“That was the price agreed,” says Squint, real stubborn.
“Which will leave you with a profit of two hundred dollars, near as I reckon. Once that wealthy pal of Marston’s pays to keep his precious son out of the army.”
“It’ll take me months to collect,” whines Squint. “Till then I’m out of pocket.”
“But you will collect, eventual,” Witham insists. “Not a bad turn of profit, for a fifty-dollar investment.”
“He’s my kin,” says Squint. “So I get the lion’s share. That’s only fair.”
Corny laughs and thumps his jug on the floor.
“Oh, Squint, you are a devil! Lucky for you the boy is so innocent. He’ll be under fire before he realizes he wasn’t sworn legal, and that the draft ain’t even gone into legal effect yet. That was mighty smart, saying he was twenty.”
“He could be twenty,” Squint whines. “Look at the size of him. And besides that, boys younger than him have volunteered. Younger boys have lied about their true age and enlisted. Why shouldn’t he?”
What they’re saying makes me mad enough to spit, if my throat wasn’t so dry. I heard the men at the dry-goods store talking about the new conscription law. According to the law, a rich man can hire a poor one to be his substitute, and die in his place if need be.
That’s what Squint done with Harold, sold him like a slave for two hundred and fifty dollars, even though he’s white and supposed to be free. Even though the draft ain’t even happened yet, not legal according to Corny. So the oath Harold took don’t count, because it came from a lie.
Soon as I hear that, I know what needs doing.
I have to run away from Pine Swamp, Maine, and Squinton Leach and his wretched farm, and find my brother and save him from the war, before it’s too late.
YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF a locked-up root cellar, think like a mole.
While Squint and Corny are busy jawing, I take a spindle from a busted-up chair and start digging around the stonework. Don’t take long to loosen up a stone, and then use the spindle for a lever and pry it out of the foundation. The stone makes a pretty good thud when it hits the dirt floor, but Corny’s telling his story about the worm and Squint is laughing like a dog that swallowed its bark and they don’t hear nobody but themselves.
Then I’m digging with both hands, pulling away little rocks and clumps of earth. Clawing up through the dirt, quick as I can. Being mad at Squint and worried for Harold makes me dig faster.
The good thing about being small, I don’t need much room to get through, and no more than an hour passes before I pop up beside the house with a nose full of dirt and my eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
That’s exactly when Corny comes out the door, singing at the top of his lungs. I just have time to scoot behind a pile of stacked firewood and hunker down as he staggers into the yard.
“‘No longer delay, love, I’m waiting for thee!’” he bellows, “‘The moon in her beauty is beaming on me!’”
His voice is bad enough to crack the moon, but that doesn’t stop him. Smells bad, too, stinking of whiskey and filth — he’s that close. Drink has made him half blind, I guess, because he never sees me, but goes on his merry way, letting his boots find the ruts of the pathway home. Heading north, more or less, still singing about maidens and moonlight. Hard to know who’s leading who, Corny or his packhorse that knows the way home.
Then Squint ambles out to the porch and my heart jumps into my throat. Figure he’s going around to the bulkhead to check for me in the root cellar, but all he does is scratch his belly and yawn like he hasn’t slept in a thousand years, and then he goes back inside.
Minute later the lantern dims and the house goes dark.
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE TYKE the dark scared me something awful, and Harold used to sit with me until I finally fell asleep. Might take ten minutes, might take an hour, but he never complained or made me feel stupid for being afraid. Said it was what our Dear Mother would have wanted, and he was glad of the chance to oblige.
Dark doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but I can’t say it pleases me, neither. In the dark I feel the eyes of the forest upon me, and it keeps my heart thumping so hard and fast my ears are hot. Part of me wants to crawl back into the cellar and hide, but I know there’s no turning back.
After a while old Squint commences to snore, which he does so loud and fruitful you could hear it in the next county, never mind from behind the woodpile.
It’s now or never, so I get up from behind the woodpile and head for the paddock where Squint left the horse.
