We reached the end of the path and the pines cleared away, revealing a small cabin with smoke rising from out behind it. Wilcox and I tied our horses to a rotten hitching post near the forest’s edge then stood there, taking in the view. The yard was in shambles, strewn with debris of various kinds. There was a freshly skinned rabbit hanging from the awning over the front porch. A musket, decades old, leaned near the front door. A rocking chair sat on the porch, swaying back and forth in the afternoon breeze.
Wilcox wiped the sweat off his forehead with a massive swipe of his arm. His shirtsleeve was already stained from an entire day of such activity.
“I dunno, Horace,” he said. “Think he’s here?”
I fingered the Colt tucked into my belt and used the bandana tied around my neck to wipe my face. I took off my hat and let the sun beat down on the bald spot I’d been working on.
“Dunno,” I answered after a bit. “No horses other’n ours.”
“This is the only stop on the road for miles.”
“That it is.”
The path had been roughly a half-mile long, winding through the forest. We’d spotted it branching off the main road and had decided it was worth a look. If nothing else, our horses could use water, and we could settle for a bite to eat. The hospitality in this country wasn’t the best, but it took a cold-hearted soul to turn away starving travelers on a day as hot as this. In a way, that’s exactly what we were counting on.
“Shall we go and knock?”
I looked over at Wilcox, surprised at the hesitation in his voice. Just half an hour before he had been as mad as he had been at any moment in the past two days. His face was still red, but now it was more from exhaustion and sun than anger. His eyes were sunken into his skull, and his beard had bits of dirt and dust tangled into it. I figured I must look roughly the same, only thinner.
I thought about it, then shook my head and called out, “Hey, anybody here?”
There was no reply.
“You hear a dog?” Wilcox asked.
I shook my head. “No dog.”
“Hogs?”
“No Hogs.”
“Chickens?”
“Nope.”
“Mighty odd.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the hitching post and figured if either of our horses wanted to go free, they could easily pull the thing apart. I glanced down at the ground and saw how trampled it was. It had been a long time since it’d rained, so there weren’t any hoof prints, but I was willing to bet a dollar there’d been a horse there the day before. A horse that hadn’t liked sitting still.
“They’ve had company,” I said.
Wilcox glanced down and saw the same thing. “Think it’s him?”
“Dunno.”
I glanced around for more signs, but there were none. I hadn’t expected our quarry to leave his name carved on a tree trunk, but he was a sloppy son of a whore, and he tended to leave traces of himself everywhere he went.
Wilcox motioned to the smoke rising from back of the cabin. “Gotta be somebody around.”
I nodded and turned my head about, looking into the pines. The forest was pretty open, but I couldn’t see anyone.
“Maybe they’re deaf?”
I grunted in reply and began walking across the yard. I stopped about halfway to the porch and called out again. I got no response, but didn’t move, because I thought I heard something rustle from behind the cabin, something like wood on wood. I reached for my Colt and let my hand rest there. Wilcox, a few feet behind me, cocked his Winchester rifle.
We waited. After about a minute a boy came around the side of the cabin. He wore britches and boots, both with so many holes that they showed almost as much skin as they covered. He was layered in sweat and soot, and his hair was shaggy, thick with smoke. His eyes were deep and blue, the eyes of someone my age, but he had to’ve been about twelve, if that.
“Hey son,” I said.
He looked at me, then at Wilcox.
Wilcox cleared his throat. “You speak English, boy?”
The kid just stared at him.
Wilcox turned to me. “Hell, maybe he’s a mute. Could be an Injun. Can’t really tell.”
“He’s whiter than pale,” I said, looking directly at the boy. “And he speaks good enough. Don’t you, son?”
The kid’s eyes met mine. His upper lip twitched, but he still said nothing.
“We’re lookin’ for someone,” I said. “A preacher-man.”
The boy’s eyes dropped to my gun, then to Wilcox’s rifle. He looked back at me, and I could see something in those eyes, though I didn’t know quite what it was. Not fear—this boy wasn’t afraid. But there was caution in there, sure enough, and something else too, something which made me tighten my grip on the pistol.
He must’ve noticed, for he grinned.
“I speak English, mister. Speak it just fine.”
From the corner of my eye I could see Wilcox relax slightly. When he saw that my hand remained on the gun, he tensed up again.
