The Outlander (40 page)

Because the widow was lost in these thoughts, she failed to attend to the
sounds coming through the trees. And when she did, it was too late. The darkness was
suddenly full of noise and movement, all of it rushing toward her. They had come! They
had followed her! She got to her feet, but there was no more running in her, so she
simply stood and waited. Not bothering to blink or breathe or get on with her life in
any way, bracing herself for the gunshot. It was so black. Where were they? And then one
of the twins materialized
out of the night and came at her with his
rifle raised, moving slowly now, the way a dog stalks a squirrel. Moonlight on his hat,
his long upper arms, the long barrel. He was within feet. She could smell him. She could
hear his breath coming and going. And then they were together, joined by the
rifle's cold muzzle where it touched her above the left eye. Somewhere out in the
dark, the other twin was making his slow, stumbling way toward them.

“Go ahead,” she said, willing her knees to keep her
standing.

But he just looked at her, his eyes shifting leisurely in the
firelight.

THE RIDGERUNNER
sat primly on a log by the enormous fire
holding a fistful of bannock and trying not to make eye contact with the dogs. There
were at least eight of them and they circled him the way wolves do, heads low, making
small yips to one another. The woman had gone away to gather a few things he might like
to trade for, and a moment later these dogs had come out of the dark. The Ridgerunner
did not move, but he watched them with his peripheral vision. If worse came to worst he
could throw his bread. It wouldn't work on wolves, but maybe it would on dogs.

The woman, Helen, had not been able to give him any information.
She'd never heard of Mary Boulton, and she'd not seen another white woman in
many months. Maybe years. He had nearly slumped when she'd said it. If not for
these dogs, he would have hiked up his packsack, slipped away into the darkness again,
and vanished. For what was the point
in staying? But now he was
pinned down by a pack of stealthy, slat-sided Indian dogs who neither knew him nor
trusted him, and they figured he could do without his bannock.

First one dog turned, then they all froze and looked into the dark. The
woman was coming back. They darted guiltily around, backing away from her into the long
grass, skirmishing with one another as they went.

“There we go,” she sighed and placed on the ground a blanket
that was wrapped around various objects. She handed him a bowl of stew with a tin spoon
in it. Moreland regretted the offer of food, for he had done this with Indians before
and he knew it was rude to eat and buy nothing, and he already knew what he would see
inside that blanket — mostly ammunition and knives, but possibly needles and gut
for repairs, things to eat, things to smoke, hats, shirts. He didn't need or want
any of it. He only wanted one thing. And it wasn't here.

“Eat,” the woman said kindly, and she watched as he spooned up
the stew. It was ridiculously good, fragrant and rich, and after so long in the cold
upper world, Moreland was starving. He beamed a grateful smile at Helen, gobbling too
fast to thank her. A man came wandering up and sat down close to her. He was tall and
kept his hair in two braids, and his face was distinctly unfriendly. After a long
interval he said, “What do you want that woman for?”

The Ridgerunner abruptly stopped chewing, for there was something in the
way he had said it — he was asking not why Moreland would want a woman, but why
anyone would follow
that
woman in particular.

“I already told him we haven't seen her,” Helen said
gently.

“Why are you looking?” the man said bluntly.

William Moreland swallowed and held the bowl before him. He was pale and
reduced, large-eyed in the firelight, and an expression of deep regret passed over his
face. Suddenly, he looked as if he were about to weep. Henry glanced at his wife in
alarm, and she put a surreptitious hand on his arm.

“Are you her husband?” Helen asked.

“No. I just . . . I need to see her. Because I owe her an
apology.”

This statement confounded Henry. But Helen gazed at her guest in quiet
contemplation for a long moment.

“William is your name?” she asked.

The Ridgerunner nodded.

“Well, William, perhaps you will take a look at these things I have
brought out for you. Some of them are quite good. And then, once we're done,
I'll tell you where Mary has gone.”

