Mending Horses Read online

  With a knot in the pit of his stomach, he guessed who the armless man was and what was liable to happen to him. He’d been run out of enough towns to feel a kinship for the man, criminal or no. And so he ran. Damn, his old body was slow and heavy.

  He was sweating rivers and aching in every joint by the time he staggered into the house. Perspiration fogged his spectacles, and he groped for the rail as he clomped up the stairs. “Eldad!” he tried to holler, but barely had breath to wheeze out something that sounded like “Da-da-da.” It felt as though a giant fist squeezed his chest.

  Nightshirt flapping, Billy dashed out of the bedroom. “Mr. S.! What is it? Are you sick?”

  Jonathan let Billy guide him to a chair and sit him down. Yanking his spectacles off with one hand, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket with the other. He wiped the foggy lenses, then rubbed the cloth over his dripping face. The vise around his chest finally let up enough for him to get real words out. “Get Phizzy. Put his bridle and saddle on. Hurry.” Billy disappeared, bare feet slapping down the stairs and across the floor.

  Jonathan staggered to his feet at the clatter of a door opening. He slipped his spectacles on, bringing the hallway into focus.

  “Jonny, what’s wrong?” Sophie’s candle cast ghoulish shadows on her face and Eldad’s.

  Jonathan gripped Eldad’s shoulder. “Get dressed. Get Aines-worth and as many sober, sensible men as you can find. You’ll need horses. Guns, too, if you have ’em.”

  “My God, what’s happened?” Eldad asked.

  “It’s Chester’s prisoner.”

  Eldad and Sophie exchanged glances. “Escaped?” Eldad said.

  Jonathan shook his head. “He’s out, but it ain’t his own doing. If we don’t hurry, the poor fool might not live to see his trial.”

  It wasn’t bloody fair, Daniel thought. He hadn’t been free long enough to even know how to be free. And now it looked as though he never would.

  The sack they’d thrown over his head reeked of musty dank barns and cellars. The smell drove away any hope of retreating to his safe place. It was gone now, and he’d likely not find it again this side of the grave.

  They’d stripped him naked. He tried to convince himself that was what made him shiver, rather than stark terror. But the churning in his belly betrayed him for a liar. He clenched his abdomen tight with every scrap of will he had left. He’d be damned if he’d let his bladder and bowels give way in front of this lot. They’d bloody well enjoy that, wouldn’t they? No, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him soil and piss himself from fear. His stomach rebelled, tried to drive his last meal up into his throat, where it would be stopped by the rag they’d stuffed in his mouth to silence him. He forced himself to push it all back down and keep it there. He’d be damned, too, if he let himself die that way, choking on his own puke.

  Though maybe that would be better than whatever they had in store for him. He thought of all the cattle and sheep and swine he and Silas had slaughtered and skinned and butchered, how the beasts had come up quiet and trusting until that last moment. Was this how they’d felt before the butchering?

  No. It wouldn’t have been like this at all. Silas had always been careful to stun each beast and slit its throat quickly, so it would feel only a moment’s pain and fear. Daniel was sure it wouldn’t be that way with him. Not with this lot. The butchering would come first, before the killing.

  Chapter Six

  Jonathan’s nostrils twitched at the smell of fire where no fire should have been. He eased Phizzy to a walk, halting in the woods just beyond the reach of fire and torchlight. Not counting the prisoner, there were a dozen men, mostly drunk, he guessed. A keg sat near the fire, and bottles glimmered in some of the men’s hands. Some were armed with sticks, lashes, farm tools, but he saw no guns. A kettle hung from a tripod that straddled the fire. Jonathan shivered as he caught the smell of hot tar.

  The prisoner was naked except for a sack they’d thrown over his head to blind him to their faces. Or perhaps to blind them to his. It was easier to torment a man when you didn’t have to see your own fears in his face.

  No. Not a man, but a boy. The prisoner’s pale bony frame had the unfinished look of a boy just starting his last growth, all knobby bones and hairless skin. They’d put a rope around the boy’s neck and flung the end over a branch to tether him while they tormented him. Their game for the moment was to pelt him with rotten vegetables and fruit, clods of dirt and stones. He staggered in a ragged dance until the rope jerked him upright like a marionette. Jonathan winced as a stone caught the boy in the chest.