I nodded at the kid. “Your pa around?”
“He’s out.”
“Your ma?”
“She’s dead.”
“Awful sorry to hear that.”
“I ain’t.”
“Got any brothers or sisters?” Wilcox asked.
“What’s it to you?”
“We aren’t here to rob you,” I said, not making any effort to soothe my voice. “I told you, we’re lookin’ for a fellow.”
“A preacher-man.”
“A preacher-man.”
The grin widened into a smile. He was missing several teeth.
“Ain’t seen no preacher-man since two years ago.”
“That the truth?”
“That’s the truth, mister, yes it is.”
I let go of the Colt, using the bandana to wipe my face again. When I was done, I left the hand free. The kid relaxed a bit, though I could tell he was still as ready as I was. Wilcox, following my lead, eased up a bit, holding the rifle at his side pointed to the ground. The kid’s eyes switched back and forth between us, like a cornered mutt. I wondered why he would feel that way, and looked towards the cabin. The rabbit stank, now that I was closer, and I could hear the flies buzzing around it. There was one small front window, and I could see in only a little ways. The interior was dark. I saw what might be a wooden rocking chair, and wondered why it wasn’t out on the porch.
The kid must’ve been following my gaze, for he said, “Mind your own, mister.”
I smiled at him. “Sorry, son. It’s just, we’re awful thirsty.”
“Hungry, too,” Wilcox said.
The kid grinned. “Doubt you’d want any a what I got cookin’.”
Wilcox sniffed the air. So did I. There was something fragrant on the breeze. My mouth watered.
“Almost smells like venison,” Wilcox said.
“Sure,” the kid said. “Meat’s a bit old.”
“Son, that’d taste mighty fine right now.”
He looked at Wilcox, then at me. He grinned again. “Want some?”
I shook my head. “Cup of water, if you can spare it.”
“I’d love a bite,” Wilcox said. “Lord, I sure would.”
The kid nodded. “Be right back.”
He turned and walked back around the cabin. When he was gone, I turned to Wilcox. “Sure you wanna eat anything he gives you?”
“Meat’s mighty hard to poison.”
“Not impossible.”
“You think he’s seen him?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think he’s seen him.”
“Then why ain’t he tellin’ us?”
“Maybe he supposes we ain’t nice folk.”
“I think we look mighty charming.”
I chuckled, and wondered how long this joyful streak in Wilcox would last. Perhaps it was just the thought of getting some food; my stomach rumbled, but I’d caught worms a few years back from eating some bad meat at a random stop, and wasn’t too inclined to go through the experience again.
I took a few steps towards the porch to try and see inside. The smell of the rabbit and the swarm of flies kept me from getting too close, but I thought I saw a bookshelf, and I knew right away that this kid didn’t live by himself. Weren’t no way in heaven or hell this kid was literate.
“He’s not alone here,” I told Wilcox.
“That so?”
“Yeah. I’d bet.”
“He said his pa’s out right now.”
“He did.”
I stepped back and stared at the smoke as it dispersed into the sky. A few more clouds had gathered there; might be storm before the day was through. That would make finding our quarry all the more difficult; heavy rains erased tracks like a hand across a chalkboard. The irony, of course, was that come morning the track would be more solid than ever, but our chances of finding it were ‘bout slim. The only hope we had was to follow the road, and I wondered if the preacher-man wouldn’t soon wizen up to his mistakes and take a detour.
I heard a click as Wilcox eased down the hammer on his rifle. I turned around and raised an eyebrow.
“I reckon I might shoot my foot off.”
I frowned but nodded and turned back to examining the cabin. It’d been built quite some time ago, probably before the kid had even been born. It was well put-together, though; I couldn’t help but admire the handiwork. It was small, probably no bigger than three rooms (and none of them fair-sized), but if it was just a boy and his father it was probably perfect.
I heard noises from around back; clanging metal, the sound of something being kicked over into the dirt. I even thought I heard a voice, though I reckoned I was probably imagining that. The wind in the pines could sound like most anything, if a man let his guard down. That’s where all the Injun ghost stories came from, I figured. Wind in the pines.
