by Clary, LeRoy
“The other?”
She made a circle with her fingers. A large one, about two inches across. “One you can throw hard and accurate when close to someone. Hit a man in the face with it, and the fight is over.”
“Got it,” I whispered, taking a second look at Tess, who had seemed so nice and motherly when we first met. Now she wanted me to bash in a skull and throw a rock at a man’s face.
“Do not make a noise. If either of us is discovered, run. Run for your life. Get to Russian Creek Crossing, to the far side of the river and hide in the bushes. Wait for me there.”
I nodded.
She moved off.
I crept along the side of the stream. I found my throwing rock quickly, then traded it for a better one. The bashing one was harder. When too large, my hand couldn’t comfortably hold them and would require two hands. Too small and they might not do the job. But eventually, one stood out that met my desires. Instead of being round, it was oblong. Gripping the center was easy. Striking with either end in a chopping motion deadly.
Back where I’d last seen Tess, she waited. It was almost full dark, the light from a campfire lighting up the underside of the leaves on the trees. She took hold of my shirt and pulled me along the wide trail that both us and them had used.
We paused, her arm barring me from moving ahead. She had me reach down and feel the rope strung tightly across, from one tree to another, above ankle-high. I gingerly stepped over it. She softly counted our paces to six. We came to another rope just below knee height.
I went two steps beyond and turned around, memorizing how a tall bush on my left appeared from the other direction. The rope was strung a full step past it. Then I retraced six steps and found three trees at the edge of the path growing almost together as the marker for the next trip-rope.
She gave me a nod of approval, clear to see in the dim light. If we had to escape from the camp, I’d leap over each rope without breaking stride. They wouldn’t see them and fall face-first.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t get up off the ground and chase us again, but if it was me, I’d give up and wait for light, especially if one or more of my fellow soldiers had just died in an attack on my camp.
Tess pushed us back, almost to the stream. I asked why.
“Better to be safe. One of us might cough or clear our throats and alert them. When it’s time, we’ll go. First me. I’ll take out the guard. When I do, we will quietly go to the nearest tent.”
She stopped talking and let my imagination consider what would happen at the nearest tent, not to mention the guard she would “take out.” My heart pounded. We were talking about killing people as easily as if we were deciding to play cards or checkers.
Right. So, Tess would sneak in and slit the guard’s throat, then together we’d enter a tent and attempt to kill two more men. If we succeeded without waking the others, we’d go to the next tent and repeat our actions.
Nothing to worry about. After all, it was only discussing killing three or four people in a few hours. Maybe five, if we were lucky.
The enormity of our actions descended on me like the rain a few days earlier. It crashed down. My hands shook, my breathing came in gasps. It was a good thing she had moved us away from their campsite.
Tess placed a hand on my shoulder as if she sensed my trepidation in the ragged sounds my breathing made. She squeezed my shoulder. “We can do this.”
She was no monster. But how could she be so calm while talking of killing several men this night? If we managed to succeed, did I want to be with her in the morning? A killer?
I sat with my back to a tree trunk and tried to figure that out.
It was a lot to take in. If it all went well, she wouldn’t be the only killer in the morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Later, she touched my arm. It was the signal. I’d been dozing. In the starlight, only large blobs of darkness told me where trees were. The path was clear and easy to navigate. Ahead, the fire had been allowed to die until only embers remained. Now and then the guard who had replaced the previous one tossed a few more sticks on top and he stood and watched it burn.
Tess whispered, “Idiot. Too small a fire to give any heat, and now after staring into it, he has no night vision.”
I felt her presence, more than saw her in the darkness as she stood beside me.
She said, “Remember. Rendezvous at Russian Creek Crossing, the east side. Use the path to run so they trip. Make sure they know that’s the way you go, even if you have to slow so they see you. Let me take down the guard, then come quietly to join me. Questions?”
Not more than a hundred questions flooded my mind. Despite that, I shook my head.
When we reached a few steps from the clearing, she used her hand on my shoulder to push me down to a crouch. She moved away and I lost her in the darkness, so I watched the guard. He was walking slowly, circling the four tents, probably doing that to make sure he didn’t sit down and fall asleep. Walking would keep him awake.
He walked the same circle, always skirting the edge of the trees on our side of the clearing. Perhaps ten minutes passed, and he’d walked past me three times. As he approached again, he disappeared.
My eyes were on him and he was suddenly not there. I heard nothing. It had to be Tess attacking. My fingers gripped the throwing rock and those on my right hand squeezed the bashing rock.
Tess moved into the clearing at the edge of the light from the fire and walked close to the first tent before motioning for me to approach. I moved quietly—for clumsy me. To my ears, every sound was amplified, especially a footfall in dry leaves, and the sound of the legs of my pants swishing with each step. When I reached her, she shoved a pistol into my waistband and hissed, “Don’t use it unless we have to.”
It was too dark to examine, to take the safety off if it had one, or to see if it had ammo. Better to trust my rocks. I knew they were loaded, and the safety was off. Neither would blow up on my hand. At the end of the tent, Tess dropped to all fours. She silently crawled inside.
