Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

'My friend Tom has gone to check the snares.'

'Oh,' was Greathouse's response, but Matthew looked uneasily at the nest of straw and wondered if Tom slept there. Surely the reverend wasn't insane, for he seemed clean enough and was dressed well, in dark brown breeches, gray stockings, a white shirt and a pair of old but serviceable brown boots. No, there most certainly had to be a human Tom, for who had put an axe to the wood and lugged it in from the forest?

'Do you mind if I sit down, here on the floor?' Slaughter inquired. 'Where I won't be in anyone's way.' He was already sitting, and putting the ball gently down, by the time he'd asked the question.

'New York, you said?' Burton eased himself into the chair with the footstool, and winced a bit as his bones settled. 'I haven't been to New York in oh eight years, I think it must be. Probably nearer ten, really. All that noise and the goings-on, it was never my cup of choice. But tell me, who do you gentlemen work for, that you're taking a prisoner to-' He stopped, and his head tilted. 'Ah! Here's Tom now!'

There came the sound of boots on the porch. The door opened. A small wet dog, its short bristly hair black as midnight and its snout the brown hue of damp sand, scampered in. 'Tom! We have company!' The wet dog was not Tom, for following right after the dog was a tall, slimly-built boy who Matthew guessed was thirteen or fourteen years old. Tom wore a black wool cap and a long black coat turned up at the collar. He was carrying two large gray rabbits hanging from a pole. And that was all the luxury of impression that Matthew could afford at the moment, for the dog stopped just short of Slaughter and, its legs splayed wide, began to rend the air with barks like pistol shots.

'James!' scolded Burton. 'Don't be inconsiderate!'

The dog kept barking, but it ceased when the boy commanded sharply, 'James! Hush!' After which, the dog made a couple of circles while keeping its eyes on Slaughter, and then it backed up against the boy's leg and made grumbling noises of disapproval.

'Strange,' Slaughter said, with a shrug that rattled his chains. 'Animals usually adore me.'

Tom looked from Slaughter to Greathouse and then to Matthew, his expression impassive. By the candleglow, his keen eyes were a light gray, and as they stared at him for a few seconds Matthew had the distinct feeling of being taken apart from head to toe as a curious youth might cut to pieces a grasshopper for closer inspection. Then the boy's gaze left him, and Tom said, 'Shhhh!' to quiet James' opinion of the new arrivals.

'These two gentlemen are from New York,' Burton explained. 'The individual on the floor who smells in dire need of soap scrubbing is their prisoner. They're on their way to Fort Laurens.'

Tom frowned and started to speak, but the reverend continued. 'I think we should take them at their word, and as Christians offer them shelter and food. Do we have enough?'

The boy was a moment in answering. Finally he said, 'The rabbits are bonny enough. I'll make a stew,' in what was definitely the cadence and rolling 'r' of a thick Scottish accent. 'First off, you'll be needin' to get that team in the barn 'less you want drowned horses.'

Greathouse nodded. He told the boy, 'I could use some help.'

Tom glanced quickly at Matthew and then at the prisoner, as if marking whether the former was up to dealing with the latter. When he took notice of the pistol on the mantel, he put aside the freshly-killed rabbits and went out the door again without a word, the dog shadowing him right at his heels. Greathouse said, 'Watch him,' to Matthew, who needed no urging on that particular subject. Then the door was closed just as a distant sound of thunder boomed to indicate the storm was in no hurry to reach the sea.

'Well, here we are.' Slaughter leaned back against the wall. 'At least it's better than where I was, but not by much.'

'Your friend,' Matthew said to the reverend. 'Just a boy. Is he not related to you?'

'No. Tom came to me ' Burton hesitated, his eyes closed. 'For-give me, time plays tricks on me now. He came to me in November, I think it was. Late November, just after my eyes began to go.'

'He came to you? How?'

'Just as I say. One day he and James just walked into the village. From the direction of Belvedere, I think he said. The trading post there. It's a good thing he came. A God-sent gift, he is.'

