
“Damn right.” She nodded towards the others. “Let’s get to work.” She pointed to him before they started walking. “Not a word of this to anyone. They don’t need it on their minds. They have enough to worry about.”
“Sure.”
She patted him on the arm. “Great.” She turned, and led him back to the group. Before they rejoined their friends she said, “We we get back, you’re going to tell me how you figured this out. I wanna know who it is that’s sitting next to me.”
***
For the longest time, the main sounds the group heard were their wagons’ wheels rolling on the gravel road and the clopping of horseshoes. A bird would call out. An animal would drift by the road, watch the armed travelers, then wander away. In the background were the buzzes, chirps, and cries of various insects.
About three-fifths of the way to Southport, the noises of nature dropped off. Ned elbowed Lisa, then cupped his hand around his ear. Lisa shook her head. He nodded and gestured, signaling that this was important.
Lisa whistled a bird call. From her position in the back of the second wagon, she could be heard by everyone else. No one changed what they were doing except to look around. Something was about to happen. They had to be ready.
Moments later rustling sounds broke on their left. Lisa shouted “Down!” the instant before four arrows whizzed from the woods. Someone in her group growled in pain.
Dirty men with ragged clothes and sharpened sticks charged out of the forest. The men yelled fiercely, like crazed animals defending their young. Lisa sat up, crossbow in her hands. She aimed at the man directly in front of her. She fired. The bolt thunked into the man’s chest. He groaned once, then fell.
Before she could reload, two more men grabbed at her. One tried for her legs. She pulled her right leg back, and pushed her right foot into his face. He screamed and backed away.
The other man got his arms around her upper body and yanked her out of the wagon. She tried to wriggle free. She tried kicking his legs. She tried to pull him down and push him back. He wasn’t letting go.
“Turn him around,” she heard Ned shout.
She glanced ahead of her. Ned had his knife out. He dodged a club swing from the man she’d kicked. With his left arm he grabbed the man’s right hand. He jerked the man forward into his waiting knife.
With two tremendous efforts, Lisa got the man hold her turned around so that her back was to Ned. Seconds later she felt the man’s grip slacken. She jumped free, finding herself in a crouched positions. She yanked a knife out of top of her right boot. She rose, turned, and caught the man’s right arm in her left hand. She pulled him forward and jabbed her knife into his chest. The man’s weight almost pushed her down, but she took her knife and shoved him back.
The first thing she saw after the man had fallen was the backs of a few of the ragged men. They were racing for the forest. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. Should we go after them? Ned’s voice answered her.
“Let them go!” he shouted. He looked past her to the wagon in front. “Bill, you see how many got away?”
“Three.”
“Anybody see any bows on these guys?”
“Got one!” It was Dan, who’d been driving the wagon Lisa and Ned were riding in. He pointed a short distance away. A ragged man had two crossbow bolts sticking out of his torso. He was clutching a longbow and an arrow. Apparently he kept trying to shoot after taking a bolt to the belly. A second shot to the chest sent him down.
“Howard’s hurt!” Ray screamed.
It broke Lisa and Ned out of their survey of the scene. They ran to the third wagon. Shawn and Matt had eased Howard onto the ground. When Lisa got close she saw two arrows in the young man, both in his back. Ned brushed past Donna and bent down.
“He covered me with his body,” Donna said.
“Is he okay?” Ray called from the driver’s spot on the wagon.
“Ned?” Lisa asked quietly.
As Ned looked up Shawn spoke. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Ned nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He stood, then looked at Shawn and Matt. “I’m sorry.”
Lisa nodded. She took a few steps back. She decided to give them a few moments to grieve. She patted Donna on the shoulder, then nodded her head towards the two young men. Donna moved in between them and held them.
Lisa signaled to Ned to approach her. He walked over to her. She led him a short distance away. “Count up how many we got,” she told him. He nodded and jogged away.
She hadn’t known Howard, so she found it hard to feel too strongly about his death. She could remember the fight, and that hurt her. I let myself get grabbed, she admonished to her now-battered ego. She had made myself a target, and they almost got her. She told herself that she should have swung at them, or jumped at them, or just pointed and shot.
God, I was incompetent.
Ned returned. “Eight bodies,” he said in a low voice.
“No prisoners?”
“Nope.”
“How many fled?”
“Three or four.”
“Okay.” Lisa walked around him. Donna and the others were still crying over Howard’s body.