  “Well, Phizzy,” he whispered, “at least we ain’t too late.” He drew out Eldad’s ancient pistols. There’d only been enough powder for one shot, if the damned thing worked at all. One pistol for noise and the other for show, and he prayed nobody called his bluff. He knotted the reins and let them fall on Phizzy’s withers. With one pistol in each hand, he gave Phizzy his head and pressed him into a trot, then a canter.

  Phizzy scattered the men and whirled to a stop next to the staggering boy. Jonathan fired the first pistol over the men’s heads. Phizzy let out a bloodcurdling scream and reared, hooves pawing the air. The fire’s glow made the misshapen gelding look like the devil’s own horse. Pride warmed Jonathan’s heart. Phizzy was old, but he still remembered his playacting days.

  “Christ!” one of the men called out.

  Jonathan dropped the discharged pistol and leveled the second one at the crowd. “A fine lot of murderers you are to be calling on the Lord.” Phizzy pawed the ground with his front hooves as if he couldn’t wait to tear into the mob. The men fell back a pace. At Jonathan’s signal, Phizzy bared his teeth and snapped them together with a sharp click.

  The men retreated farther. Two dozen drink-blurred eyes tried to fathom who the strange rider was. The smith solved the puzzle first. “It’s Sophie Taylor’s cousin, that peddler fella.”

  Jonathan focused on the blacksmith, who was no doubt the leader of this pack of idiots. “Who do you think you are, almighty God, to be killing folk outside the law?”

  Fairley said, “We’re only giving him what he deserves: a little tar, a few feathers . . .”

  “It’s better than he gave them folks in—in—” The speaker hesitated. Bleary-eyed, he glanced around for somebody to finish his sentence for him.

  “In where?” Jonathan demanded.

  More than half a dozen towns were named and quarreled over.

  “And what did he do in wherever it was?”

  Arguments broke out over the number of folk the boy had slaughtered and how he’d done it.

  Jonathan edged Phizzy between the prisoner and the crowd. When the gelding’s shoulder brushed the boy’s, Jonathan grabbed the trembling boy’s arm and pulled him closer. “My, my, such a dangerous boy,” Jonathan shouted. “He must’a depopulated half’a New England.” The prisoner tensed as Jonathan’s fingers groped for the noose and eased it loose. “I’m glad to see he didn’t hurt you none. He must weigh all of a hundred pounds.”

  “A small man can be just as dangerous as a big one,” said a brawny ox of a fellow.

  “Seems to me there’s a good lot of small men here.” Jonathan worked the rope free and slipped it from the boy’s neck. He reached for the hood, but the boy collapsed to the ground in a shuddering heap.

  The prisoner’s fall galvanized the mob. With a cry, they surged forward. Jonathan leveled the empty pistol and coaxed Phizzy into another show of snapping teeth and pawing hooves.

  The blacksmith was the only who stood his ground. “What’s he to you, peddler?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “Nothing. Only I hate to see a good man hanged.”

  “Good?” The men repeated the word almost as one, then burst into angry laughter.

  “Good!” Jonathan shouted over the din. “A good man like yourself, Jacob Fairley. Or you, Tom Shelby. Or you, Ezra Stokes. . . .” He named all the men he recognized, watching their eyes go slack and
fearful. A few tugged their hat brims down low over their brows and retreated into the shadows.

  A breeze swirled a puff of white up from a sack in one man’s hand. Feathers drifted about like flies buzzing around a cow’s backside. Jonathan pointed his pistol at the feather-bearer. “If I was you, Abner Bacon, I’d rather face hanging than tell my wife what I done with all them feathers she was saving for her pillows and mattresses.”

  Abner stared sheepishly into the bag, then thrust it behind his back.

  Jacob cackled uneasily. “And why would any of us be hanged?” From the way his eyes wouldn’t meet Jonathan’s, the peddler knew that sense—or fear—had begun to sober him.

  “Well, ain’t that the penalty for murder these days?” Jonathan asked.

  “It’s not murder we’re doing. It’s justice.” The smith pointed a sooty finger at the pale figure quivering behind the gelding’s shaggy legs.

  “Not if you got the wrong fella.”

  “We got the right one,” Jacob said.

