Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

wagon up.'

'I repeat my question.'

'I heard you the first time.' Greathouse shot a glance at him that could curdle the blood. 'The only thing we can do, if we're intending to get to that fort, is to walk.'

'Good suggestion,' said Slaughter.

He hardly had time to draw a breath after the last word, for suddenly Hudson Greathouse was off his seat and upon him, and when Greathouse meant to be upon somebody they were well and truly a fixed target. Greathouse grasped shirtfront with one hand and patchwork beard with the other and brought his face down into Slaughter's with eyes like hellfire lamps.

'Don't speak,' Greathouse hissed. 'Don't do any damned thing I don't like.' His voice trembled, not from fear but from loss of control, which Matthew had realized was paramount to his nature.

Slaughter obeyed; his face was expressionless, betraying nothing.

It took a minute for Greathouse to compose himself, but still he kept hold of the prisoner's shirt and beard. 'Yes, we're going to walk. Yes, I'm going to have to unlock your irons. But you want that, don't you? Is that what you'd hoped would happen, all along?'

Slaughter said not a word, honoring Greathouse's first command.

'I'd warrant it's still over a mile,' Matthew said, looking down the long descent.

'You be quiet, too. Just let me think.'

A bad sign, Matthew thought. The man of action, reduced to thinking.

'How heavy's the safebox?' was the next question directed at Slaughter. When the prisoner didn't reply, Greathouse twisted his beard. 'Now you can speak.'

No discomfort registered in Slaughter's eyes. Matthew thought he must have a supreme mental control over pain. 'One man can carry it.'

'All right, then. But you'd better know that I'll have the pistol on you all the way there, and by God if you do something-anything-I don't like I'll blow your kneecap off. Do you understand that?'

'I hear what you're saying, sir. But why should I do anything you don't like, as I wish to be quits with you two even more than you wish to see my backside.'

Greathouse held him for a few seconds more, to emphasize who had power over whom, and then let him go. He reached for the key in his pocket and unlocked the manacles and leg irons, even as Matthew watched with the growing anxiety of a job ill-done.

Slaughter rubbed his wrists. 'If you please, sir,' he said in a silken voice, 'would you throw that key over the drop?'

Greathouse shook his head, the key clenched in his fist.

'Ah, here's the problem, then, and I knew we must come to it.' A faint, maddening half-smile surfaced on Slaughter's mouth. 'It's a matter of trust, isn't it? I'm trusting you-the both of you-to do as you've promised, even though you were let off so lightly by that simpleton of a pastor. Why should I take you to the safebox, unless there's at least-at least-a display from you that I shall not end up in irons again once you have the treasure?' He gave a passing scowl of irritation when Greathouse didn't respond, and diverted his attention to Matthew. 'Tell him, young sir, that I'm not going anywhere if he doesn't throw the key over.'

'We'll be sitting here for a long time then, won't we?' Greathouse said.

'Yes,' replied Slaughter. 'We will be.'

The two men stared at each other, neither one moving. Suddenly, in a blur of motion, Greathouse reached out to grasp Slaughter's beard again; yet, before the hand could get there, Slaughter intercepted it with his own, the dirty fingers with their sharp ragged nails seizing Greathouse's wrist with remarkable and-for Matthew- unsettling strength.

Slaughter said, quite calmly, 'You forget yourself, sir. We are no longer captors and prisoner. We are now partners.'

'The hell you say!'

'The hell,' came the answer, 'I do say.' He freed Greathouse's wrist, with an air of annoyance. 'If I'm to walk you down to the fort, I want an assurance that I will not be walked back up and returned to those irons. You vowed you'd release me, and not kill me. I take you at your word. Now show me I can trust you by throwing the key over.'

Greathouse looked to Matthew for guidance, and for the first time Matthew saw in the other man's eyes an expression of helplessness. It was a terrible thing to witness, this chink in a knight's armor. Yet Matthew knew his own tarnished tin had gotten them into this predicament.

'Damn it,' Greathouse said, to the world. He took a long breath, let it out between gritted teeth, and then he reared his arm back to throw.

'On second thought!' Slaughter held his hand out, palm up, before Greathouse. 'I should like to cast it myself.' His eyes were heavy-lidded. 'And, by the by, I do believe you moved the key to your other hand just before your last attempt at beard-twisting. I think it's in your coat pocket by now, there on the left side.'

Greathouse lowered his head. When he looked up again, he was wearing a bemused-if petulant-smile. 'As you said back at the hospital, never blame the wind for wishing to blow.'

'True enough. However, I've polished off several men who tried to blow their wind in my direction. The key, please?' He wriggled his repugnant fingers.

'I suppose you'll want the gun next?' Greathouse took the key from his coat pocket on the left side and dropped it into Slaughter's palm.

'Not necessary. I trust you not to shoot me, at least until you have the safebox. Besides, wet weather is no friend to gunpowder.' Slaughter threw the key over; there was a faint metallic tink as it hit a treetrunk far below. Then, rid of this obstacle to the life of a titled scoundrel, he grinned like a king. 'Now! Shall we be off, gentlemen?' Disregarding Matthew, who had brought the pistol's barrel out from beneath his cloak as a presentment of threat, Slaughter got down off the wagon. His feet pressed into the mud, and he began to walk jauntily along the treacherous road into the valley of Fort Laurens.

Greathouse started to get down as well.

Matthew felt a pressure in his throat, as if he were being throttled. It was his confession, he realized. His confession, all balled up word tangled with word. He reached out and grasped the other man's sleeve. 'Hudson,' he said, sounding near choked.

Greathouse looked at him, the thick gray eyebrows ascending.

'Listen,' Matthew went on. 'We don't have to go down there. There's something I need to-'

'Coming, sirs?' Slaughter called, waiting twenty yards further along.

'Easy, easy.' Greathouse's voice was muted. 'I can handle him, Matthew. Don't worry. The key to the irons is still in my pocket. He threw the key to my room at the boarding house.' Greathouse angled his face toward Slaughter. 'We're coming!' he replied, and he clambered off the wagon to the mucky earth.

Matthew watched him follow Slaughter along the descending track. Wet weather is no friend to gunpowder. True enough. The pistol he was holding might be useless, if the time came to pull that trigger. He wished Greathouse had brought a sword; those worked well enough, shine or rain. He had to get out of the wagon and face what was ahead, had to push his guilt into his guts where his courage used to be. Had he actually begun believing those air-woven tales of his own stellar celebrity in the Earwig? Had he fallen so far, since summer?

Greathouse stopped to wait for him, and just beyond Greathouse also stopped Slaughter, who was if anything a well-mannered killer.

When Matthew's boots pushed into the mud, he half-expected the earth to open up for him, and for him to slide down and down into the thick dark where a new winter's fireplace had been lit for his comfort in Hell.

He walked on, carrying his invisible irons that made prisoners of even the richest men.

Thirteen