Half a minute later came MacVie's cry of astonishment. "Aaaach! What do you think you're doing, interrupting Sir Reverence by sneaking up on me? I got enough trouble making it happen without the comfort of me own jakes. Begone, you tattooed whoreson, or I'll give you a face full of it!"
Belly laughter rocketed around the campfire. MacVie certainly wasn't concealing his resentment.
***
A hand prodding her shoulder awakened her to pre-dawn coolness amid the pewtery glow of starlit forest and the stink of rancid bear grease. The whisper from a crouched shadow belonged to Mathias. "We must move on. We've company out there."
All thought of sleep vanquished, she sat. David and Jacques shuffled bedrolls together, and two grease-slathered shadows murmured among the horses. "Where? Do they know we're here?"
"Camped a mile away, just off the postal road. A party of a half-dozen civilian men. They don't know we're here yet."
"Good." She indicated the snoring MacVie. "A connection?"
Mathias grunted. "I recommend that we don't wake him until the last second. Maintain silence all the way to breakfast."
She groped for her shoes and smiled without mirth. "Let's tell him we're being tracked by redcoats."
"I'm expecting that development, too. The Fates are fickle, especially in the forest."
He moved away on moccasin feet. With a swivel up to her knees, she smoothed out blankets and assembled the bedroll. Then she saddled Samson and loaded her gear.
Fearful of being nabbed by soldiers, MacVie fumbled his bedroll together in haste after being awakened. The party mounted horses and resumed the journey southbound. With Runs With Horses in the lead, Standing Wolf and Mathias melted into night to create a false trail, rejoining the group twenty minutes later. Mosquitoes bombarded Sophie's hands, face, and neck. Irritated to be the only one under attack, she considered slathering on some of the Indians' bear grease.
They paused at seven Tuesday morning for deer jerky and dried pears before paralleling the Savannah River and the postal road by a mile to the west. The rolling hinterland made the going slow and fatigued the horses.
By noon, south of Alton, MacVie recovered enough mettle to gripe. Since they were approaching Mack Beans Swamp, he said, they ought to use the road and give the horses a break. He ought to get his weapons back, too. And didn't they trust him enough yet to tell him their destination?
With the noontime sun beating down, the group headed toward the road. Half a mile from it, while the rest of the party dismounted in an oak grove and ate more jerky and dried fruit, Runs With Horses and Standing Wolf set off to scout the safety of the road.
MacVie claimed a patch of grass near the horses, stretched out in the sultry cicada-song, and snoozed, hat covering his face and just visible above the long grass. David, Jacques, and Mathias conversed in quiet tones, weapons in hand. Holding her loaded musket, Sophie walked to and fro to ease the stiffening of muscles in her inner thighs.
David and Jacques meandered to the periphery of camp, the brown of their hunting shirts blending with the bark of trees. Mathias migrated over to her. "Muscles sore from riding?" She nodded. "Give it a couple days. You'll feel better."
"You're not trying to talk me out of this journey anymore."
"Rather late for that." He glanced over her shoulder, and she, following his glance, glimpsed MacVie's black hat. Mathias lowered his voice and infused it with humor. "When you set your mind to something, stopping you is like halting a runaway horse team."
"The pot calling the kettle black indeed."
"True, and as I join the ranks of cantankerous old men like my uncle, I shall be entitled to ever-increasing stubbornness." After a mutual chuckle, the amusement on his face faded, replaced by sobriety. "Sophie, now see here —"
The report of a firearm bounced off the trees. She clutched her musket, and Mathias pushed past. "MacVie, on your feet — ah, damn his eyes!" She swiveled to see the black hat left as decoy in the grass. Then she dashed for the horses.
David yelled, and another shot sounded much closer. Several more close shots, and she reached Samson, who, with the other horses, shied about. Out in the woods, she heard Creek battle whoops. Jacques exulted, "Vive le Montcalm!" and followed it with his own whoop. Mathias sprinted past the horses and discharged his rifle. A man screamed. Alerted by peripheral vision, she pivoted to spot MacVie, his right arm recoiled, an eight-inch knife in his hand.