I went after, knees weak, hands shaking with my rocks grasped so hard they were threatened to become gravel when I crushed them to pieces, and my breath was thankfully shallow.
She moved to the man sleeping on our right, so I went left. Heavy snores came from both. She pulled to a stop near the man’s head. The knife was poised in her hand. With the palm of the other hand, she shoved it over his mouth as her right hand slashed the knife across his neck. She bent forward and used her body to try and keep him still and prevent noise.
The other stirred.
I froze. The bashing-rock was raised. I was about to kill. Shooting from a distance had been cold and impersonal—or I had pretended it was. This was different. My instinct was to run, leaving Tess to fend for herself.
I remained. Only an instant had passed, and my intended victim was still asleep but might wake at any time. Then, my mind recalled the vacant expression on Mayfield’s face as I held her dead body. It reverted to the scowl she often gave me, the one that always dissolved into a smile because she didn’t mean the other. How she had taken my hand to comfort me when we were children and I had been scared after the bombs fell.
I struck his head with all the might I possessed as Tess fought to keep her opponent still and silent. The blunt end of the bashing rock struck the skull, and unlike hitting stone upon stone, it crushed with a moist sound and entered the head. The man’s body stiffened, trembled, and went limp.
There was no remorse, nor satisfaction. I didn’t feel like revenge had occurred. In total, I was empty of feelings. A madman who killed by bashing heads with rocks. There was no pain, no release, nothing.
Tess placed a gentle but insistent hand on my arm. “Follow me.”
We moved out of the tent and into the second. A single man was inside, blankets for a second sleeping spot were empty. It probably the bed of the sentry Tess killed. We crawled closer.
“Hey!” He shouted in sudden alarm and
sat up, arms flailing.
Tess used her knife again, stabbing this time.
“Help!” he managed to shout.
Tess stabbed twice more, then snarled over her shoulder at me without waiting to check to see if he was dead, “Run. The path.”
She didn’t have to say it twice. I took off in a sprint, with her at my heels as waking voices broke the still of the night. A shot was fired. Then another, but we had already rounded the first turn on the path and the familiar bush I’d marked in my memory was ahead. I leaped over the unseen rope in the darkness and took only five steps instead of the original six I’d measured to reach where the three trees stood. A second leap carried me clear over.
There were more shouts of discovery at the camp. Orders snapped. I imagined them finding the guard, the two dead in the first tent, and one dead in the second. That left only three.
Tess was right behind me. The night was darker under the canopy of the trees and we slowed just in time to hear a pursuer fall heavily to the ground, followed by a curse. He grunted and then shouted, “Traps. They have traps set. Be careful.”
There seemed to be an anxious discussion, but the words were obscured by distance and our heavy breathing. After that, we heard nothing of them coming after us.
When the stream we followed reached the river, we splashed along the edge until reaching the crossing. I looked hopefully for our horses, but they were not there, of course. By now they might have found their way home. We entered the heavy shrubbery and cut a few branches to place in front of us so we could see out from behind a barrier, but nobody could see us.
After catching our breaths, Tess whispered, “Sleepy?”
“No.”
“Me neither, but we need rest. It’ll be a long day tomorrow. Mind taking the first watch?”
“Okay.”
“Do not fall asleep. If you need to sleep, wake me.”
She could have told me other useless instructions such as; if you see anything. She didn’t. She said nothing else. Soon, she was sleeping.
I didn’t understand how she could do that, at first. Then, as the night progressed, my mental high from the battle ebbed and the only fight left in me was staying awake. To take my mind off the horrors earlier, I concentrated on listening to the sounds all around, most of which were never heard in Deep Hole.
A regular sound of scraping like paper rubbing together came from behind me. Each time, a response sounded from my left. An animal called “who” over and over, an owl, I think. Far off, an answering “who” sounded. There were rattles, dry leaves scratching in the slight breeze, of course, the sound of the river flowing over rocks and boulders. A plop in the water told me a fish had leaped.
Listening became boring. I smelled the moist earth, the scent of evergreens, the sharp tang of a nearby flower, and me. I stunk. Sweat combined with fear and sorrow gave me a pungent odor. I raised an arm and smelled my pit. Foul.
Shifting to another sense, I watched the stars. It made me sleepy and feel alone. I was chilly, not cold. There were few senses left to keep me awake. I pinched myself.
My thoughts returned to Mayfield, as they did every few moments. Things she’s said. Things I wished I’d have said. The truth was that while there was an attraction between us, we had never done anything about it. Not even after they banished us. We’d been too busy surviving and learning the new world we were thrust into.
Still, there had been moments. Looks exchanged. As if both of us were too damn proud to approach the other. Now I was attempting to act as she would want, do as she would.
Did she want me to kill that man with a rock? Doing some quick math, there was a one in ten chance it was him that killed her. We’d now killed seven of the original ten, four of them this night, which translated to a seventy percent chance of us having killed the guilty one. The same odds for Cap’s killer.
