Chase (14 page)

P
hin looked quickly toward the window. It was gray now, not glossy black. Dawn coming.

“He'll not likely get…wind of you here,” Fraser whispered. A look passed between Abby and her grandmother.

“Will he?” Phin asked.

“Alma's out birthing a baby,” Grandma Collins said. “We told the father about you two when he came to fetch her.”

“And once the Wright girls visit the Brinkleys, that's the whole village told!” Abby said tartly.

“But not tonight.” Grandma Collins pinched the bridge of her nose. “Surely we could all sleep, and think this through in the morning?” She looked older, frail and
exhausted. Abby gave her a worried look, and then glanced at Fraser, lying with his eyes closed.

“I…think so,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “She only went this morning. I don't see how he could have found out yet. Call us,” she told Phin earnestly, looking straight into his face. “If you feel worse, or he does—don't hesitate. All right?”

And they left the kitchen, taking Lucky with them.

Phin looked at the gun in the corner. He'd never shot a gun, never even loaded one. Murray'd steered him clear of weapons. “Learn to use it or don't pick it up,” he'd said. “Bluffing's the quick way to get killed.” But it was none of his business to teach tavern help to shoot, even if Phin had wanted to know.

He got up and went to the window. The yard was peaceful, empty. He stepped to the back door. The hillside stretched below him, barely sensed. Not even an owl disturbed the quiet, but if he listened hard he could hear, almost, the clink of glasses on a bar, the scraping of a fiddle.

He was exhausted, and his throat was starting to hurt again. He stretched out on the blanket and wrapped the coat around him. From where he lay he could see stove, table, book, gun. He had to stare hard to keep them all in place. If he lost focus for even a moment, they whirled
around the room—table upended, book flying, stove—

No. He blinked, hard, to drive away the image of Engelbreit calm-eyed against the stove. But he always came back.

Plume walked through the open door, slim and broad-shouldered, rimmed with sunlight, and the gun exploded—

No. Phin was
here
, on this floor, in the dark. Fraser breathed beside him and the door was shut—

—and the next moment Plume said, light and rueful as a man refusing an olive, “This one I can't do.”

It happened too many times and finally, angrily, Phin sat up—

—to find sunlight splashed bright across the kitchen floor and the cow lowing resentfully. Behind him Fraser breathed deep and slow.

Abby stumbled through the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. She glanced toward Phin and Fraser as if her mind wasn't working yet, got her pail, and went to the door. She opened it, the light threw her shadow long on the floor, and Phin found himself on his feet, heart pounding.

The shadow had skirts, not a hat and gun. He followed her outside.

The sun was mid-morning high in a soft blue sky. A creamy haze floated above the trees downhill.

Abby went toward the barn, stopping abruptly at the
closed door. “Here.” Phin shrugged out of the coat, and helped her put it on. Together they walked to where the cow tugged at her tether. Phin scratched the annoyed animal while Abby knelt, arranging the skirts of the coat under her to keep her dress dry. She rested her cheek against the smooth swelling side. Milk hissed rhythmically into the pail and Abby closed her eyes.

Sorry
, Phin wanted to say.
Sorry for the trouble
. He looked off downhill. “How far is town?” he asked.

“Four miles. That way.” Abby pointed with her chin.

Four miles was nothing.

“He might not hear about you,” Abby said. “Maybe he'll go away.”

Plume looked up at Phin from the pile of hay with hot, hard eyes.

“Or can't you hide up on the hill? We'll say we never saw you again.”

Phin imagined it, and it made sense. With a supply of food and a coat, maybe a blanket, he could live up there awhile, watch the farm—

But his imaginings took him farther. Plume coming, not believing the story he was told; how would he force the truth out of them, or out of Fraser, helpless on the floor—

“If he comes, it's too late.”

“Then we'll hold him off. Gran can shoot—almost as well as she claims!—and Fraser's got at least one gun—”

“He does?”

“A derringer, in his sleeve. You didn't know? There's a knife, too.”

“I saw that.” Phin turned to look at the house. From below as he'd fled it had looked like a fortress. Now it seemed gentle and domestic, a broad-beamed old lady dressed in gray. It had seen its pig killings and the beheading of chickens for Sunday dinners, its family deaths in back bedrooms. It had never seen anything like Plume.