  “You do?” Jonathan scratched his chin dubiously. “You seen him do all this robbing and killing? You got some newspapers or handbills telling about it? You got a writ on him?” Phizzy’s ears twitched, and for a moment Jonathan thought he heard thunder.

  The men shuffled their feet and looked away. Jonathan saw a flash of light in the woods behind the men, and he heard the rumble again. Not thunder. Something better.

  “Hell, you can’t even agree what he’s done or where he done it. About the only thing you can agree on is how to kill him.” Jonathan tossed the pistol at Fairley. Reflexively, the blacksmith grabbed the gun before it tumbled to the ground. He held it by the barrel and stared at it as if he didn’t quite know what it was.

  “If it’s killing you want, go ahead, kill him. But you better kill me, too. ’Cause I’ll stand witness against every damn one of you.” Jonathan stood in his stirrups to get a better view of the forest beyond. He pointed over the men’s heads. “And you better kill Chester Ainesworth and Eldad Taylor and all the rest of them sober fellas coming up behind you.”

  A half dozen horsemen burst from the woods. Some of the mob dropped their torches and ran, stumbling over each other in their drunken flight. Abner Bacon flung his sack at the nearest rider. The bag burst open in a spray of feathers. The horsemen had their hands full trying to calm their shying horses, avoid the fallen torches, and prevent the men on the ground from escaping, all the while trying not to drop their own lanterns or fall into the fire in the middle of the clearing. Eldad somehow managed to keep his own mount calm. He drove together several of the men like a flock of sheep.

  Chester leaped down from his horse and pulled off his coat, using it to smother the fallen torches and stamping smaller flames out with his boots. The odors of scorched cloth and leather and burning feathers mingled with the tar- and wood-smoke-laden air. By the time Chester had conquered the fires and reclaimed his gelding, the rest of the horses had settled down, and their riders had herded the remnants of the mob together. Only five remained, trapped in the circle of horses while feathers drifted about them like a freakish snowstorm.

  Chester stomped over to stand toe-to-toe with the blacksmith. The constable’s face was a blend of crimson rage and sooty black splotches. The smoldering coat in his hand wreathed him in a shroud of smoke, so he looked as if he’d just climbed up from the depths of hell.

  “What the devil are you playing at, Jacob?” Chester roared. He jabbed his index finger into Fairley’s chest hard enough to make him wince. Fairley looked ready to jab back, when the wind lifted a cluster of feathers and blew them into the blacksmith’s face, where they stuck to his sweat-dampened cheeks like a ragged beard. Fairley swore and wiped the feathers away. They clung to his fingers and refused to be shaken off. Flicking his wrist in frustrated attempts to shed the feathers, Fairley looked too much of an idiot to lead anyone, and Chester looked too much of a devil to be defied.

  Jonathan dismounted and knelt next to the prisoner. At Jonathan’s touch, the boy squirmed away, kicking frantically. Jonathan grabbed the boy’s shoulders. “It’s all right, son. I ain’t one of them.” The boy settled like a frightened colt, trembling as the peddler untied his hands, then pulled the sack from his head and the gag from his mouth.

  The boy scrambled into the shadows to retch until dry heaves racked his body. When Jonathan laid a hand on his shoulder, the boy jerked away from him.

  Jonathan took a flask from his coat pocket. “Here now, son. This’ll set you straight.” He offered the flask, trying to coax the boy into the light in order to see how badly he’d been hurt.

  The boy shied again. The breeze cast a drift of feathers over him. He shivered when they settled on his body. “I ain’t going to harm you,” Jonathan assured him. He put his hand under the boy’s chin and pressed the bottle to his lips to get him to drink. Their eyes met for a second, then the boy turned away, coughing up the spirits.

  Jonathan’s heart rolled over. “Eldad! For Christ’s sake, bring me a light!” He pulled the boy around to face him, cupping the boy’s cheek in his hand when the lad tried to squirm free.

  Eldad’s lantern revealed a pale, freckled, sharp-featured face, his pupils so wide that his eyes looked nearly black.

  “Dan’l?” Jonathan said. “Dan’l? Son? Do you know me?”

  The boy might have been a wild beast or an idiot child for all the response he made.

  “You know this fella, Jonny?” Eldad asked.

  “I fear I do, Eldad. God help him, I fear I do.”

