Chase (12 page)

P
hin had been brought up not to startle someone splitting wood, but there was nothing he could do. Abby looked up, the hatchet kept swinging, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the horrible sound of her hitting herself.

Instead came a familiar uproar; his old friend Lucky by the front door, eyes bulging as if Phin and Fraser were his worst nightmare come to life.

When Phin looked away from the dog, he saw he needn't have worried about Abby. She had her hatchet well under control, cocked back like a weapon with the blade angled at him.

He opened his mouth and his voice failed. He tried
again, pushing out the only word he could think of.

“Sorry.”

Anger flared in her eyes. “That's my
father's
coat!” Phin nodded.

“Abby!” a firm, ringing voice commanded. “Step back.”

The grandmother stood in the open doorway. The rifle was too long and heavy for her, but it didn't matter. The barrel rested on the back of a kitchen chair, leveled at Phin's belt buckle.

Abby went to her side and turned to face Phin. The two women looked much alike: small, neat, and disconcertingly competent.

“You suppose he killed this man, too?” the grandmother asked. “Young fellow, I want you to know I can shoot a squirrel's eye out with this!”

Phin just nodded, just stared, and they stared back at him. Lucky filled the wordless stalemate with barks.

Abruptly something shoved Phin from behind and he stumbled. The short rein ends nearly pulled through his hand as the stallion turned. A throaty nicker came from uphill, and the mare hobbled around the corner of the barn.

“Oh for pete's sake! Abby, catch her! Put her in the barn!”

Abby went running, pulling off her apron. Lucky leaped and barked at her side. She twisted the apron into a rope as she ran, and intercepted the lame mare.

The stallion jerked his head, trying to follow. The bit still dangled below his throat and with only the loose noseband, Phin could barely hold him.

A whisper came from above; barely a whisper. Barely a breath. “Ho.”

The stallion stilled, quivering. He struck out with one hard black hoof, just missing Phin, but didn't take another step.

Fraser lifted his head to look directly at the grandmother. He was a ghastly sight, corpse gray, with blood in his beard where he'd strained the stick hard against the corners of his mouth.

“We'd appreciate,” he said. “Your help.”

“So you're alive, are you?”

“Just,” Fraser said, his voice a thread on the edge of breaking.

“Yesterday you said you were a lawman. Is the boy your prisoner?”

Abby came back in time to hear this. “Implied. Implied he was a lawman.”

The grandmother turned to her. The rifle stayed steady,
pointed at Phin's middle. “They want help, Abby.”

“They need it!”

“‘We,' he said. All of a sudden it's ‘we.' But the boy's a murderer, we know that!”

Phin shook his head. Once it started shaking, it refused to stop. He stood helpless under their stares, trying to think what to say.

“
Accused
of murder,” Abby said. “I don't think either one of them could murder a mouse right now. Do you?”

“A lot of men have walked up to a buck that looked dead and wished they hadn't. I don't know.”

“Too long,” Fraser said, “and I'll be gone. Bleeding.”

The two exchanged a swift glance. The grandmother twitched the rifle upright and leaned it against the house. “Can you get him off the horse, boy, or are you as dead-and-alive as you look? Abby, what bed will we put him on?”

“I want him in the kitchen. Get blankets—” Abby whirled on Phin. “Can you get him down? What's your name? Why are you just standing there?”

He knew the answer to only one of those questions. “Phin. Chase.”

“Chase,” she said, and took a second in the crowded morning to really look at him. A smile warmed her eyes. “That's apt! Do you need help?”

He nodded. Fraser looked limp again, and yes, a trickle of blood ran down the stallion's dark shoulder.

“Untie him—no, bring him to the door first. Gran, will you
kill
that dog!”

In a few minutes everything was organized; Lucky locked in a back room, bedding brought to the kitchen, the stallion standing astride the front step and the grandmother at his head. Abby loosened the rope; “Is this
our
rope?” Fraser tipped slackly onto Phin's shoulders and braced arms.

The weight was too much. He couldn't really carry the man. He dragged him through the doorway and collapsed backward on the blankets with Fraser on top of him.

“Get up, get up! Take that horse away from Gran—put it in the other stall and get back here!”

Phin stumbled out the door. The grandmother was grimly hanging on. Phin took the reins and was towed toward the familiar barn.