I looked at the musket leaning near the door of the cabin. I could tell, even from this far out, that it was rusted and wouldn’t work worth a damn. Looked like a pre-War musket, perhaps from the ‘40s or ‘50s. It had probably belonged to this boy’s grandfather. Great-grandfather, even. It was primitive, as far as firearms go, even firearms from back then; muzzle-loader, slow and unpredictable. No good for hunting or fighting, but mighty good for scaring off unwanted neighbors. I figured it still served that purpose, or was at least intended to do so.
After about four or five minutes the boy came back around the side of the cabin. He had two wooden cups in his left hand and a plate with a slab of bloody meat in his right. He gave the plate and a cup to Wilcox, then waited for me to come get the other cup from him. He grinned at me, and I decided right there I hated that grin and did not trust it one bit. It was the grin of a boy who had been taught to lie, and taught real well.
I smiled back at him. “Much appreciated,” I said, and casually sniffed the cup before I took a swig. The water was dirty, and there was a hint of blood in it; it probably had been used for bleeding, and hadn’t been washed thoroughly. I didn’t let myself think about what had been bled into it.
Wilcox bit into his meat, tearing at it. Blood spurted onto the ground, and he chewed, grimacing. “Tough,” he said around a bite, then tore off another piece.
The kid nodded, watching him eat. “Yuh. Ain’t been cookin’ too long. Old, too, I told ya.”
“You have a name, son?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Reckon I do, mister.”
I waited but he didn’t offer it to me, so I didn’t offer him mine. Instead I said, “And your pa got a name?”
“He does.”
I cocked my head to the cabin. “You live here with just your pa? No chickens or hogs? No dog?”
“Got a dog.”
“Where is it?”
“With pa.”
“What you eat, then?”
That damned grin. “Old venison, I ‘spose.”
I had to restrain myself from shaking the kid. Something about his eyes told me that if I reached out to him I might lose a few fingers. Instead, I stepped back a few steps and turned around, looking at the forest. I glanced back down the path we had come, squinting to appear as though I were thinking hard about something other than how to get the truth out of the kid.
“You live pretty far off the main road,” I said.
“Yuh.”
“Get many visitors?”
“Nope.”
I looked at him again, and he was grinning at me, and I knew that illiterate or not, he had his wiles about him. I decided to skip pretense and get to the point; I was tired, it was hot, that rabbit stank to high Heaven, and I had a feeling the quicker we left the place the better.
“The preacher-man, son. We know he was here.”
“You do, huh?”
“Only stop for miles,” Wilcox said around a bite of meat.
“There’s other places.”
“He has a marking,” I said. I rubbed the left part of my chest. “Here. Bad scar, from the war.”
“Lots of men scarred in the war, mister.”
“It’s a burn, son. Burn scars look different.”
“Lots of men have burn scars, too.”
“This one’s a preacher-man,” Wilcox said. “A burn-scarred preacher-man who came along that road back yonder.”
The boy watched him chew for a bit, then turned back to me. He shrugged, as if our discovery of the truth meant little to him. “Yuh. He was here all right.”
I nodded. “Where did he go?”
“He ain’t here.”
“Where did he go?”
“What you want him for?”
Wilcox finished the piece of meat. He set the plate on the ground, then picked up the Winchester, which had been leaning against his leg. He wiped bloody grease off his mouth with the back of his hand. It smeared in his arm hair, hanging there, thick and sticky.
“He done some bad things,” I told the boy.
“Like what kinda things?”
“Killed my sister,” Wilcox said. I could sense the anger taking over him again, and I was relieved. “Had his way with her and then he killed her.”
“How?”
The question hung there, and I could see Wilcox was too surprised to be offended.
“Doesn’t matter how,” I said. “He did it, that’s all.”
“Don’t sound like a thing a preacher-man would do.”
“Well he did it. We’re after him.”
“How I know he ain’t innocent and you want to kill him for something he ain’t done?”
“Son,” Wilcox said, “you just tell us where he went. That’s all you need to concern yourself with.”
“You got blood in your beard, mister.”
Wilcox wiped his face with the same hand. It did nothing.
The boy turned to me. “You gonna shoot me?”
“No, son. We just wanna find this man.”
“You gonna shoot him?”
“What’s it to you?” Wilcox asked.
“Nothin’. Just wonderin’.”
“Just tell us where he went,” I said.
“Why would he tell me, mister?”
“We could wait ‘til your pa comes back and ask him.”
“Why would he tell my pa?”
“Is he still here, son?”