The way I figure, our Dear Mother would want me to save Harold from getting killed in the war, just like she wanted him to keep me from being scared of the dark. Can’t catch up to him on foot, so it stands to reason she’d want me to take Bob the horse even if some folks might consider it stealing. Fact is, old Bob came to Squint as part of my mother’s estate, so I have a prior attachment, even if it’s not exactly legal.
Bob doesn’t mind. He comes over and nuzzles at my hand, soon as I duck into the paddock. Always does that, even though I never once had an apple or a lump of sugar to give him. Could be he recognizes my smell, or maybe he just likes the company.
“Hey, Bob,” I whisper. “Want to go for a walk tonight? Good horse. Shush. Easy now.”
Squint left the bridle on him and the only saddle the horse has ever known is an old blanket, so it doesn’t take but a moment to lead him out of the paddock and away from the house. Seems like we’re making a dreadful racket, with clattering hooves and me tripping over rocks and such, and that we’ll wake the dead and Squint, too.
He never does awaken, and by the time me and Bob get over the first hill the moon is down and the dark of the world is all around us. A few stars show through the racing clouds, and that’s enough to point me south, and follow in my brother’s footsteps, even if I can’t exactly see ’em.
Figure to get as many miles away as possible before the sun rises. Squint is sure to follow, if only to get back his horse, and this time he really will have murder in mind.
YOU PROBABLY ALREADY know this, but horses don’t like to go places at night, any more than sensible folks do. A horse has his patterns and his habits, and night is for standing around and sleeping. For a while Bob keeps trying to turn back, his eyes rolling white and fearful, but he doesn’t fight me too much, all things considered.
“Good horse,” I keep telling him. Mostly so I can hear the sound of my own voice, because the forest has a way of creaking and groaning that puts a lump of nothing in my stomach.
It’s only the tall trees, I keep telling myself. The pine and spruce and hackmatack moving in the wind. The way their long boughs brush like fingers, and make a sighing you can feel deep in your bones.
“Good horse,” I say. “Good horse.”
It’s not like we’re moving fast. Bob’s old and slow, and besides, even a young horse can’t run in the dark or he’ll break a leg for sure. Has to see the ground or he doesn’t feel connected.
I walk Bob for miles, and then skinny up onto his back and let him walk me for a while. Under the night shadows of the mighty trees, finding our path through the blind darkness, me and that good old horse.
All the time Harold is in my mind, how he must have marched and marched with the stick on his shoulder and the whiskey sergeant shouting orders. Does it scare him to be that far from home? Does he know I might follow? Do his feet hurt? Then I get to fussing that bears might get him, black bears as big as boulders, and it makes me so fearful that the shadows start to look like hungry bears, and the spruce branches are the bears’ long teeth, snapping at us from behind.
Bob the horse, he knows I’m afraid and that makes him afraid, too, and he starts to pick up the pace.
“Whoa, now, hold!”
I pull back on the reins but the horse won’t stop. He’s got an idea in his head and the idea is to run away from the darkness and the shadows. Run until he gets to daylight and can see the world ag
ain.
All I can do is hang on, clinging to his thick neck. Branches whipping all around us, so close I can smell the pine needles. The horse snorting with fear and shaking his head to keep clear of the reins. Running blind at a full gallop, trusting his hooves to find the way. Not caring what the next step brings.
Figure any second he’ll trip and break a leg and I’ll go flying and crack my skull on the trees or the rocks, and that will be the end of my adventure. But just as fast as he bolted, Bob starts to slow down. He’s run out of oats and remembered how old he is, and that he can’t run that fast no more, and he’s heaving and gasping and snorting up a lather.
Got to rest the horse or he’ll die on me, for certain. Poor old thing is shaking, he’s so wrung out, and making funny little noises deep in his throat that mean he’s still plenty scared.
Me, too. Because I can hear something in the dark that shouldn’t be there. Voices. Folks talking. Two men, sounds like. One of ’em low and rumbly so the words are muffled, but the other voice, the one that’s doing all the telling, that voice is clear as a bell.
“Kill that son of a bee,” it says. “Kill him while we got the chance.”