The corporal was guilty of giving the orders and that was a hundred percent certainty. He was to one that had kicked me in my head. I didn’t know if he was one of the four that we’d killed in the camp tonight but suspected not. He wouldn’t sleep in a tent with another. Both of my rocks had been abandoned there, the bashing one and the throwing one. I suddenly remembered the gun Tess had thrust at me. It was under my belt.
I pulled it free. Instead of a revolver like the one Tess carried, it was a semi-automatic, but smaller than the nine-millimeter ones we had carried. The barrel was smaller in diameter, the handle shorter as if made for a smaller person, perhaps a woman. I ejected the clip and found a dozen tiny shells, all handmade. They were crude, uneven and misshapen.
However, they fit nicely in the clip and I slapped it back in place and racked a round in the chamber. I could only hope they fired. Training from Sarge reminded me that in the case of a misfire, I could use the slide to eject the shell and another would be ready. That was good to know.
“Getting ready?” Tess asked softly. “See something that you’re going to shoot?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just getting familiar with the gun.”
“Good response. Now get some sleep and I’ll watch.”
I didn’t argue. While cold, my body was worn out, my mind numb, and I huddled until almost asleep. The last I remember is Tess placing her outer shirt over my shoulders and upper body as I wished we’d located the horse blankets during our wild escape. Even half a blanket would have helped.
She woke me by placing her hand over my mouth and hissing, “Quiet. They come.”
I wiggled to where I could watch the river and the far side at the same time. Our little barricade we’d constructed was ahead of us, the branches and leaves more than enough to disguise our shapes. The day had brightened, but the sun had not yet come above the eastern hills.
I saw nothing of them.
Tess watched upstream, on the far shore. A flicker of movement along the edge of the river caught my attention. We waited; our hands empty of weapons because we didn’t intend to use them. Not yet.
Three men eventually came into view. Slunk into view is a more accurate description. First came one alone, moving slowly, his head turning and twisting at every sound or imagined sighting. A scout. He carried a pistol as if it were fragile.
Behind moved two others, the corporal and last was another soldier. They watched their every step.
I calculated their intended path and realized Tess had chosen our spot well. They would walk within fifty feet of us, along the other side of the river, if they continued as they were. As slow as they progressed, they may as well have been standing still, like lifeless targets.
Tess whispered, “Slowly remove your gun and aim it. Nothing else until I fire, then you take the one in the rear, the last in line.”
Gun in hand, we waited for them to travel the last hundred yards. They came abreast, all three scanning the shadows, trees, and anywhere a person might hide in ambush. At one time or another, all three looked directly at us.
“Movement is the first thing your eye sees,” Sarge had instructed us since we were children. “Color is the second.”
Our clothing blended in with the forest. We remained perfectly still. The first one, their scout, moved twenty yards ahead of the other two. He came even with us, then passed by.
I assumed Tess was going to shoot the corporal when he came in position.
I was wrong. As the corporal came even with us, the last in line only a few steps behind him, Tess fired her revolver twice. The third attempt resulted in a click on an empty chamber or bad bullet.
My first shot was a solid hit on the chest of the man who came last and my second shot a few inches away, only an instant later. The distance was such that I could have thrown a rock, so the shot at night was nothing to brag about except that the stolen gun worked perfectly.
As the first and last man fell, the corporal looked around wildly, didn’t see us, and fired a few shots a dozen feet to our right. I centered my gun on him, ready to empty the clip when Tess’s hand swatted my barrel down.
/> In a total surprise, I turned to her. She climbed to her knee, aimed her empty gun at the corporal, and said in a calm voice that carried and failed to indicate that her last attempt to fire a bullet had resulted in a click, “You’ve seen how accurate we shoot. Drop your weapon or both of us will fire on the count of three. One. Two.”
His gun hit the ground.
As it fell, I recognized it was my gun. Or Mayfield’s. That it might be hers caused my finger to tighten on the trigger.
Tess said, “Relax, Danner. Don’t shoot.”
She strode into the water in his direction, her gun never wavering.
The corporal’s eyes were wide, his lower lip trembled, and he tore his eyes away from the man who had been behind and now lay dead at his feet. “Y-you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
Tess kept walking closer as she said, “No.” Her empty revolver lashed out and struck him across his right cheek. The front sight ripped a bloody line. As he fell to his knees, she continued in the same tone, “I’m out of ammo, so I’m going to beat you to death.”
“Nooo,” he wailed.
She reached down and pulled him to his feet. “Unless you tell me everything I want to know.”
He nodded eagerly. The blood ran down his chin and dripped to his chest.
The gun at his feet galvanized me. I stood, ran across the stream while splashing water everywhere, and snatched it from the ground. Training had me check it before pointing it at him. Tess pulled a small length of the same rope she had made the tripwire from. Before he could object, she had his hands tied behind him, and the tail end of the rope around a small tree to stop him if he tried to run.
Tess turned to me. “Search him. Then those two.”
All had backpacks. I started with the one nearest, and tossed a few coins, a folding knife, a key, and a small, crude, carving of a bear from wood. He carried a poor-quality gun I’d hesitate to fire, a strange-looking pistol with a heavy coating of rust everywhere. Strange because the handles were pure white in the morning light.