Lost Nation (35 page)

The magistrate Morris inclined his head to one side. “And what might that have been, Mister Blood? That something behind it?”

Blood said, “For myself, I figured he elected to stay for reasons of his own; he was a trapper, a solitary man. I liked him well enough. But for the other men, it’s a question of what fancies, what notions, that group of men might’ve had. With things edgy there and the other Canadians
gone I imagine more than a few thought Laberge was an agent of some sort. I don’t know. Foolish thinking but it’s not my job to supervise what grown men think. Can’t you see that?”

Morris said, “Are you the one now posing questions Mister Blood?”

“I just don’t know what you want, is all. I wasn’t the one strung him up. Why come after me?”

Hutchinson spoke now. “That’s easy Blood. You were the one we all agreed upon.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The magistrate frowned at the sheriff and returned his attention to Blood. As if there had been no interruption. He said, “The surviving sisters of Charles Laberge have petitioned for warrants against the men responsible for his death.” He raised an eyebrow as if the rest was obvious. “You shall name those men.”

“Why, I might’s well cut my own throat as do that. But even if I was of a mind to I couldn’t do it.”

The magistrate regarded Blood. Lizard unblinking eyes. Waiting.

Blood said, “It’s true the boy Laberge killed provoked it all. Drew his own knife out first and swiped Laberge with it. But then Laberge kicked that boy in the arm, broke it he did too. Kicked the knife right out of his hand. That boy was hurt bad, his knife gone, so he grabbed hold of the girl works for me. As a shield. It was over. I was moving fast to get to them when Laberge just stepped forward and slashed that boy Bacon’s throat. That was the murder done, right there. What came after that was just a spontaneous reaction to a horrific thing.”

“Why should I believe this version?”

“Why shouldn’t you? It’s what happened.”

“Then the men I wish to question would confirm it independently, would they not?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“No?”

“Those men don’t trust anybody. Not any authority. There’s no boundary established yet. So, any arrests you Canadians might make, like any by New Hampshire men, they’d see it as greater threat than it was. The same way they mistrusted why all the Canadians left under nightfall cover. They’re prickly and they’ve reason enough to be. So, however it came out, if I was to name you names I’d be done there. Even
if they weren’t to kill me I’d be finished in that country. Not a man would trust me, not a man would do trade with me.”

It was quiet in the room. Hutchinson had a penknife out and was cleaning his fingernails, wiping the residue from the blade onto his coat sleeve. The magistrate glanced at him but Hutchinson kept his head bent over his work. Morris peered at the ledger before him, reading. Blood watched him. He seemed to be rereading the same lines. Blood wondered if this was a distraction or if the magistrate was coming to some decision over some or all of this.

Finally the magistrate looked up at Blood. He said, “And so the sisters of Charles Laberge. And their children—his nieces and nephews—all I can offer them is this tale of how their brother and uncle was a simple murderer who received a rough but true justice. And it took a party of the King’s troopers to retrieve his body for a burial according to the rites of their Church. Is that what you suggest?”

There it was, thought Blood. Then considered the presence of Hutchinson and amended—This is the money part. Where the hell was Sally and Van Landt? He said, “I feel bad about that.”

“Which part,” the magistrate asked in a mild tone. “Do you regret?”

“I never gave his family the first thought at all. Most of the men, the single men, the older ones, the trappers and woodsmen, they left whatever family they might’ve had long ago. It’s the unusual ones that take to the woods like that. I might not’ve done the right thing, burying him as I did, but I was showing what respect I could for him. There wasn’t even a hope of burying him in the cemetery there. The others would’ve been happy to leave him hang to rot. I cut him down and did the best I could. I don’t regret that. But I’m sorry to distress his relations.” He paused. “Perhaps—”

“Perhaps?”

“Perhaps if you were to explain all this to them they might understand it better. Why I did as I did.”

“You mean why you buried him in your garden.”

“It wasn’t the best choice. I just wanted him in the ground. It was bad weather. Everything was iced up. Doing the best I could with short judgment.”

“Short enough,” said the magistrate.