“IF WE KILL HIM NOW, we never get our money.”
“Come on, Stink. Why’d you want to spoil all my fun? You know we got to dispatch him eventual.”
“Back away afore I lose my temper, Smelt. Ain’t you got no sense?”
Stink and Smelt. Pair of cold-blooded killers arguing in the woods, close enough to hear my heart beating. To make matters worse, the night is fading fast. Never thought I’d want the dark to last longer, but times like this, the light of day will catch me sure as Christmas.
What gives me away isn’t daylight, though. It’s Bob the horse, deciding to whinny.
“Hold on! You hear that?”
A moment later a big man comes crashing out of the spruce trees and catches me trying to hide behind the horse. The big man is missing an eyeball that’s got an empty socket, but apparently he can see me fine with his one good eye.
“Step away from that nag, boy!”
Before I can move an inch the big man picks me off the ground and holds me up like a sack of beans. Gives me a shake and bellows, “You spyin’ for the judge, boy? He send you out here?”
Once in the heat of summer an old rooster got up in the hay and died, and Harold and me thought it was the worst smell ever, but that’s before I made the acquaintance of Stink Mullins. Every part of him smells of rot. His black teeth, his scabby eye socket, his crusty beard, all of it makes a sick hog’s fart smell sweet by comparison.
Odor so overpowering I can’t hardly breathe, let alone defend myself against the charge of being a spy for the judge. What judge? What spy? Have I got to the war already?
“Huh? What do you say, boy?”
Before I can answer he drops me to the ground and all the air woofs out of me.
“What’s this?”
The other man, the one called Smelt, is a whole lot smaller and skinnier and less fragrant, but he’s got all the charm of an energetic weasel. There he is, circling around as if he’s looking for a place to bite. When he prods me with a boot I grab hold of his foot, to stop him from kicking.
He snarls and shakes me off.
“Where’d he come from?” he wants to know.
“Where you from, boy?” Stink demands.
When I get my breath back I tell him the general area, without mentioning Squint or his farm, in case he’s already raised an alarm.
“In the area of Pine Swamp, is that right?” Stink says.
“Near abouts,” I admit. “That’s the closest town.”
“Then the judge sent you, like I figured.”
“Nobody sent me,” I tell him. “I’m just lost in the woods, is all.”
“He’s lyin’,” says Smelt, crouching down to look me in the eye. “You the judge’s boy, that’s who you are.”
“I’m Homer Figg. Let go my ear. It hurts.”
Both men laugh.
“Ear won’t hurt none when we cut it off,” says Smelt, reaching for his knife.
“Hold now,” Stink says. “The boy can’t hear us with an ear off.”
“Let me take his tongue,” Smelt insists. “Can’t lie if he ain’t got no tongue.”
“Homer Figg,” Stinks says, rubbing at his beard. “Figg, Figg, Figg. Wait now. I knew a Henry Figg once. He kin of yours?”
“My father,” I tell him.
Stink sneers at me. His smelly breath makes my eyes water worse than a moldy onion. “Is that right?” he says. “If he really was your kin then I expect you’ll know how he died.”
“Died of a felled tree,” I say.
“Never liked the man,” Stink says, satisfied. “Thought he knew everything, but he didn’t know that tree, did he?”
Stink carries me through the woods to where they’ve built a lean-to shelter out of spruce boughs. There’s a man inside, trussed up like a hog, his head covered with a burlap flour sack.
“Best tie him up, too.”
Smelt lashes my wrists and ankles with a rawhide strip while Stink collects Bob the horse.
The man with the sack on his head moans and tries to work himself free. Smelt kicks him, and the man goes silent, as if holding himself still inside.
“That’s better,” Smelt says to the man with the sack on his head. “You stay quiet as a mouse, maybe you’ll live to see the sun come up. Which is any minute now.”
Smelt turns his attention to me. Crouches down, grinning. He’s only got one tooth and he keeps touching it with his tongue while he studies me, like a toad studies a fly. “If you’re really from Pine Swamp, I expect you know the local judge, Mr. J. T. Marston.”
