Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

'How is it you speak such good English?'

'I've lived with the English. Have you lived with my people?'

'No. I was lookin' for a shorter way to Belvedere one day, and I found it.'

'How is it you didn't get yourself lost in the woods?' Walker asked, slowing his stride to remain alongside Tom. 'Or did you?'

'I can tell my directions, if that's what you're askin'.' Tom shot him a quick dark glance from his better eye.

'Who taught you?'

Tom suddenly stopped, so abruptly that Walker also stopped and Matthew narrowly avoided a collision with the both of them. 'Who taught me?' There was acid in the boy's brogue. His mouth twisted. 'I'll tell you who, then. My father, partly. Taught me how to read the ground and the sky. Taught me my directions. How to build a fire. How to hunt, and lay a snare. But after he died, and I was on my own then there were lots more things I had to best learn in a hurry, and I knew if I didn't learn 'em right the first time, I wouldn't get no second chance. So I stole when I had to, and I hid out when I had to.' He glanced at Matthew, as if marking him as an intruder in this brutal paradise. 'See,' Tom continued, 'I learned real quick that the way to stay alive is to keep movin'. I forgot about that, and I got soft and liked an inside bed, and a house with a table you ate off of, and readin' the Bible to an old man, and pretendin' I had some kind of family again. That's why they're dead, 'cause I forgot that at any minute this world can kick your door down and come in swingin' a razor.' He nodded. 'Look what I let happen, back there.' His eye found Walker again. 'Who taught me, you're askin'? My father, some. But in this world, it's the Devil teaches you the lessons you never forget.'

'You couldn't have stopped Slaughter,' Matthew said. 'No one could've.'

Tom thrust his face toward Matthew's. 'Maybe you could've,' he answered. 'I told you, maybe you should've killed him when you could. But don't fret about it, don't you fret.' He held up a finger of his razor-slashed right hand. ' I'm gonna kill him, so don't you fret.'

Matthew almost recoiled from the cold ferocity in the boy's voice. It was hard to remember that he indeed was a boy, of thirteen or fourteen years, because his sentiments and expressions were those of a older man mauled by life. Scarred by life, would be the more correct phrase. To see what lay behind those eyes, Matthew thought, would be a frightful view. A desolation, perhaps; a loneliness, for certain. Anger was holding him together, a rage against the world. And who could blame him, with all the death and misery he'd witnessed? So he might be young in years, Matthew thought, but it was an illusion, for his trials had left him withered within.

Tom was through talking. He turned and started up the hillside again, but halfway up his remaining strength failed him, for he staggered against a boulder and slid down to the ground. He put his hands to his face and sat there, hunched over and otherwise motionless.

'He's almost done,' Walker said quietly. 'He's fighting it, but he knows it too.'

'What are we going to do with him?'

After a silence in which Walker was obviously deliberating the question, the Indian approached Tom, with Matthew following behind. 'I suppose, if you can read the ground so well, that you've seen the tracks?'

Tom lowered his hands. Matthew had expected to see the tears of either loss or frustration on Tom's cheeks, but there were none. The boy was again sealed up tight. 'I have,' Tom replied. 'Good-sized bear about two hours ahead of us, movin' slow.'

Matthew felt a start of alarm; his own scars had been left by a meeting with a bear, three years ago, and he didn't wish for another encounter.

'That's why I'm not running us faster,' Walker said. 'I'm going on ahead, to scout. You two meet me at the stream, and don't dawdle.'

Tom nodded, familiar with the landmark Walker specified, and then the Indian took off running at a steady pace up the hillside, among the trees, and out of sight.

'Give me a minute,' Tom said, as Matthew waited. He reached into his mouth and worked a loose tooth, after which he spat red on the ground. Then, with a soft groan that spoke volumes, the boy pulled himself up and stood unsteadily, balancing with a hand against the rock. 'Maybe find myself a walkin'-stick,' he said, his voice slurred. 'I'll be all right.'

