Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

Matthew opened his sleep-swollen eyes. The fire had burned down to the red-glowing embers. And then from beneath Walker's cloak came that keening cry again, rising up to end in what might have been a gasp of breath or a plea for mercy. There followed a period of silence, and then the cry rose up, grew ragged and hoarse and became in its last tortured notes a strangled moan.

The owl spoke. Walker was silent, but Matthew could hear the quickness of his breathing, as if he were running from something he knew he could not possibly escape.

Matthew gave an involuntary shiver. The night was colder, with the fire's dying. He carefully and quietly reached out to grasp a few of the broken sticks Walker had gathered to feed the flames, and as he dropped them upon the embers one of them gave a crack, a polite sound, nothing harsh, just a sound that might have been the trod of a stealthy boot amid the pines.

The dark green cloak whipped up. Startled speechless, Matthew looked into the face of the damned.

The skin seemed to have further tightened around Walker's skull, its pressure so intense that it had caused him to bare his teeth in anguish. Sweat sparkled on his forehead and cheeks. The thin slits of his eyes were fixed directly on Matthew, but then again they had an unfocused quality, a nightmare glaze about them, and so perhaps they could be just as much looking through Matthew at some distant vision as at him. He was up on one knee, his body quivering.

Matthew saw the gleam of the knife in the newborn firelight, and suddenly in a blur of motion the blade was right there at Matthew's neck.

'Walker,' Matthew said firmly. He dared not move. The Indian's face came toward him, as if to make out whose visage was floating like an orange lamp in the dark. 'Walker,' Matthew said again, and this time his voice cracked and betrayed him. 'I'm not one of your demons.'

Walker's eyes searched his face. The seconds passed. And then Matthew saw the madness leave him, like a blanket of crows rising from a bleak field. It was there one second, and the next it had broken apart and whirled away and nothing was left but the memory of black wings beating the air.

Walker sat back on his haunches and looked at the knife in his hand. Matthew, as weary as he was, doubted he'd be getting back to sleep anytime soon. He sat up, rubbed his throat where the blade had threatened to cut him a dead man's grin, and stared into the fire as if to find in it some picture of comfort.

'Ah,' said Walker, his voice tired and raspy. He slid the knife back into its holder on the fringed belt. 'Now you know.'

'Know what?'

'Why I have no wife, and why I am unlikely to ever have a wife.'

'That's happened before?'

'Several times, in your land. Of course, they never let me have a knife. But I did try to attack some of the ladies who accepted me. It happened only once, here, but once was enough.' Walker kept his head down, shamed by his lack of control. 'You can imagine my ' He thought for a word again, and Matthew decided that in these times of hesitation Walker was trying to recall words he had learned but that he didn't have much need to use and so had nearly forgotten. 'Popularity,' he finished.

Matthew nodded. 'What do you dream about?' he asked. Walker was silent. 'Is it so terrible to speak of?'

For a time Walker did not answer. He picked up a few sticks, broke them between his fingers and put them into the fire one after the other. 'My demons show me things,' he said at last. 'Things only demons would be cruel enough to show a human being.'

'That's saying a lot while not saying very much,' Matthew observed. 'What do they show you, exactly?'

'The end of the world,' Walker answered, and he let that linger before he continued. 'That is to say, the end of my world. Yours will go on, but you might wish someday-someday-that it would not.'

'I don't understand.'

Walker opened his rawhide bag that held the dried meat as well as the flint and steel, and from it he brought a familiar object: the broken silver watch. He placed it in the palm of his left hand, and occasionally gazed at it as if to ascertain whether it was still lifeless or not.

'When I was eleven years old,' Walker began, 'a group of Englishmen came to our village, with a guide who spoke our tongue. Rich-looking men, they were. Wearing great cloaks and feathered hats. They brought bags of gifts with them. Bundles of bright cloth, glass bottles, bead necklaces and bracelets, woolen caps and the like. They were certainly rich men, and they wanted us to know it. They brought the chief's daughter a clay doll with blonde hair; I remember that very clearly, because all the children crowded around it wanting to see. And then these men said that they wished something for their gifts, and it would benefit both them and the tribe. They said they wanted three children, to take back with them across the dark divide, to show them what the world called England was like, and the great King's city of London.'

'The agreement was made,' said Walker, as he watched the fire burn. 'To pick three children, and see them off on one of the flying canoe clouds that rested on the waters of Philadelphia. Nimble Climber was chosen, Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone was another, and I was the third.' He glanced at Matthew. 'Back then, I was called He Runs Fast Too. My father is He Runs Fast. You met him. He and my younger brothers took your friend out of the well. He doesn't run quite so fast now, but he still gets around.'

'For that I'm grateful,' Matthew replied.

'It would please him to hear it, but not from me, since he and I no longer speak. I am a source of great shame to him, being insane.'

'Insane how? Because you have bad dreams?'

'Let me go on. We three children, and the tribe, were told we would see the world of England and the city of London for ourselves and when we were returned-within two years-we would be able to explain to our people what we had witnessed. In hopes, the men said, of forming closer ties as brothers. But you'll note in my story that the men wanted only children, and there was a reason for that.' Walker nodded, his eyes still directed to the fire. 'Children are so much easier to handle. They're so trusting, so unaware.'

'You mean the men didn't do as they said?'

'We were taken to England, yes.' A muscle worked in his jaw as if he were chewing bitter hardtack. 'What a journey that was. And all that time, through heavy seas and sickness, knowing your home is falling further and further away behind you, and to get back home you have to come the same way again. My soul withers at the memory of that trip. How you English do it again and again, I'll never know.'

Matthew managed a faint smile. 'Maybe we're a bit insane, too.'

'You would have to be. But I suppose that's the nature of all men. To be a bit insane, for a purpose or a cause.' Walker turned the watch over in his hand, and ran his fingers across the silver. 'Nimble Climber did not survive the trip. The sailors began a wagering game, betting how fast he could get up the rigging to fetch a gull feather fixed to the mast with a leather strap. And they kept putting it higher and higher. The captain warned them to stop, and the gentlemen who were travelling with us forbade it but an Indian boy of nine years can't be stoppered in a bottle, or locked below a deck. They were paying him with peppermint candies. He had one in his mouth when he fell. And when I stood beside Pretty Girl and looked at him lying on the deck, I thought of the clay doll with the blonde hair, and I hoped it didn't break as easily as Nimble Climber.'

One of the owls hooted a few times, far off in the woods. Walker listened to it, his head tilted to the side as if hearing the sweetest music. 'When we reached England,' he said, 'I stood on the deck in the dawn light looking at a forest of flying canoe clouds around us. Ships, of course. Hundreds of them, it seemed. All shapes and sizes. I thought how many men must there be in this world, to have made all those canoes? It was an incredible view, one I shall never forget. And then directly when we left our ship Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone was taken away by two men. I held onto her hand as long as I could, but they pulled us apart. They put her in a horse box. A coach. She was carried off, somewhere. I never found out. Some men put me into another coach, and I was not to see my people again for almost ten years. When they finally were done with me, and let me go home, I was insane.'

'When they were done with you?' Matthew asked. 'What happened?'

'I became a star,' the Indian replied, with his own wistful smile. 'A celebrity, I think is the word. I was dressed up in feathers and animal skins, with a golden crown on my head, and put upon the London stage. The signs out front advertised me as the 'Noble Young Savage', or 'Jonathan Redskin'. The plays-I was in several, over a number of years-were all the same: romantic dramas pitting the gallant Englishmen against the wicked or