He grimaced. 'You have a hateful way of being right.'
He scrambled into trousers and boots, set a plumed hat on his head to shield him from the sun. The plume was a bright pheasant's feather from England, now sadly battered.
Soon he would have to replace it with a dul er turkey tail feather.
He was finishing a bowl of last night's stew, strong but stil eatable, when someone knocked on the cabin door.
'There, you see?' Anne said.
'Hush.'
He opened the door. Henry Dale came in. He was a short, fussy man whose ruddy complexion and tightly held jaw gave clues to his temper.
After dipping his head to Anne, he said, 'Edward, what say we set a few snares today, mayhap, if fortune favors us, in spots where no knavish sims will come on them to go a-poaching'
'Good enough. Allan Cooper told me how you were robbed yesterday.'
Anne's presence plainly was the only thing keeping Dale from exploding with fury. He limited himself to a single strangled, 'Aye.' After a few moments, he went on, 'Shall we be about it, then?'
Wingfield checked his pistols, tucked a bundle of cross bow bolts into his beltpouch, nodded. After a too brief embrace with his wife, he followed Dale out into the bright morning.
Colonists were already weeding, hoeing, waoering in the fields.
Caleb Lucas shooed a goat away from the fresh, green stalks of wheat, speeding it on with a kick that brought an indignant bleat from the beast. 'And the very same to you,' Lucas cal ed after it. 'Damned impudent beast, you can find victuals anywhere, so why thieve your betters' meals?'
'Belike the foolish creature thinks itself a sim,' Dale grunted, watching the goat scurry for the edge of the woods, where it began browsing on shoots. 'It lacks the accursed losels' effrontery, though, for it will not turn on its natural masters. The sims, now, those whoreson, beetle headed, flap-ear'd stinkards, '
Without pausing but to draw breath, he continued in that vein until he and Wingfield were surrounded by forest. As had Anne's remarks the night before, his diatribe roused Wingfield's contentious nature.
'Were they such base animals as you claim,' he said, 'the sims would long since have exterminated one another, and not been here for us to find on our landing.'
Dale gave him a look filled with dislike. 'For all we know, they Wel nigh did. 'Twas not on us they began their habits anthropophagous.'
'If they were eating each other, Henry, and you style them
'anthropophagous,' does that not make men of them?' Wingfield asked mildly. His companion spluttered and turned even redder than usual.
A robin twittered among the leaves. So the colonists named the bird, at any rate, but it was not the redbreast of England. It was big and fat and stupid, its underparts the color of brick, not fire. It was, however, easy to kill, and quite tasty. There were other sounds in the woods, too.
Somewhere far off, Wingfield heard the deep-throated barking cries of the sims. So did Henry Dale. He spat, deliberately, between his feet.
'What men speak so?' he demanded. 'Even captured and tamed, as much as one may tame the beasts, they do but point and gape and make dumb show as a horse will, seeking to be led to manger.'
'Those calls have meaning to them,' Wingfield said.
'Oh, aye, belike. A wolf in a trap will howl so piteously it frightens its fellows away. Has he then a language?'
Having no good answer to that, Wingfield prudently kept silent.
As the two men walked, they looked for signs to betray the presence of smal game. Dale, who was an able woodsman when amiable, spotted the fresh droppings that told of a woodchuck run. 'A good place for a snare,' he said.
But even as he was preparing to cut a noose, his comrade found a track in the soft ground to the side of the run: the mark of a large, bare foot. 'Leave be, Henry,' he advised. 'The sims have been here before us.'
'What's that you say?' Dale came over to look at the footprint.
One of the settlers might have made it, but they habitual y went shod.
With a disgusoed grunt, Dale stowed away the twine. 'Rot the bleeding blackguards! I'd wish their louse- ridden souls to hell, did I think God granted them any.'
'The Spaniards baptize them, 'tis said.'
'Good on them' Dale said, which startled Wingfield until he continued,
'A papist baptism, by Jesus, is the most certain highroad to hell of any I know.'
They walked on. Wingfield munched on late ripening wild strawberries, larger and sweeter than any that grew in England. He spotted a woodchuck ambling from tussock to tussock. This time he aimed with special care, and his shot knocked the beast over. Dale grunted again, now in approval. He had bagged nothing more than a couple of songbirds.
They did find places to set several new snares: simple drag nooses, hanging snares made from slip nooses fasened to the ends of saplings, and fixed snares set near bushes.
The latter were especially good for catching rabbits.
They also visited the snares already set. A horrible stench announced that one of those had taken a black- and-white New World polecat. Skinned and butchered to remove the scent glands, the beast made good eating.