“We can take some time to bury him,” she told them, “but not too long. We have to get to Southport by sunset. Besides, they could attack again.”
Shawn looked up at her. He was frowning. “That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all.” He wants to go after them, she thought..
“They can’t get away with this. Howard’s death...”
“Is terrible.” Lisa forced a calm into her tone. “”People are counting on us.”
“We don’t know the forest,” Ned added.
“I can track them,” Matt said.
“Maybe you can, and maybe you can’t,” Lisa said. “There’s no sense taking the chance that you can’t.”
“They murdered him,” said Shawn
“Eight of them are dead. Eight.”
“Let me finish it. Just me and Matt.”
“No!” Shawn was about to say something. “That’s an order, Shawn,” Lisa said.
“We can’t let his murderers go.”
“Yes, we can.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so!” Lisa felt her fists clench. She paused to regain her composure. “I know you want revenge. I know you’re angry. So am I. I don’t want outlaws to run free. But we have a job to complete.”
She stared down at him. She made sure he knew that she wasn’t about to give an inch. Moments passed. At last Shawn turned away from her gaze. Donna led him and the others away to bury Howard.
Lisa walked back to the middle wagon. Ned followed her but said nothing. They climbed into the back of the wagon and sat down in the bed. They watched the burial.
“You could let them go, Lisa,” Ned said after a some time had passed. His voice was low so her couldn’t be heard. “He might find them.”
She didn’t meet his gaze. “We don’t have time.”
“They might come back, try again.”
Lisa turned and glared at him. “Let it go,” she said, teeth clenched.
“All right.”
She kept to herself until the burial was done. She waited for them to take their places. She rose up, turned to the first wagon, and ordered the group to start moving. No one spoke as the resumed their journey.
Ned waited for several minutes to speak to Lisa again. He kept his voice barely above a whisper. “You didn’t do too bad back there.”
“I almost got carried off.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t.”
“I took too long to shoot.”
“Your first fight?”
She started at him, frowned. An instant later her expression mellowed and she sighed. “Yes.”
He smiled to her. “Bill Travis always said, ’You live through a fight, you did good enough.’”
“I guess.”
They rode on in silence.
“We can’t chase after every outlaw that attacks us,” Lisa said at length. “We’d be up to our necks in blood.”
“Yeah. Still, it don’t seem right.”
“It is right. Going after them would be getting revenge.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Yeah. Justice isn’t revenge. We have to make a distinction.”
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t, someone could decide to get revenge on us.”
“So, we do nothing.”
“For now. If they attack on the way back, we fight as hard as we did this time. If they don’t, we don’t worry about. Either they’re stupid, and their stupidity will get them killed. Or they’ve been scared off, so they’re no longer a threat. We move on.”
“Sounds hard.”
“It is. But we don’t have any choice, Ned. Doing the right thing is hard, sometimes. Don’t you agree?” She finally smiled.
He smiled back. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
***
Lisa wanted to stay in Southport for no longer than the rest of that day and overnight. There wasn’t that much business to do. She thought finding out the town’s needs wouldn’t take long, and it didn’t. Their greatest need was a secure road so clothes, tools, and seeds could get to them. With most of the outlaws dead, that need was fulfilled. Finally, there was the town feud to deal with, and that would take time as well as effort.
In the morning when they should have been leaving, Lisa discovered that two of her group were missing. Shawn and Matt had taken off during the night. She didn’t need to think too hard about why.
Her first choice was to leave anyway. She knew which direction the two went. The group was certain to meet them on the way back to Richmond. The only problem was that if the two failed to meet the group on the road, there would be pressure to go after them. That would weaken the group when there was still a chance of another attack. What was worse for Lisa was the thought of having to tell Wayne that two of his friends had disappeared, and that she had returned to Richmond instead of searching for them.
She decided to wait. She wasn’t sure how long she should wait. It turned out that the residents of Southport needed help repairing some of their buildings, and with a few other minor tasks. Lisa knew that if her group left after lunch they could make it to Richmond by dark. Lunchtime came; neither young man appeared, and the work wasn’t completed.
Part-way through that afternoon Lisa had a moment to speak to Donna. She told Donna she knew why Shawn and Matt were gone. She said she was willing to wait until the next morning. At that point they absolutely had to start back for Richmond. Donna simply said “Okay” and kept working.
The pair finally returned at sunset. Lisa stomped up to them. She pointed at the community building. “Come with me,” she ordered, “now.”