At the top of the hill, a slim branch from a fallen tree was found to suit Tom's purpose, and he hobbled on it while trying to walk as fast as he could go. Matthew thought that Tom's revelation of his sense of the world's evil had sapped some of the strength the boy had been hoarding, and even Tom's depth of willpower had its bottom.

Tom's description of the murder of John Burton had been horrific, even if the boy was unable to remember all the details. It had been like a bad dream, he'd told Walker and Matthew. James started barking, the door had crashed in and the man was suddenly there. Tom recalled that he'd worn a black tricorn-Matthew's hat-and how he'd grinned in the guttering candlelight. Dogs were born brave, and so James had attacked the intruder and been crushed down by the chair across his back. Boys were also born brave, and sometimes foolish, and when Tom had gone at Slaughter he hadn't seen the glint of the drawn razor until it came at him, slashing his outstretched hands, followed by a fist that had slammed into the side of his face and sent him sprawling. He'd remembered, in a blur, seeing what Slaughter was doing to the reverend, and when he'd grabbed at Slaughter from behind an elbow hit him in the mouth and another fist struck and the razor streaked across his cheekbone and tore ribbons from his shirt. Then he was stumbling out across the porch, dripping blood and only half-conscious, but the conscious part was screaming at him to run, to get to the woods, because he knew James was finished from how the dog had shrieked, and no man could stand up to a razor the way it was cutting pieces from the reverend's face.

He had gone instead to the barn to get the hayfork, but there the darkness had crashed upon him and he remembered falling. And there he'd stayed, until James' cries had called him back to the world, and he'd gotten up and walked in a haze of blood and pain to the cabin with the hayfork ready, the Devil's weapon to kill the Devil. But Slaughter had gone, probably in a hurry to get to Belvedere before nightfall, and had taken with him two items: the boots and Tom's long black coat, which certainly was too small for him to shrug into but would serve well enough as a cloak over his asylum clothing.

'I don't intend to kill Slaughter,' Matthew said to Tom as they continued on along the trail. 'Though he might deserve it. I'm going to catch him and take him to New York. Let the law punish him.'

Tom grunted. 'Tall words. He'll have somethin' to ' It was getting harder for him to talk, and he had to get his breath and make another effort at it. 'To say about that. Best I kill him. When the time comes.'

The afternoon moved on, and so did the two travelers along the Seneca trail. When Matthew thought Tom couldn't make it another step, the boy seemed to draw from amazing reserves and keep going. By Matthew's imprecise calculation of time, about two hours after Walker had left them they came upon a shallow stream that ran clear and quick across rocks. Both Tom and Matthew drank from it and rested against the trunk of a massive oak tree that Matthew saw was carved with Indian symbols.

They didn't have long to wait. Walker came at his steady run along the trail from the opposite direction, knelt down and drank from the stream and then said, 'Belvedere is only a mile distant.' He turned his attention to Tom, who was already trying to stand up but whose legs would not obey; he was worn to a nub. 'Help him,' he told Matthew.

'I don't need no help,' was the boy's angry, if hoarsely whispered, response. But whether he admitted it or not, he did, for he couldn't stand up even with the walking-stick until his pride allowed Matthew to lend a shoulder.

At last they emerged from the forest onto the road again, or at least what served as a road, and there stood the town of Belvedere before them. The smell of a settlement was very different from the smell of the woods. In the air lingered the scents of cooked food, burned firewood, moldy timbers, wet cloth and that oh-so-ripe fragrance of well-filled fig-pits. Belvedere itself was no different from any of dozens of small communities that had grown up around a trading post originally built to barter skins from Indians and trappers. Most of the houses that Matthew saw were in need of whitewash and some were green with mold, though here and there an enterprising soul had put a brush to work. But all their roofs and walls were still standing and they all looked to be occupied, for their chimneys smoked. A long structure with a front porch had brightly-colored Indian blankets nailed up on the walls, and above its door was a red-painted sign that proclaimed, simply, Belvedere Trade. Two