He glanced down the farm road. No one was coming.

Abby stood up and looked, too. “I never used to think about what a lonely place this is.”

“Sorry,” Phin said, and she looked up at him with a rueful smile.

“Sorry butters no parsnips. Why don't you move this cow for me, and then come on inside.”

 

The kitchen was warm. The stove crackled with life, the teakettle crooned, and Grandma Collins stood stirring a pot of oatmeal. In the pantry Abby was setting the milk to cool. In spite of everything, Phin felt his spirits lift. He looked to Fraser, expecting to see the strength he'd shown
last night. But Fraser lay flat in his blankets, eyes wide and dull in a yellowish face.

“How are you?” Phin asked.

The words seemed to reach Fraser slowly. He licked his lips. “Bad.”

Abby bent and put her hand on Fraser's brow. She looked at her grandmother. Grandma Collins shook her head slightly, lips pressed together. “I know who I want to see come through that door.”

“Maybe this afternoon,” Abby said. “All those girls—someone should be old enough to help by now.”

Phin expected they would do something for Fraser. Instead Abby asked him to put a kettle of water on the stove. Then the three of them sat down to breakfast; oatmeal, with cream and maple sugar, and strong hot tea. While they ate, the kettle started steaming. When they were done, Phin set it beside Fraser's blankets, and Abby knelt to examine the wound.

She loosened the bandage. A smell was released, and Phin found he needed to step outside.

He looked down the road, and listened. He collected eggs, imagining once or twice that he recognized the hen that had been his intended victim. He moved and filled the cow's water tub.

Then he walked up to the field, telling himself he was checking on the horses. There was nothing to check. They were completely self-sufficient. Even the lame mare evaded Phin easily.

But when he turned to look downhill, the roofs were small, and he saw how far away from the house he was already. He could just keep going—

The stallion nudged his shoulder. Phin ran his hand along the dark arched neck. He had no rope, but he could go down and get one, get the bridle—

The horse pricked his ears toward the road. Phin looked, too. Did the stallion smell something? If so, he dismissed it; dismissed Phin, too, turning abruptly from the hands that produced no tobacco or beechnuts, not even a pemmican cake. Phin had to smile. He went back to the house.

Fraser had been rebandaged. He lay as still as a fallen leaf, and Abby sat beside him, watching soberly. “Mr. Fraser,” she said after a while. “You've got to take hold.”

“Should we go for the doctor?” Phin asked.

“If you want to kill him!” Phin flinched. “Sorry, but he's not a good doctor. Anyway, you can't go. Plume is there.”

“He could go for Alma,” Grandma Collins said.

Abby considered that. “No,” she said finally. “Mummy'll
come as soon as it's right to leave. We can't call her away if the baby needs her.”

“Then it's up to us.”

“And him.”

They looked down at Fraser. He was conscious, clearly. His jaw was tightly clamped, and once in a while he licked his dry lips.

Grandma Collins picked up the book from the table, and began to page through it thoughtfully. “You two go away for a while. This is old people's work.”

Abby led Phin off to the parlor. It had a look of lost prosperity: worn velvet chairs, a scuffed carpet, and books on shelves, on tables, piled against the wall. “It's how people pay us, sometimes,” Abby said, seeing Phin's amazement. “If we lived nearer town, I'd open a library.”

Phin sat in a stout, gentlemanly chair, glancing sideways at the nearest stack of books. Dickens's name repeated on seven spines. He hadn't read any of them; he wished he wanted to now. He got up and crossed to the window, looking out at the yard. The only things moving were the hens.

“You're making me nervous,” Abby said. “You beat Fraser. Did you notice that? You're someone to be reckoned with—but you're as jumpy as a cat on wash day!”

Phin turned away from the sunny scene. “You don't…have a cat,” he managed.

“She disappeared this spring. I'll insist on being paid in kittens, next time I see a likely one.”

The room was abruptly shadowed. Phin turned. Only a cloud, gusting across the face of the sun.