The boy laughed. “Mister, you see a horse other’n yours around here?”
I let the wooden cup fall to the ground. “Son, I never said he was horseback.”
The boy was unfazed. “Everyone on that road is horseback, mister.”
“Is he still here?”
The boy’s eyes shifted. “Not really.”
“Son?”
“No, mister, he ain’t here.”
I looked at Wilcox. He looked at me. I thought of what I had heard, or thought I had heard, earlier: voices. The wind in the pines, probably. Wind in the pines.
“Son, what’s ‘round back?”
He hesitated. “Pines.”
Looking at the kid, I said to Wilcox, “I think I’ll go look.”
The kid stepped forward. “Mister, you don’t wanna go doin’ that.”
“Is he back there, son?”
“Mister, you really don’t wanna go doin’ that.”
“I aim to, son. I have to.”
He was fast; I’ll give him that, his reflexes were even faster than my own. He reached around back and pulled a knife from the waistband of his pants before I even had a chance to register the movement. I think Wilcox must have caught sight of the knife at the last second, though—the boy had turned just enough so that his backside was partly exposed—for he whipped up that Winchester and smacked the boy across the head with the barrel. The boy fell in a heap to the ground, and I kicked the knife from his hand.
We stood there, staring down at him. I watched his chest, to make sure he was still breathing. He was.
“Jesus,” Wilcox said.
I nodded.
“Jesus. I’ve done some things, yes sir, but I ain’t never dropped no kid before.”
“He’s alive.”
“Thank sweet Jesus for that.”
We stood there some more, watching him.
“You think he’s that preacher’s kin?”
I shook my head. “Don’t look a thing like him. Besides, that preacher’s a silver-tongued son of a bitch. This boy, he don’t have that in him.”
“He’s got somethin’, all right.”
“Yes, he does.”
“You think the preacher’s ‘round back?”
I glanced up at where the kid had come from, and drew the Colt from my waistband. “I aim to find out. You stay here and watch the kid.”
“Don’t kill him, Horace. He’s mine.”
“He’s yours,” I agreed. “I’ll bring him out if he’s back there.”
“You really think he is?”
“I dunno. He was here. Good chance he still is.”
With the Colt in my right hand at my side, pointed forward, I rounded the corner of the cabin. The smell of the meat was stronger back here, and closer up it smelled more like pork than venison, though not exactly. As I passed the side of the cabin I looked in a window and saw the barren room inside with two beds, and shuddered at the thought of sleeping in the same room as that kid. Then I thought of what the kid’s father must be like, and shuddered again.
The backyard was bare even of grass, just a giant spread of dirt. There was a woodpile and some various tools, all rusted. The centerpiece of the yard was a barbeque pit, a hole in the ground covered by sticks with the meat resting atop them. It was just like I’d seen the slaves using during the war, and I wasn’t surprised that this was how the kid cooked. Everything else around here was old as hell.
Smoke rose from the pit, and the stench of meat was stronger back here. The pit was hot, hotter than any pits I remembered encountering, and I turned away from the heat.
I glanced around, but there was no sign of anyone back there. I glanced at the cabin, but couldn’t see much through the solitary window. The door was open and I made to go to it, only I stopped about halfway there, looking over my shoulder at the barbeque pit. When the kid had come back around back he’d thrown some fresh meat on, and it was all chopped up and fatty and hadn’t cooked very much. I stared at a chunk of the meat, then stepped closer, mindless of the heat.
There was a scarred spot on the meat, jagged and discolored. I’d seen plenty of scars like it in the war; once a man just a few feet from me took a musket shot in the arm. The sleeve of his uniform caught fire; the shot went through his arm, and the man lived, but had a scar there, not from the musket ball but from the fire.
This was a burn scar. I had seen it before.
I bent over and retched, but I hadn’t eaten and nothing came out. I tucked the Colt under my waistband and ran back around the side of the cabin. Wilcox was standing a few feet away from the kid, the gun pointed to the ground. The kid was still out.
“He here?” Wilcox asked me.
I looked at him.
“Horace? He here?”
“No,” I said, thinking the explanation would have to wait ‘til later, when we made camp. “No, he ain’t. Let’s go.”
“What we do about the kid?”
“Leave him.”
“You don’t think his pa will come after us for this?”
“No I don’t.”