'Really?' Something about the reverend's tone of voice had pricked Matthew's curiosity, which always lay near his surface. 'And how might that be?'

Burton's eyes opened and he stared into the fire as it popped and hissed. What he might be seeing was up to debate. 'God sent him to me, to help keep my promise.' He breathed softly, as again in the distance thunder rumbled. 'I'm going to die soon,' he continued. 'I feel it coming. I was asleep in my chair when you knocked and others here, before they died, told me they had dreams of death knocking at their doors, and it was all right, it was not to be feared. So I thought I wasn't sure I was dreaming, or awake when I answered your knock. But God sent Tom to me to help do what I promised for the others, the ones who died. To take care of their graves, until I also pass from this life. And Tom has promised me also. He would stay with me until I die, and I will be the last grave in the cemetery. And that will be what happened to the village of New Unity, gentlemen. In the space of hardly more than six months, from April to October, one year ago.'

'What happened?' Slaughter asked. 'Eh? What're you talking about?'

'Fever,' came the hushed reply. 'It killed men, women and children. Whole families. My wife as well. And I am left, with the help of God and Tom, to watch over their place of final rest. They worked so hard at building a town. All of them. So very hard. They deserve now to be remembered. Don't you agree?'

'Your opinion,' said Slaughter, in a hollow sort of voice that Matthew had not heard from him before. 'God doesn't give a shit about us. Why should anyone else?'

Matthew saw the reverend flinch at this brutal statement. For a moment Burton did not respond, and then he said, not without pity, 'Sir, you have a very cold and callous attitude.'

'I've earned it,' Slaughter answered.

The remark hung in the air, as the fire's red center spat sparks and another torrent of rain beat against the roof.

'But you were asking about Tom.' The reverend put his feet up on the footstool before him with the slow regality of his age. 'He's told me that the dog took up with him somewhere on the road, and he named it after his father. For companionship, you know. I believe he was very close to his father.'

'What became of his family?'

'His mother died when he was a small boy. A younger brother and sister, also dead. I would think fever in that case, as well. His father was a farmer. Kicked in the chest by a horse and passed away soon after.'

'Hm,' Matthew said thoughtfully. Indeed, he was thinking of his own origins. His mother dead of poisoned blood when he was but three, his father a hardworking Massachusetts colony plowman who was struck down by a horse's kick to the head when Matthew was six, and then Matthew was thrown into the embrace of the world, which was not often kindly. But, looking upon Reverend Burton in this flickering firelight, Matthew was reminded of his mentor at the orphanage in New York. Headmaster Staunton, who had treated Matthew well, who had lifted him up into the higher realm of books and education with a strict but respectful hand, and who in essence was responsible for his evolution from a dirty street urchin to a young man whose mind never rested in the pursuit of a problem. Headmaster Staunton had left the orphanage in his sixty-sixth year to travel west into the frontier land, with intent to teach the Indian tribes the salvation of God, and then the detested Eben Ausley had arrived to take charge. But that was past history. What intrigued Matthew at the moment was the fact that he and Tom had both lost their fathers to the whim of capricious fate in the form of a horse's kick.

'From what I gather, Tom has no more family in the colonies,' Burton went on. 'I think he sold the horse and set off on his own, and that was a year or so before he came here, if I have it right.'

'Parson, speaking of right,' said Slaughter. 'It looks to me as if we'd wear near the same size of boots. You wouldn't have another pair, would you?'

'No, I'm sorry, I don't.'

'Oh.' Matthew saw Slaughter give a faint half-smile, and the flameglow lay red in his eyes. 'That's a pity, then.'

Matthew didn't care for the way that was spoken. He measured how long it would take him to fetch the pistol up and train it on Slaughter, if he had to. But how fast could Slaughter move with all that iron on him? He wished Greathouse would hurry up. He felt Greathouse could handle him, even without a gun, and he wondered as well if Slaughter could smell fear on a man, like a horse an instant before it kicked.

The fire popped, shooting sparks, and when Matthew jumped just the smallest bit he heard Slaughter give a