DAWN FOUND THE
widow on horseback, reversed in the
saddle, her wrists tied together behind her with ropes knotted round the saddle horn.
Misery infused every part of her body, and she could not tell any more what was mere
injury and what was the anguish of her mind. They did not speak to her, for she was
nothing to them but an unfinished task, and they were much like John, they had his
aloofness. It was with some incredulity that she realized their horses had been
purchased from the Cregans. She herself was mounted backward on Sean Cregan's
clever little mare. This fact wounded her more than she could admit, but she told
herself she should not be surprised, for the eight boys were thieves and
businessmen.

At first, the twins had split up, one leading the way, the other riding
behind, guarding her. In this way, she was face to face with one of them. Jude or
Julian, she didn't know which — so similar to John it was unnerving to look
at him. His face was bloodless, ashen, his massive shoulders hunched over the saddle,
and he glowered at her. All she remembered about these two was her husband's
directions to her before they had arrived at the cabin for one of their few visits.
“Don't contradict Julian,” he said. “He doesn't take
it.” A simple statement, but in the shorthand of that family
a potent warning.

They rode down a winding path through the cedars where there was no
underbrush and the ground was light as cured hide, smooth and carpeted with leaves. As
they went, the widow shifted on her mount as if to adjust her seat to a more comfortable
position, but she was working at the ropes behind her.

“Cut it out,” he said. She heard something in his voice, some
hint of pain or inner gloom. She looked closely at him, saw the coat flap bow open with
each hooVall, revealing the fine shirt inside, on which had spread a dark stain. The
same shadow crept the edges of his long coat, where blood had soaked the lining and now
mackled the outer cloth. He saw her looking, pulled the coat closed. She knew then which
one he was — Jude, the lesser twin, for he bore his injury as patiently as a
dog.

“Does it hurt?”

“You shut your mouth.”

A wrathful flush to her cheeks. Not a wink, not a shift of her gaze, for
she was no longer afraid. Instead, a fury had come over her. She could not take her eyes
off him, and in her mind she was leading him again — the quarry rushing low and
awkward, following the rifle barrel, running toward that moment. Perhaps he sensed her
thoughts, because he blurted out, “All this, all of this hell, is because of you.
Are you proud of what you did?” He had spoken only to galvanize himself against
her stare. She realized there was something about her that he had not expected, or had
forgotten, and it was draining the purpose from him.

“No,” she said. “I'm not proud of what I
did.”

“But you're not sorry, are you? Do you feel any regret at
all?”

“A little.”

“You are an abomination,” he said.

“And what are you?” she spat. “
Half
a
man!”

His expression froze and, bit by bit, he sank away from her. Half a man,
and fading. He simply drew his coat closer, as if she had never said a word. After a few
miles he chucked his horse forward and joined his brother at the front, leaving the
widow to her thoughts.

She swayed with the converse gait of the horse, watching with dull eyes as
her home drifted away. Well, after all, what home did she have now that Bonny was gone?
Now the town was gone? There was nothing left. Like the Ridgerunner, she had been
hobbled by misfortune and finally caught.

The trees thinned out as the mountains withered and lost character and
became merely blue. When she craned around, she could see the beginnings of fields,
sloped and undulating areas of cultivation marked out in shades of white or yellow, cut
by incursions of leafy trees. Farmland. She spied houses, smoke rising. The air was warm
and muggy, and she began to sweat in her hide clothes.

They passed through a grove of massive poplars with wind-bent trunks. She
looked up. Every leaf was moving furiously, a sourceless churning, and the sound was
like applause. The horses stepped along, Queen Anne's lace reaching to their
bellies. Their trail was visible through the long grasses, and it streamed back to where
she had been. This is the progress of life, she thought sadly, seeing only what has been
and is now gone, dragged away from our beginning, a child riding the resolute shoulder
toward bed.

“
YOU
'
RE HERE FOR
three
days,” the man said. “Just till the judge comes, and then you and them two
are off out of here.” He stood in the hallway just beyond the door, which was made
of metal bars.