  Chapter Seven

  “His name’s Daniel Linnehan,” Jonathan said. He took a hefty swallow of Ainesworth’s rum, its warm bite serving as liquid comfort against what he’d seen that night. “He’s bound out to some storekeeper up in Massachusetts. Near’s I can remember, the boy’s got no kin.”

  “Do you know his master’s name?” Chester winced as his wife salved the blisters on his singed hand. Now that the anger had settled out of him, he looked dirty and exhausted and a good decade older than his years. His bloodshot eyes were circled with fatigue and soot and, Jonathan guessed, more than a little guilt over his failure to keep his prisoner safe. Still reeking of smoke, he nursed a mug of rum in one hand while his wife nursed the other.

  If Chester looked the worse for wear, his wife looked the worse for worry. Yet even in a shabby work dress, with her dark hair a-frazzle and her mouth tight with concern, she was a handsome woman. Her brown eyes had an intensity and alertness that were a wonder to Jonathan, given the time of night and how much work the men had brought home to her. She’d tended the boy’s hurts and her husband’s burns while simultaneously conjuring rum and cider and cake for Jonathan and Eldad. But she’d quickly made it clear to the men that the appearance of food and drink didn’t grant them leave to lounge about in idleness. There’d been candles to light, water to be fetched, a fire to be tended, shirts and rags to be gathered, a multitude of orders to be obeyed. She was definitely a woman strong enough to keep a man in his place. Every time she looked his way, Jonathan involuntarily straightened in his chair and tidied his clothes.

  “Mr. Stocking?” Mrs. Ainesworth said. “Who was the boy bound to?”

  Jonathan rubbed his eyes, realizing that his mind had drifted off without answering Chester’s question. “His master?” He scratched his head. Something to do with lying. Lyford? Lyons? “Lyman,” he said finally. “Yes, Lyman.”

  “So that much is true, then,” Mrs. Ainesworth said, glancing toward the shadowy corner of the kitchen where Daniel lay stretched out on the settle.

  Though Jonathan couldn’t see the boy’s face, he guessed that Daniel still stared at the ceiling with the same vacant gaze he’d worn since his rescue. Moving with no more will than a puppet, he’d let Jonathan and Eldad wrap a coat around him, put him on a horse, and bring him to Ainesworth’s house, where he’d sat limp as a rag baby while Mrs. Ainesworth and the men had washed and tended to him and put a clean shirt on him.


  The worst of the boy’s hurts were old ones: scars from beatings across his back and buttocks and legs, scars from something else along his arms and shoulders. Jonathan suppressed a shudder at the thought of so many scars on such a young body, such a young soul. “That boy’s been used hard,” he said.

  “Hard enough to make him do murder?” Chester asked.

  “No,” Jonathan said, though what, indeed, did he know of the boy? He’d seen him all of twice. Still, he’d seen enough to convince him that the boy had a sense of honor—honor enough to spare an old horse’s legs and an old man’s pride by deliberately losing the race Jonathan had challenged him to at their first meeting. But even an honorable man would do murder in his own defense. Or someone else’s.

  “Would he steal a horse?” Chester asked. His wife finished bandaging his left hand. She tugged his sleeve to make him hold out his right.

  Jonathan had forgotten about the stolen horse. “Was it a red mare?”

  Chester nodded and took in a quick breath as his wife dabbed ointment on his knuckles. “A good-looking one, so I’ve heard, though I haven’t seen her myself. She’s still at the blacksmith’s. I was going to fetch her in the morning.”

  “He ran off, then,” Jonathan said softly. “Ran off and took the horse with him.”

  “Maybe not.” Mrs. Ainesworth shot a cryptic glance at her husband.

  Stiffly, Chester started to rise, but his wife patted his forearm to make him sit back down. “I’ll get it, dear,” she said. She ruffled her husband’s dark, wavy hair and kissed him gently on the forehead before taking a candle and leaving the room. She returned with a bundle of papers.

  As he leafed through the papers, Jonathan let out a low whistle. Whatever had freed Daniel from his indenture must have been one step shy of a miracle. “So he’s free, then. And the mare belongs to him.”

  “If those papers are real.” Eldad’s tone warned Jonathan not to get too hopeful.

  Mrs. Ainesworth clicked her tongue impatiently. “That boy’s only what? Fifteen? Sixteen? Would he know enough to write them, never mind forge half a dozen different hands?”