Blood ignored this. “The family? Are they well off?”

The magistrate studied him a time. Then said, “In this place?”

Blood nodded. Some ground had been established. He said, “Perhaps, as a token of my regrets and my intentions, my sorrow over the entire affair, I might be allowed to relieve the costs of the burial. As well as whatever attendant expenditures would be involved. Of course, we must consider their pride, so if you think it appropriate this could be accomplished silently, through a third party. The priest perhaps. Or even yourself, as you must know all the parties affected. Whatever course you think best.”

The magistrate bowed his head over his hands folded upon the ledger. Then raised his head and his clasped hands so his chin rested upon his fingertips. He said, “It would not be an inexpensive proposition. To be done properly.”

Blood said, “I would think not.”

“How much money,” the magistrate asked, “do you think correct?”

“I defer that judgment to you.”

“My expertise is legal, not fiscal.”

“I see,” said Blood. “I myself know nothing of Catholic customs. Would five American dollars in gold be sufficient?”

The magistrate hummed into his fingertips, now up, pressed against his lips.

“But I should sorely hate to offend further than I already have. Perhaps ten would be closer the mark?”

The hum dropped a tone.

“But then again,” Blood said. “The Catholics have a party for the dead, don’t they? A wake. That would be expensive I’d think. And there is the question of a proper burial stone. So might fifteen be a better figure?”

The magistrate finally looked at him. “You have this money, this gold, upon your person?”

“You know I don’t. I already told that officer of yours I carry no money and had no time yesterday morning to bring any away with me. But the girl works for me should be along soon. I instructed her to bring what money I have with her.”

“You have no money?”

“It’s coming I tell you.”

“And where is this girl?” The magistrate glanced around the room as if to discover her.

“She is riding over under the safekeeping of a man I trust. A man of responsibilities. So they undoubtedly got a late start. Even so, they should be here within the hour.”

Hutchinson folded his penknife and put it away and raised his hands one at a time and spread his fingers to inspect his work. Then looked at Blood for the first time throughout this negotiation. He said, “Would that be Emil Chase by chance?”

Blood said, “No. It would not.”

“You’ll not tell me who then?”

“I see no reason to. They’ll be along.”

Hutchinson stood. An awkward sideways struggle up with both his hands on the tabletop. Once up he stepped back from the table, the healed leg swinging out straight from the hip and making a half circle out to the side.

He said, “Has it occurred to you to question how the King’s troopers rode in so easy to a place that cost me men and horses and the better life of my leg in order to bring you here?”

Blood was cautious. “I imagine their letting me be taken served some purpose. I’m tolerated in the Indian Stream but nothing more.”

Hutchinson reached into his vest pocket and drew out a ten dollar gold piece and laid it on the ledger before the magistrate. He said to Blood, “You’re in my debt now.”

Blood addressed the magistrate. “No. I’ll await the girl.”

Hutchinson ignored this. “The girl will not appear. My deal with Chase was that if they would allow you to be taken I’d not ride into their country. I’ve kept that bargain, hard as it was to do.”

Blood said, “I don’t understand you.”

Hutchinson said, “My wording with Chase was carefully chosen. I mentioned only myself and let him believe I spoke for all the New Hampshire authorities. And I’m here. Up in Canada. Attending to you. But this morning at dawn a Captain of the New Hampshire militia led a company of over a hundred men into the Indian Stream with warrants for the two dozen men we could name and orders to repulse all resistance by whatever means. In fact, Blood, you should count yourself lucky to be here. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The magistrate Morris stood now also. The gold piece had disappeared from his ledger page. He said, “I would’ve done better to deal
with this man alone than with you, Hutchinson. But I’m done with you both now. Take your business from my house.”

Beside the hitching rail a single trooper waited. It was not the one who’d allowed Blood to wash himself. He watched Blood and Hutchinson come from the house and then wordless bent and unlocked the manacles from Blood’s ankles and rose and took the irons from his wrists. Then stepped back and faced the two men and made a weak mockery of a salute and turned and walked up the road, the irons dragging from his taut sturdy arm, one of the leg circlets dragging in the dirt as he went.