He opened the door of the empty stall and maneuvered the stallion inside. The horse was dangerous now. Completely focused on the mare, he hardly seemed to notice Phin's presence. With clumsy fingers, Phin stripped off saddle and bridle and took himself away from the trampling hooves. The horses introduced themselves over the
wall between the stalls, with sniffs, loud squeals from the mare, the ring of boards being struck by hard hooves. Phin hastened to bring armloads of hay.

Water? Were there buckets somewhere? And where was the well?

Water would have to wait.

He went back to the house. Warmth flowed out the open door.

They knelt on either side of Fraser. His coat was off, and Phin could see the dark crust of blood on his shirt. Tenderly the grandmother held a wet cloth to it. “I don't think we can get it off yet,” she said to Abby. “Let me soak it a little more.”

Abby looked up at Phin. “Close the door, for heaven's sake! Is this a knife wound or did you shoot him?”

“He fell.”

“Just fell?”

“I—” Phin said. “With the rope…I don't know why there's blood.” It made no sense, especially with the wound on the front of Fraser's body. If he'd landed on something, he'd be wounded in back, wouldn't he?

Abby got to her feet with a quick, graceful twist and went into the next room. After a moment she returned with a ceramic pitcher and basin, and a pile of clean white
cloths over one arm. She put everything on the table. There was a mixing bowl on the table, too, a small bottle stuffed full of fuzzy purple flowers, a book with a worn cover.

Abby took the kettle from the stove and poured steaming water into the pitcher. She dipped her hands into a small crock. Phin smelled strong soap. Washing her hands, she looked keenly at him.

“Are you sick?”

He nodded.

“Go in there—” she pointed toward an open doorway off the kitchen. “Get the teapot and put in two scoops from the jar marked ‘Boneset'—you
can
read?”

Phin laughed; not out loud, just a little breath. Engelbreit's house and
Leaves of Grass
; everything before and since, all in a flash not seen but felt, a twist of emotion in his body. He nodded.

“Two scoops of boneset, and fill the pot with hot water from the stove.” Phin obeyed. “Then go out that door”—she pointed to one Phin hadn't noticed yet—“and pump me a bucket of water.”

“The horses?” Phin croaked.

“What about—oh. There's a trough behind the barn—I'm amazed you don't know that! They'll have to be led out later. Now go!”

Phin went. The door opened to the back of the house, a yard with a pump. He worked the handle, more exhausted with every stroke, and turned with the full bucket. Abby stood in the doorway watching him as she dried her hands.

Did she think he'd run? Did she think he could?

He came toward her. She stood back to let him into the house, but her penetrating eyes stopped him.

“Why did you laugh?”

Phin's throat hurt too much for talking. Besides, he had no words. Here he was on this bright morning, being bossed by a girl who barely came up to his shoulder. She was in charge. Why her and not her grandmother? And where was the mother? He didn't know. He didn't know anything.

“Well, come on in, and close the door behind you. I don't want to touch anything. Now fill the kettle—thank you. And sit. Pour yourself a cup of tea and drink it right down—you won't like it! And then have another. Ready, Gran?”

Fraser groaned as his shirt peeled away from the wound. Phin saw a glimpse of milk-white torso tracked with red puckered scars, and a black oozing place low on his chest. He looked quickly away. Watch Abby. Sunlight through the window on her smooth clean hair….

“That'll be a war wound,” the grandmother said.

Abby bent close. She seemed cool, alert, thoughtful. “Look at that,” she said to her grandmother. “Shrapnel, do you think?”

Fraser whispered something.

“Shell? Oh. Cannon shell. Sir—what's his name?” she asked Phin. “He told us yesterday, I suppose, but—”

“Fraser.” And he'd have a first name, wouldn't he? David, maybe? Douglas?

“Mr. Fraser, I should take this out of your wound. The fall must have—oh, think of it, Gran! Like living with a knife inside you! May I try to take it out?”

Fraser's head barely moved on the bedclothes; a nod.

“Give him something to bite on, Gran—cloth is fine; he won't hurt himself. I wish Mummy would come back with the bag right now! I'll have to use my fingers.”

The grandmother looked to be wringing her hands, but no, Phin saw, she was twisting a rag into a hard stick and now she put it between Fraser's teeth. “I wish she'd come, too,” she said grimly. “That baby could have waited a day or two, seems to me!”

“Are you ready, Mr. Fraser?” Abby asked. “It's going to hurt. A lot.”

It did, and it took a long time. That growl came out of
Fraser again. In the other room Lucky barked. A smell began to pervade the kitchen, of old blood and new blood, and around the edges of Fraser's growl a silence deepened. Whenever Phin glanced toward the mattress he saw Abby bent over, intent, her thumb and forefinger pinched on something and working it tensely. The thing was small and frighteningly tenacious.