She hit the dirt. In passage, the knife clipped her hat from her head and pinned it to a tree not far behind her. Terror rebounded her to her feet, musket in hand, to find him gripping a tomahawk. "Will can't help you now, wench. This is between you and me." Yellow teeth bared, he charged her.
She shrieked, hauled up her musket, and fired point-blank into his pelvis. Hot blood spewed everywhere, including her arm, and he flopped on the ground, screaming. Horses whinnied.
A tattooed blur of rancid bear grease wielding a tomahawk leaped over him and vanished into the dense tree growth, followed by a man's screech of terror from the trees and another Creek whoop. MacVie began bleating his epitaph, his dark eyes imploring, agonized. Sophie threw down her musket and gagged at the sight of death and the stenches of blood and burning black powder. The pulse of blood from his severed pelvic artery slowed. A rattle took up residence in his throat. She backed into Samson, spun about, and leaned against the horse, drinking in his familiar warmth and smell. Grabbing the saddle, she gagged again and almost vomited.
She heard a final, distant report from a firearm. Then the forest, including MacVie, quieted. Her right sleeve, sprayed with blood, grew sticky. She clung to Samson's saddle, and they calmed each other.
In the distance, David yelled, "Sophie! Sophie!"
Mathias sounded at least as frantic. "Near the horses!"
Fowler in hand, David crashed through underbrush and emerged at the horses. "Ye gods — Sophie!" He dragged her around and clutched her. "How much blood on your arm is yours?"
"None," she squeaked into his shoulder. Beneath the stink of sweat, blood, and black powder, she smelled David's familiar scent. She started trembling again. Two years earlier, she'd fired pistol shots out her dining room window to chase bandits off her property. She'd heard the pain of one hit by a ball, but she hadn't smelled it. And she hadn't killed him. Her stomach lurched.
David set her out at arms' length. The sight of sweat spiking his hair and runneling through dirt and powder on his face pitched her from nausea into a burst of hysterical laughter. Never before had she seen her brother in such disarray.
Mathias bounded onto the scene, drew up short at the sight of the body, and sprinted for her. He caught her up in an embrace made awkward by the fact that it included his rifle. "Your arm — you're hurt!" He dropped the rifle and took her face in his hands. "I shouldn't have left you. I promised, gave my word. Forgive me."
An elemental tremor grazed her at the touch of his callused hands on her face, the first time in all her life that a man had held her face. From the earnestness in his black eyes, she doubted Mathias had needed any convincing from Will a month before. It led her to wonder: What had her father intuited all these years that caused him to assign Mathias as her protector? David, however, required no guesswork. Wiggling his eyebrows, he ambled away.
After a moment, flustered, she guided Mathias's hands off her face. "I'm all right. Really."
David stood over the body and grimaced. MacVie's blood had attracted blowflies. Sophie looked away in haste, her nausea returning. "H-he threw a knife at me and missed, then came at me with a tomahawk, so I —" So she killed him, a human, her neighbor, someone she'd bartered and danced with. "I shot him."
David sounded on-edge, disgusted. "I took care of Donald Fairbourne." He hadn't enjoyed killing. "Charley Osborn and Pete Whitney ran afoul of Uncle Jacques's tomahawk."
"I shot Measure Travis." Mathias retrieved his discharged rifle, his teeth jammed together. He hadn't enjoyed killing, either.
Alton's rebels h
ad been disbanded — almost. David glanced at Mathias. "Sam Fielding ran away eastward. Sehoyee Yahuh gave chase."
Standing Wolf — where was he? The expression on David's face mirrored her realization that Jacques and the two brothers were missing. Twigs snapped. They spun about, Mathias reaching for his tomahawk, David ready with a knife.
Jacques and Runs With Horses walked into view towing the Indians' horses. Standing Wolf limped, bloody-legged, between them. Dark satisfaction filled Jacques's eyes when he spied MacVie's body. "Excellent. We need not worry about that one escaping." His ropy neck rotated to allow him sight of Sophie's hat pinned to the tree. He scowled, freed the hat, and tossed it to her. "That dog MacVie stole my extra knife — and my second tomahawk!" He knelt, whisked MacVie's purse from his waistcoat as if purse cutting were second nature to him, and retrieved his tomahawk. "I presume that is not your blood, belle Sophie. You are using your arm much too well."