The two men stood by the rail and the roan horse Blood had recognized earlier. He said, “I thought that horse was dead.”

“The horse that died that day was the colt of this one. I still don’t know what made me ride that young horse up there.” Hutchinson speaking with the self-assurance of a man happy with his undertaking, with the results, almost relaxed.

Blood said, “You’ve killed me surely. You know that, don’t you.”

The sheriff said, “I’m half of a mind to ride over the notch and see what’s left of the place.”

Blood said, “If the girl’s been harmed it will rest on you. Do you understand me?”

“You threaten me again, Blood.”

“No. I speak only the truth.”

Hutchinson put the reins over the horse’s head and slowly led it to a block of granite set into the yard for children and women to mount from. He had to back and steady the horse some time to force it to stand stirrup-side by the block, Hutchinson hopping stiff-legged back and forth. He finally got his good foot into the stirrup and heaved himself across the horse that once the rider came up stood still as the stone. Hutchinson looked down at Blood.

He said, “Would you travel with me Blood? At least part of the way?”

“No.”

“Think man. Away from here, you might attack me. I’m better armed but you’re a resourceful man, are you not? You might find your revenge.”

“That day,” said Blood. “Is not this one.”

Hutchinson smiled. “You ain’t dead yet, are you Blood? That’s a good thing, is how I see it. That’s how little I fear you. But you, you recall you’re in my debt.”

“No,” said Blood. “I’m not.” And stepped forward and with all his freed might struck the horse across the head with his balled fist and the horse wheeled and farted and Blood struck it again on its fat muscled buttocks as the sheriff listed in the saddle. The horse snorted and burst out upon the road where the rider fought to control the horse, fought to turn it south and not north and so the two spun together a moment and then set off, the rider still not in control of the beast.

Blood walked out to stand between the stone gateposts until the horse was gone from sight. Then he began to walk south along the road. Hoping only that he would spot the rough trail that led to the ford and the notch and the land beyond. Telling himself to walk, not think; all thinking at the moment was worry. Put it into your legs, he thought.

Six

They heard them coming, the measured rolling rumble of horses in reined-in canter, the sound in the gray dawn light coming more through the earth than air and they scrambled off the rugged road up a hillside of scrub juniper and cedar where they crouched behind the circles of giant juniper and watched the horsemen pass below. Perhaps twenty men in white and green uniforms with cross belts and high boots riding into the filaments of daylight hazed in cold mist from the stream, the men and horses a bright slash of color made animate, the surging grand horses and the men upright under their black beaver tricorns, the sound some herald drumbeat sent forth onto the land.

The three crouched inert until the dawn smothered the passage of the horsemen and then looked all three one to another.

“What in the world was all that?”

“I’d guess a pile of trouble for somebody,” Fletcher said. Then turned to Sally and said, “Was those the same soldiers come after Blood yesterday?”

“I don’t believe. Those was different uniforms.”

Cooper said, “Other than the Dutchman farmer, what lies upstream from here?”

Sally said, “I ain’t never been up there. But there’s four five others along this way, I know that. Seems like some trappers too, further along.”

“I wonder who that bunch was going for?”

Sally frowned at Cooper. She said, “I don’t know anymore about it than you. We should get on. We’re wasting time setting here.”

Fletcher said, “I ain’t so sure. Maybe we should pause a bit and see if those soldiers come back with someone. Or what happens.”

Cooper said, “Whatever it is, it’s serious. Riding like that this time of day. Those horses was lathered, cool as it is. They been traveling some ways. I say we set tight too.”

Sally said, “Blood idn’t going to take it well I’m late from what he expected. He expects me midday: not earlier, not later.”

Fletcher said, “You don’t have to fret over him.”

“I ain’t fretting. It’s a fact is all. I got to watch after myself.”

“No you don’t.”

Sally said, “Yes I do.”

It was quiet then.

After a bit Cooper said, “Well, might be nothing at all. But Blood, I’d guess he druther see you arrive a bit late than not at all.”