He turned away, stared out the window at the snow melting in the warm sun, dripping off the eaves of the house. He tried to avoid hearing the small, wet sound within the room, not quite masked by Fraser's growl.

“There!” Abby held something up. It was smaller than Phin had expected, and it dripped—

“Abby, put your head down! Don't you dare faint on me till we've got this man bandaged!”

Abby turned abruptly from Fraser and sat bent over, hugging her knees. She held the shell fragment away from her skirt in red fingers. “Stupid,” she said after a moment, her voice sounding slow and slurred. “I was doing so well and then—I
looked
at it….” She swallowed audibly.

The grandmother knelt, pressing a cloth to the wound. For a moment there was no sound in the kitchen save Fraser's harsh breathing.

Unexpectedly, a sense of rightness dropped over Phin;
peace and piercing joy. The sun glinted off the teapot. A petal fell from one of the flowers onto the book. He gazed at it, feeling his heartbeat rock him slightly, feeling the warmth and his body relaxing in it.

The moment had edges. He knew it would end. But it went on a long time.

Abby stirred. With a guilty start, Phin poured himself a cup of tea. His hands felt pleasantly distant. Maybe they belonged to someone else.

He took a swig. It was horrible. Another gulp, three. He put the cup on the table, reached toward the pot again, and then, no, he thought he'd just put his head down on his arm, arm of the worn old military coat.
Essays
, Emerson, said the gold letters on the spine of the book. In a second he'd pick it up, but just now he'd close his eyes….

T
here were dreams. A hand laid on his forehead as his mother used to, checking for fever. Far-off neighing. Cooking smells.

A voice said, “Not in our rooms! Not till we know.”

Later he woke up someplace else.

No, same place, but on the floor, looking up. A curtain beside him. No, a skirt. In a chair. The grandmother, knitting, looking grimly past Phin at something beyond him.

He wanted to look, too, but it was too much effort to lift his head. He lay staring at the skirt, the stove, sunshine through the legs of chairs and table. There was a sound behind him, regular, harsh. Fraser, he decided
after a bit. Breathing. He closed his eyes again.

“I don't know what to do,” a voice said. Maybe it was later. “If I take her out, he'll jump the door, and I don't dare touch
him.
But they need water.”

“You,” another voice said. “Boy!”

“Phin. His name is Phin.”

Phin opened his eyes again. Abby and her grandmother looked down at him.

“Could you help me take them to water?”

Them.

The horses.

Phin struggled up on his elbows. His head felt stuffed with hot wool. His eyes wouldn't fully open, and he ached everywhere. When he tried to speak, his voice choked off. He nodded, and then faced the prospect of getting up.

“I wouldn't ask if I didn't need to.” Abby reached down a hand. Phin took it. A firm grip on his elbow boosted him to his feet.

The bedding was next to the stove now. He didn't know how he'd gotten there, beside Fraser.

Who looked up at him. His eyes shone like pools of mercury. Phin had seen that shine in the eyes of four people. Three were now dead.

“How lame is the mare?” Fraser sounded weak, but
surprisingly rational. “Can she go far?”

“She bowed a tendon three weeks ago,” Abby said. “She can hardly hobble.”

“Turn them loose. If you don't mind a foal next summer.” He closed his eyes. In the shadow beside the stove, his lids looked purple. Abby bit her lips, looking at him. Then she turned away.

“I can probably let them loose myself.”

Phin didn't bother to shake his head. He followed her out into the sunny afternoon. The air chased shivers over his skin, even inside the heavy coat.

The mare stood in the farthest corner of her stall, ears back scornfully. The stallion leaned over the dividing wall at her. He looked magnificent, his eyes brilliant, his neck arched. He didn't so much as flick an ear at Phin and Abby.

“He'd better not hurt her!” Abby said. Phin just pointed at the mare's door.

Abby looked at him soberly. “Me first, then you?”

Phin nodded.

“I'll lead her outside, right? So we aren't trapped in here with them?”

Hurry
, Phin mouthed.

Abby opened the mare's door and looped a strap over her neck. The mare followed her, and the stallion shoved against
the door of his stall. Then—was this more fever?—he reared slowly, like a dog sitting up for a crust of bread, and looked over the half-door, judging the distance to the floor.

“Go!” Phin croaked. Abby hauled the mare out the doorway and sprang aside.