Still shaky, she approached Standing Wolf with Mathias. "Did you find Sam Fielding?"
The warrior scowled. "His feet and dagger were too quick."
David gestured dismissal. "He isn't worth hunting at this point. If we don't intercept El Serpiente by tomorrow night, we'll have to wait for him in St. Augustine. Let's get out of here before scavengers assume we're trying to compete."
Standing Wolf leaned against a tree, his expression stoic, the gash in his thigh oozing. Mathias and Sophie inspected the wound, and she straightened to look in the Creek's dark eyes. "We'll dress it quickly so we can leave. You may need stitches later." He nodded, impassive over his injury.
Mathias muttered to her, "Why did they ambush us? Can it be that they did help El Serpiente murder Will and Jonah?"
That theory held water better than others, but it still contained too many holes. Little would make sense until they tracked down and interrogated the man known to them only as El Serpiente.
Chapter Twelve
PICKETED NEAR THE road, the mounts of Donald Fairbourne, Peter Whitney, Measure Travis, and Charley Osborn grazed. Churned grass, hoof prints on the road, and a dropped haversack testified of Sam Fielding's frantic flight northward on horseback. Having confiscated the dead men's supplies, the travelers divided their money. Then they took the road south after a detour into the thicket to discourage pursuit, the extra horses plus MacVie's roped behind them, the empty saddles discarded.
Mathias scouted a mile ahead in the sweltering afternoon, warning the party into concealment from marching militiamen and, later, from several families with wagons. Runs With Horses ranged a mile behind to verify lack of pursuit. By dark, they'd put more than thirty miles between them and the noontime carnage.
The drenching of afternoon rainstorms was a mixed blessing, washing away evidence of their passage, yet promoting activity of insects. Camped a mile from the road on Perkins Bluff, they ate a meal from their stores and banked down the campfire after it provided light for Mathias to stitch Standing Wolf's thigh.
Sophie collapsed on her bedroll, exposed skin smeared with bear grease. Her inner thigh muscles felt like throbbing jelly, and bruises and insect bites mottled her skin. Although she'd changed shirts and washed the blood off, her right arm still felt sticky. Most of the dead men had families. Three nights earlier, she'd danced with MacVie.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw blood spray, heard screams and moans, and smelled death. Revulsion and regret pirouetted through her soul and ground at her stomach. The worst part about it was realizing she'd make the same choices again.
For an hour she listened to men's snores before she pushed her blanket off and stood. From the direction of the road, a red wolf howled. She hobbled a circle around the coals and swung her arms, wishing her mind would quiet.
Jacques materialized from the surrounding foliage. "A problem, belle Sophie?"
"I'm too tired to sleep. I'll take your watch for you."
Chuckling, he cradled his musket and meandered to her. "Non. I am wide-awake. I have relived the times Pierre, Jean, Auguste, Claude, and I made a glorious team for Montcalm, cutting down the English pigs. Back in '58 we built a rockslide. When the pigs triggered it, those who were not swept off the mountainside screaming were crushed beneath boulders." He chuckled again.
"We were reunited at the side of Colonel Prescott near Breed's Hill five summers ago, but we had claimed our most excellent victory days before that. We discovered the route some pigs were taking to Boston, and we disguised a pit in the road filled with sharpened sticks. While we watched, a half-dozen pigs marched into it and impaled themselves." He sighed, enraptured, oblivious to the disgust filling her face.
Having witnessed the Frenchman in action, Sophie no longer dismissed his war stories as figments of an old man's imagination. Another wolf howled from the direction of the road, closer to the campsite. One of the pack answered from beyond the road. "Uncle Jacques, the French War is long over."
"Au contraire, we are still fighting it, and we will not stop until arrogance has been wiped from English faces."
The west shadows around the campfire emitted Mathias, concern on his face. "Sophie, you cannot sleep?"
She shook her head. "'Out, damned spot.'"
"Ah." He sighed, his face filling with regret, and nodded. "'What's done cannot be undone.'"
Jacques frowned. "Whose secret code is that?"
"Shakespeare." Mathias's gaze met hers, and she knew that he commiserated with her sense of loss. She fished out a smile for him, enjoying the "secret code," wondering if he'd intended a double meaning in his quote.