“Course I know him. He sold my brother into the army.”
Smelt’s hard little eyes brighten like bits of black glass. “Hmm. Sounds like somethin’ J. T. would do,” he says, rubbing at his jaw. “The judge’d sell his own mother for a barrel of sour pickles.”
“Please let me go,” I beg, trying to sound pitiful, which isn’t too hard under the circumstances.
“Why’d I do that?” Smelt wants to know.
“Let me go and I’ll see that you are amply rewarded. My rich uncle will pay you a hundred in gold.”
Smelt likes the idea. “You got a rich uncle, do you? How rich?”
“Richest man in Maine. Owns all the trees in three counties, and most of the grass. Owns his own railroad, and all the cars and engines. A hundred in gold is nothing to him.”
“Uh-huh. And what exactly are you doing out here in these woods your rich uncle owns?”
“I’ve got to find my brother afore he gets killed in the war.”
Smelt finds that amusing. “You and your rich uncle gonna buy him out of the Union Army, are you? I checked your pockets, boy. You ain’t got no money. Not one red cent. You don’t have a saddle and you don’t have shoes. All you had was an old nag ain’t hardly good enough for glue. And we aim to keep that horse, for the trouble you caused us.”
“That makes you a horse thief,” I tell him.
Smelt slaps my face. Not too hard, just enough to make me cringe. “Watch what you call a man! Horse thieves are for hanging. Call me a thief, but have you got any papers to prove you own that bag of bones?”
“Yes, sir. Piles of papers. Deeds and bills of sale and proof of ownership.”
“Hid them in the woods, I suppose, all those papers?”
“No, sir. Left ’em in the safe in my uncle’s bank.”
“Uh-huh. You’re a pretty fair liar, ain’t you, boy? Look me in the eye and tell me you really got papers.”
I look him in the eye and say, “I’ve got papers. It’s my horse, fair and legal.”
“Hmm. That’s good. Average man might believe you, but I expect you stole that nag from some poor farmer.”
“No, sir! It was my father’s horse, and left to my Dear Mother until she died. It should belong to me and my brother.”
/> Smelt nods to himself, like he knew I was fibbing all along. “‘Should be’ is a different thing than ‘is.’ Forget the horse, boy. Figure how you can be useful. That’s what’ll keep you alive.” Stink comes into the lean-to holding his hand that’s bleeding.
“Horse took a bite out of me,” he announces, sounding surprised.
“What’d you do?” Smelt wants to know.
“I bit him back.”
“You want to be careful, Stink, biting on a horse. It’s bad for your teeth.”
“That how you lost yours?” Stink asks, sneering.
But Smelt ignores him and licks his one remaining tooth, as if deep in thought. “Whilst you was biting horses, I come upon an idea,” he says. “I think there’s a way we can use this boy.”
“Use him? He ain’t hardly big enough to dig his own grave.”
“No,” says Smelt, “but he’s a prodigious good liar. Ain’t you, Homer Figg?”
Comes to me that I better tell the truth, or they’ll find a way to make me dig my own grave.
“Yes, sir,” I admit. “I’m a real good liar.”
I ONCE TOLD PARSON REED of the Pine Swamp Congregational Church that my mother and father were not dead, but away visiting Queen Victoria, and that they would soon be sending for me and Harold. The parson was powerfully impressed that a boy of five knew the queen by name, and even more impressed when I explained that my father had been hired to fell all the trees in England, and that the task would take no more than a week. The parson said he’d not been aware that so few trees remained in the British Empire, and I explained that my father could fell a tree with one swing of his ax, and could therefore lay an entire forest down in an hour or so, depending on his mood. And while my father was laying waste to the forests my mother was busy in the royal palace, teaching the queen how to spell.
When Parson Reed said it was a great surprise to learn the queen could not spell, I explained that until recently kings and queens had no need of spelling or reading, because servants did it for them, and the parson remarked that I had a surprising knowledge of the world for a child of my age, or any age for that matter.