She had wanted to discipline them in front of her group. Upon reflection, she decided that discipline and embarrassment weren’t the same thing. She waved at seats. As soon as they sat down she asked, “Have you avenged Howard now?”
“Yes.” Shawn’s tone was defiant. “They won’t be a problem any more.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“What excuse?” Matt asked. He was more puzzled.
“Did either of you stop to think? What if those outlaws had friends?”
Shawn snorted. “Those animals? I doubt it.”
“Oh, really. Are you sure? Would you be willing to stake your lives on it? How about the lives of the rest of us?”
“You were gonna let them get away.”
“The important word being ’you.’ It was my decision, Shawn. Mine, and mine alone. I am in charge of this group. If I tell you to do something you do it. If I tell you not to do something, you don’t do it.”
“So we just let them...”
“Yes!” Lisa took a breath to calm herself, and to figure out a better approach.
“Shawn, did you think about the chance that maybe, just maybe, those guys weren’t wild attackers? What if they wanted us to follow them? What if it was a trap?”
Shawn and Matt didn’t reply right away. Matt shifted in his seat. He was now thinking about that, and clearly it was bothering him. Shawn stared at the floor, but his anger seemed to be fading. Lisa pressed on.
“It could be a trap next time,” she continued. “Or maybe next time they do have friends. You go after them, then they come after you. Do we have to avenge you? Do we keep getting revenge on each other? When does it stop?
“Tell me, do you both believe in what we’re doing?”
Shawn’s head snapped up. “Of course,” he said. Matt nodded his head vigorously.
“You know that there’s some things you had to give up, right? You have to follow my orders. You can’t hoard anything. You have to obey the rules of any towns we come to.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“There are other things that you have to give up. That we all have to give up, if everyone’s lives are going to get better. One of those things is that we can’t do what feels good to us. We can’t do whatever we please. We have to do what’s right. Not just what’s right for us, but what’s right for everyone else.
“You think that the bandits that killed Howard don’t have any friends. If they did they’d come after us. Do you really think that fighting every outlaw will make things better? Does that help us trade goods? Does that get towns working together? Does that really bring people together?”
“It makes the road safe.”
“Safe for who? Remember, we’re about to try to stop two towns fighting each other. Suppose those bandits were from one of those towns. You both remember White Rocks. What if those guys were working for one of those towns? What if they only looked like wild bandits? Maybe they were covering their real intentions with that disguise. Maybe they looked like that so no one would know who they really were.”
; “Then why’d they just attack us?” Matt asked.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is we really don’t know who those guys were. If they were from one of those towns, doing their bidding, and word got back that we not just defended ourselves, but that we hunted them down and killed them, what would that do to us?
“We’re not just going there to stop that feud because we have lots of armed men, and even a few armed women. We’re also going there because we’re not from this world. We haven’t taken sides. They don’t know us, and we don’t know them. They have to know that. They have to be able to trust us not to give victory to one town and defeat to the other.”
“If those guys were from one side, they wouldn’t like us,” Matt said.
“That’s right. They’d think we were on other side.”
“So what?” asked Shawn. “Isn’t it wrong to use outlaws like that?”
“Of course it is,” Lisa answered.
“Then I don’t see why what we did matters.”
“It matters because we’re not here to pick fights with anyone. We’re here to get people working together.
“Think about Ned and his group. They were robbing people. They knew it was wrong. They needed someone not to wipe them out for doing wrong. They needed someone to tell them that they could do better for themselves if they did right. They were smart enough to understand that, and they’ve joined us.
“Yesterday, who was it who knew when an attack was coming? Ned. Would you have known that?” She looked at Matt. “Would you?”
“No.”
“No. We made friends with them, and that paid off yesterday. We could all be dead if it wasn’t for them.”
“Well,” said Shawn, “we couldn’t make friends with those guys who attacked us.”
“Probably not. Does that mean we have to make them our enemies? Fighting and avenging are what enemies do. We aren’t supposed to be making enemies. We’re supposed to be making friends.
“Besides, getting revenge isn’t the same as getting justice. Anybody can rationalize getting revenge. If we’re going to make things better, we have to stand for better ways of doing things. Making rules and sticking to them. Dealing with everyone equally. Not punishing those who break the rules more harshly than what they deserve.
“Think about that, both of you. I know what you did when you found those guys who survived our fight. Don’t bother telling me that you let them fight back fairly. I bet they didn’t even know what was happening.
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