Disdain curled Jacques's upper lip. "The Bard — bah! What is wrong with Racine or Molière, eh? I shall translate for you the wit and wisdom of Alceste in Le Misanthrope." He cleared his throat and adopted a swagger straight from the Comédie Française. "'The more one loves, the more one should object to every blemish, every least defect'." Sophie's efforts at restraining a grin were almost undone when she realized Mathias also struggled to submerge his humor. "'Were I this lady, I would soon get rid of lovers who approved of all I did, and by their slack indulgence and applause endorsed my follies and excused my flaws.'"
A wolf howled less than a quarter mile west. Picketed together, the horses shifted about, ears pricked, nostrils examining the breeze. Mathias said to Jacques, "Pardon me, Alceste, but we've camped across a favorite wolf route."
Annoyance speared Jacques's expression. "I shall make sure the horses are secured."
Sophie imagined indignation seasoning the howl from the wolf that sounded off next. His fellow, just as close, voiced his displeasure. She looked at Mathias. "They sound quite close."
"They'll get closer."
"Are we in danger?"
He motioned her to help him build up the fire. "We won't provoke them, and their food supply is abundant this summer."
Runs With Horses joined Jacques at the horses. David and Standing Wolf rose. Needing no explanation for the sonata swelling around them, they faced outward, listening, weapons ready.
At least eight individual melodies of wolf-song flavored the night while the pack encircled them to protest invasion of their territory and insist on their departure. Eager to comply, the horses struggled with the instinct to flee while responding to the assurance imparted by Runs With Horses's touch and murmurs.
Her back to the crackling fire, Sophie glimpsed the glint of green eyes in the foliage and lifted her musket. Gooseflesh raised on her arms and neck at the raw emotion hurtling through her. Fight or flight — was she the hunter or the hunted? The green eyes subsided into night. She relaxed and exhaled a shaky breath. Near her, Mathias said, "He's assessing for his leader."
The pack elevated their chorus to a din, members pacing just beyond the reach of firelight. She let the butt of her musket slide to the ground and, balancing the barrel against her pelvis, covered her ears. For another minute or two, the pack maintained the racket, ancient warriors in ceremony around a sanctuary they could neither enter nor leave. At last, resignation p
unctuated the howl of a wolf farther away — the leader summoning the pack to more productive activities. After voicing final opinions on the intruders, each wolf rejoined the leader and the night.
Runs With Horses had calmed all eleven horses, but Sophie stroked Samson because she'd never been so close to wolves in the wild. Her ears still ringing, she watched Jacques wiggle his forefinger in his ear with an expression of distaste. "One thing is certain." He switched fingers and ears. "The night will seem very quiet now."
***
Cirrus curtains draped Wednesday's steamy sunrise. Sophie tightened a strap on her saddle and wondered when she'd sleep well again. What slumber she'd snatched had been splintered by visions of MacVie's agonized face and a dream wolf — gaunt, gray, and winter-worn — that circled her and howled with laughter. "La hija del Lobo, no daughter of mine. It isn't me you should track. Frightened yet? Go home to your beau before it's too late!" How utterly macabre.
Next to her, David secured his bedroll to his saddle. From the purple smudges beneath his eyes, she knew the loss of their father had overtaken him, too. But by that evening, the Fates willing, they'd catch El Serpiente, and perhaps they could close a door on the murders of their loved ones.
She muttered, "I keep going over it in my head, but it makes no sense. Why do you think MacVie and the rebels wanted us dead? Were they bought by El Serpiente and trying to assure his safe passage to St. Augustine?"
"If so, I'm glad those buggers are dead, but I just don't swallow it. To be truthful, I'm not sure Fairbourne wanted to kill me. From the look on his face, he might have settled for scaring me off, driving me back to Alton. I've no idea who made the first aggression — it all happened so fast — but it's no use speculating or casting blame. Fairbourne's dead.
"And that the old man is gone, too — I mean, there's a part of me that refuses to believe it." He choked off and gritted his teeth before releasing a fey laugh. "It's so odd that he's gone the same week as old Carey, as if the two of them sat down together and plotted it out — the two peas in the Alton pod."
Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution Page 10