“Please,” Abby said. “Sit down. Lucky will let us know if someone comes.”

Phin sat. He didn't know what to say. Abby didn't seem to, either. Grandma Collins's voice reached them, a long murmur without defined words.

“Do you remember your father?” Abby asked suddenly.

Phin shook his head. But clearly she wanted talk, and he found himself telling her about Murray, and Dennis.

“So you had fathers, in a way. I didn't—only Emerson!”

“He was like my uncle,” Phin said. “Like the one in Ireland. I mean—I never met
him
either.” He went to the window again.

“This is absurd!” Abby got up, too. “Let's go see how he's doing.”

“Do you think—”

“I don't know. Life flares up and down. You can't tell when it's guttering like this. He might very well live.”

Phin took this to mean
He probably won't
. He pressed his
head against the cool windowpane. If Fraser died he'd have to keep running. Maybe he should be running now, because how much help could the man be flat on his back?

Lucky barked outside and Phin heard hoofbeats. He drew back from the window, heart pounding. A buggy—

“Oh, thank goodness!” Abby rushed out of the room. A moment later Phin recognized the horse as the one he'd seen from the graveyard.

Abby's mother got wearily down and came toward the house carrying a basket and carpetbag. An even wearier man followed her with a bushel crate. Phin retraced his steps through the unfamiliar house, reaching the kitchen by one door as Abby's mother entered by another.

She paused just inside, sniffing the air sharply, and weariness seemed to fall away from her. “What's wrong?” she asked, looking around. Then she swept across the kitchen and dropped on her knees beside Fraser, bag and basket forgotten on her arms. “What happened?”

Her voice was soft and breathy. Fraser's eyes opened. “Oh. You,” he whispered.

“He fell,” Abby said. “There was old shrapnel. I took it out and he seemed—but he's worse today.”

“Old shrapnel,” Alma said, in a voice like the low
register of a fiddle. Abby and her grandmother exchanged alarmed looks.

“His name is Fraser,” Abby said somewhat overloudly. “He's a Pinkerton detective, Mummy, he's not—”

“Abby,” her mother interrupted. “Get some of the apples that have started to rot.”

Abby made a funny, strained grimace at Grandma Collins, wrenched open a door Phin hadn't noticed, and thundered down the cellar stairs.

“Apples,” Fraser said.

“Rotten apples draw out poison. It'll be all right, don't worry. This time it'll be all right.”

Grandma Collins came behind her daughter-in-law, gently removing her shawl and burdens. She put her hands on the broad shoulders a moment.

Then Abby was back with a basin full of apples, brown and mushy, but still whole. They smelled sharp and cidery.

Abby began mashing them. Her mother bent over Fraser, tenderly unfastening his bandages. Fraser watched her hands.

“Alma?” The stranger, Brinkley, approached the blankets. “Should I stay? Or send the constable?”

She turned blankly. “Whatever for?”

“The constable,” Abby said, mashing on. “That's a good idea, Phin, don't you think?”

Alma Collins looked at him over her shoulder. “That's the boy—what?” She bent to listen to Fraser, but Mr. Brinkley stared hard at Phin.

“Wouldn't it help to get the constable?” Abby asked Phin. “He could arrest Plume—don't
look
like that, Phin, he's a
blacksmith
! He lifts
ponies
off the ground—”

“Is Plume that feller came off the train?” Brinkley asked. “'Cause he's headed this way.”

Everyone in the room seemed suddenly distant to Phin, as if they'd zoomed ten feet away. Brinkley continued. “Passed him on the way up—he's driving Doc's buggy.”

And Abby, looking pale, said, “Passed him how? Your horse is no faster than the doctor's.”

“Thought you'd be glad of a warning. Alma'd nodded off, or I wouldn't have. I give him wrong directions. Sent him up to the old Larborough place.”

Abby turned from her apples. Her eyes met Phin's. “It's an abandoned farm,” she said. “It'll take him about half an hour to find that out and get back to the road. And I think he's going to be angry.”

Phin had already faced it. There was only one reason Plume was coming here, and only one thing to do.

“If you could wait…a little while,” he said to Brinkley, “I'll go down and meet him.”