Neal Barrett - Through Darkest America

He pulled himself to his feet and stood in the ravine, holding to an old root until the nausea went away. He was tired and stiff all over. He stood there a long time just looking anywhere but toward the house. That was when something else took over in his head and, for a while, put everything behind him.

They’d gone quickly through the kitchen, mostly just breaking things and tearing up whatever they could find. There was flour everywhere and sugar grated under his feet. Pots were shattered and the pieces ground into the floor until you couldn’t tell what they might have been. He reached down and picked up something white and shiny. It was part of a cup, the one with the flowers painted on it that had been his mother’s favorite. He looked at it a minute, then laid it carefully on the table.

In the room upstairs where Papa and his mother slept he found her. Her clothes had been stripped away and her wrists and ankles were tied to the head and foot of the bed with coarse wire. The wire was buried in flesh and he couldn’t see it except where it wound around the posts. She had fought a lot, for a while, anyway. The blood made red bracelets around her wrists and ankles and the skin was torn and swollen there. There was blood in a lot of other places, too, where they’d done things to her. He couldn’t see all of her face because the long black hair was tangled about her features, but he could see the small dark hole in her forehead, ringed with a faint aura of blue.

He thought about cutting the wires loose and finding one of the sheets or blankets that hadn’t been torn too bad and covering her with that. Instead, he turned away and closed the door and went downstairs again.

Papa was halfway up the front steps. He still had on the heavy checkered shirt but his trousers were gone, and Howie saw them bundled up in the yard. He had crawled about ten yards over the hard ground and Howie could look behind him and see the trail he’d made trying to get to the house. He hadn’t used his arms, because his hands were pressed tight against his belly where he’d tried to hold everything in long enough to get there. They’d cut him badly. One raw slice across the bowels, deep, from hipbone to hipbone. There were other cuts on his thighs and between his legs where they’d taken everything away.

Howie looked at him, studying the expression on his face for a long moment.

In his own room, he reached up between the eaves and found his bow and quiver of arrows still there. He rolled up his extra work pants and another shirt and his jacket. Downstairs, he picked through the wreckage in the kitchen and added half a loaf of bread and some dried meat to the bundle. Outside he filled a clay jar with water and stoppered it with a dry plug. Then he walked to the grove of oaks where the War Tax goods had been stacked, squatted down, and studied the tracks of men and horses and wagons. He followed the wheel ruts and the hoof prints with his eye and saw they’d gone west, across his father’s land, toward the river road. That meant they probably didn’t mean to pick up any more goods just now, but were headed for Cotter, which was just outside Bluevale and used a lot by the army.

He looked back once at the house and the barn, then past them to the fields and the stock pits and the green shadow of the woods. There was no sign of old Jaro or any of the other hands. The stock pits were empty. They’d taken everything, as he’d figured. He guessed there were still goods in the barn—there was more there than you could carry away.

He turned and searched the horizon west. On horse a man could go faster, but they had the wagon, which was slow, and the stock to drive along. They’d just make the river, then. They’d have to stop there and rest the stock for the night, even if they felt like pushing on in the dark. He figured he could make it by maybe two or three in the morning. And that would be a good time to get there.

Howie Knew he would have to take care and go slowly. They were soldiers and knew their business; you didn’t just sneak up on men like that and figure they’d hold still and line up nice and easy like meat. They’d be fast and alert, and more dangerous asleep than most men full awake.

There were the guns to reckon with, too. A man with a gun had it all over a man with lesser weapons. At least, in a lot of ways he did.

There was a quarter-moon with enough light to see how the low Spring grasses had been flattened where they’d left the prairieland and angled off down the hill to the river. The hollow there was thick with big oaks and cottonwoods. He spotted the red sparks of a dead fire just to the south, twenty yards or so from the river. They’d set up camp in the shadow of the trees, then. The stock would be further down, but well away from the trees so none of the herd could wander off. And since they were on the road, and weren’t likely to build pens or dig pits, they’d do what you always did on a drive— keep watch around the meat in shifts.

Howie wasn’t sure what you did with horses. But he was near certain you didn’t have to watch them or anything. That meant—what? With a herd that size, three men, at least, to stand watch. And maybe two others for the camp itself, if they bothered. And he had an idea they were in the habit of that. Five, six men awake, then. The others asleep. He crawled down the side of the hill and moved quietly through the edge of the forest.

It took a good hour to circle the camp. There were three guards instead of two. Three others watched the herd. Six slept. Colonel Jacob was on the far edge of the camp, away from the fire, and close to the river. The other troopers were dark lumps scattered about him.

Howie stayed just on the skirt of the camp a long quarter hour. Belly flat against damp forest floor, hardly daring to breathe, his eyes taking in every trifle—how the grass bent, and where the dim moonlight touched the ground.

There was a guard between him and the Colonel. He stood just outside the small clearing, quiet and almost invisible against a broad oak. There was a little cover noise from the river, but not enough. He’d never get past the man without being heard. He inched back down the bank, passing the guard and coming up again higher, behind a thick bed of fern.

He lay still on his back a long moment, fitting the arrow quietly to his bow, acutely aware of the man only yards away, and knowing what the slightest sound would do. Coming up slowly, he brought his eyes just over the foliage. For a moment, his heart stopped, thinking the man was gone. Then the body took shape again; he let out a long breath.

Howie knew he had to go for the head or no place at all. Anything less than that and the man could cry out. He didn’t let himself think about missing. The bowstring sang and a shadow dropped quietly to the base of the tree. When he crawled forward his hand touched the rifle and a broad cartridge belt the guard had left at his feet. There was a pistol in his belt and he took that and the other things and laid them where he could find them again at the base of the bank. Then he turned back to the clearing and went in for Jacob.

He’d thought about how to do it. He knew even a grown man used to moving fast couldn’t stop a quick knife across his throat. Only that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He knew that, too. It had to be the other way or it wouldn’t be right.

A few feet from Jacob a man turned over and groaned in his sleep. Howie froze where he was, part of the earth and shadow, then inched forward until he could touch the Colonel. He slept with his mouth open, one hand across his chest. Howie slipped the bone knife from his belt. He’d already wrapped the butt with thick layers of cloth from his extra shirt. Grasping Jacob’s hair with one hand, he brought the padded hilt down solidly, just above the ear. Jacob stiffened slightly, but made no sound at all.