“What is this place called?” the widow asked.

“This? Nothing. This is the old bank. We got a new one now, made of
brick. Just up the street there.”

“No, I mean the town.”

“Oh. You're in Willow Cane.” He stared at her through
the bars a moment while rain steamed on the barred sill behind her. She could smell it,
the scent of hot dust and water. A stale but living smell.

“Did you do it?” he asked. His tone was so casual the widow
didn't at first know what he meant. And then she did. It hadn't occurred to
her that anyone might ask that question, her guilt being so patent it must be part of
the air she breathed. And yet here he was, asking, and he seemed truly curious.

“Yes,” she said, “I did it.”

“I wouldn't have guessed it, you being a girl. What'd
you do it with?”

“His rifle.”

“Not so? The man's own rifle.” He took off his hat and
held it before him as if in the presence of someone above him.

“Where'd ya shoot him? In the head?”

Despite herself, the widow winced. “No.”

“Where then? Not in the back?”

“Do you really need to know?”

“Not so much. I'm just . . . well, I'm
curious.”

The widow sat down on her pallet with a sigh. “In the leg.”
She put a hand across her thigh like a cleaver. The man pondered that for a while,
spinning his hat in his hands like a little wheel, churning through the conundrum.

“How long'd that take?” he said. It was like he was
asking how long it took to get to the next town. “Must've taken a while,
just bleeding like that.”

“No,” she said. “Not long at all.”

“Was he bad to you?”

The man's inquisitive face, bland and waiting beyond the bars, was
like a sign held up before her, full of wordless meaning and promising retribution. A
feeling like panic rose in her throat and her head began to pound, a painful surfeit of
blood pumping there. No more answers for the merely curious. For they would provide her
with nothing, and there was no escape. She sat mute upon her bed.

“Well,” the man said to himself, pensive, “I never saw a
murderess before.” A thin rumble of thunder passed somewhere far away. Rain
hissed. “You don't look like one,” he offered and walked away. Almost
immediately he was back, looking through the bars again. When he spoke, his voice was
friendly.

“If you know what's good for you,” he said, “you
won't tell them what you told me. Just keep saying you didn't do
it.”

THE RAIN CONTINUED
through the afternoon, hissing
through the trees and pooling in the grass. Mary sat on her bunk and ran her hands down
her thighs over the soft deerskin, her fretful fingers checking and rechecking the seams
unconsciously. Despite the heaviness of the air, she began to smell cooking, a chicken
roasting. She had nothing to do. She was
not expected to cook or do
laundry, she did not have to chop wood or stoke the stove or sweep or hunt or try to
stay warm or plan in the least degree for anything. In her head a little chime kept
going off —
do something, do something
. But her survival was out of her
own hands now. She was expected only to wait. Little surges of dread rose and subsided
within her, and she attended to these waves and endured them.

She sighed and stood up. There were shutters on the window that looked
like they had never been used. Their hinges had rusted open. If she pressed her face to
the bars, she could see a sliver of the street. Once in a while someone would hurry by,
a hunched blur, and then they were gone.

Over the next hour the rain stopped. It grew dark and the lights went on
in houses nearby so the canopy of the trees lit up. There came the voices of children.
Dinner was over. A hammering sound echoed from somewhere across the street, metal on
metal. She stood by her window and breathed the wet air in deeply, felt on her face the
breeze that came and went as it wished, right through the bars. Little spatters from the
trees blew in over her bed and into her face. She pictured the Ridgerunner, decades ago,
pacing his cell, maddened by confinement, while the barred door stood open to him. Why
had this man, so adept at escape, not fled the courthouse jail? He did not belong to
this world, he never would. Why had he tolerated the grinding process of the law?
Curiosity was the only answer — William Moreland, a hermit of grand proportion,
who could not stand the trappings of civilization, the fences and roads and rules, was
curious about people. It was one thing she did not share with him.