“All right!” she called.

Phin threw open the stall door. The stallion's hooves drummed briefly on the barn floor and then came an enormous squeal. Phin hurried outside.

The stallion was beautiful with Fraser riding him, and beautiful in a stall. Now, as he danced courteously beside the limping mare, pointing his ears at her, stretching his neck to venture a sniff at her flank, he was more than beautiful. The mare threatened him with a hind foot. He curved away, and back to her, and Phin shook his head. He had ridden that horse? It didn't seem possible.

“We'd better shut the door so they don't get into the oats,” Abby said. “Can you help?”

The door was a wide one, mounted on an iron roller. Abby pushed and Phin pulled feebly, and they got it closed.

“Now back by the stove. You're going to have another cup of tea and you're going to sleep some more.”

And he did.

 

When he woke again it was dark, inside and out. A candle on the table barely illuminated part of the kitchen. The grandmother sat in a rocking chair, a blanket wrapped around her. The shine of her eyes told Phin she was watching them.

Phin sat up. He still ached, but more distantly, and he didn't feel stronger so much as lighter. It was easy to sit up because he weighed nothing.

The grandmother pressed her finger to her lips. The chair creaked as she got out of it, bringing him a cup.

“Abby says you're to drink this.”

“I—need to go out first.”

“Go, then. Shh.”

Phin glanced at the shape beside him on the blankets. Fraser lay staring at the ceiling, chewing his lower lip. His eyes still had that over-brilliant glitter, but as Phin rose they turned his way, clear and lucid. Phin felt a jump of alarm, which he hoped didn't show. He gave Fraser a little nod and slipped out the door.

The moon was up. Phin followed the trail of footprints to the outhouse. Around the corner of the barn he heard crunching and looked uphill. Two horse shapes bowed their heads and pawed the snow. A cow shape stood watching.

The beauty stopped Phin. Weak and clearheaded, he
took in the world around him. White pastures stretched up the hill. The color of the leaves was visible in the moonlight; their spicy scent was present in every breath, cooled and freshened by snow.

He walked up toward the animals. The mare whooshed her breath at him. The stallion touched his nose to hers. Phin turned his back, did what he'd come out for. After a moment he felt a nudge on his arm.

He stroked the stallion's face, his flowing forelock, the hollows above his eyes. The high neck curved around him. The stallion pushed at the pocket of this coat—

—that didn't belong to Phin. Horse that didn't belong to him; farm that didn't belong to him, under a moon that belonged to no one. Nothing belonged to Phin Chase and he felt a wild joy rising; because of that, or anyway. He was alive. Fraser was alive and the horses and cow and the women, the trees—all alive. He wanted to sing, or strike one of those long keening notes on a fiddle; failing that, to run his hand along the neck of a beautiful horse seemed a kind of singing.

The stallion turned away from the empty pocket with a faint sigh. Phin searched his pants for the last nugget of tobacco. His hands found knife, wooden matchbox; Plume's money.

He looked down at the dimly lit kitchen window. As he watched, it was blocked briefly; the grandmother maybe, peering out. Maybe Fraser had asked her to. He was awake in there, aware. Injured though he was, he hadn't forgotten his mission, and there was no guarantee as to what would happen next. Phin might get sicker, fall into Fraser's power. He might waken in handcuffs—

Or it might all go another way entirely. But whatever Fraser was—lawman, Pinkerton agent, some higher-up in the Sleepers, even; that was remotely possible—Phin knew there was one thing he had to do.

His fingers, by now, knew the difference between the money and the letter or list, whatever it was. He took it out of his pocket. Gripping it in his teeth, he pulled off the tight cover of the box and shook out a match, struck it on one of the stone gateposts and held it near the paper.

Last chance; for power, if this was power. To bargain, if Fraser wanted it.

Last chance to read the thing.

Worth the lives of six men.

Maybe they were mine supervisors, like Engelbreit. Maybe they were Sleepers, killers like Plume; or heroes fighting for their people; or both. It didn't matter. Whoever they were, the power that paper held over them didn't
belong to Phin or Plume. It didn't belong to Fraser either.

Phin touched the flame to the corner of the paper and dropped the match hissing in the snow. The bright, pure flame blossomed up the sheet, making the handwriting stand out briefly black and stark. The glow warmed his face.

Then the heat reached his fingers. He let the paper fall. It curled, and the flames sank to a tracery of embers. Phin crouched and felt where he'd last seen it. There was nothing left.