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He might have missed Peter Cosington and Ernie Marchly anyway, if Baldy Anderson, one of Tree's big farmers, hadn't stopped by the pair's storing shed to chat as they hitched their mules and prepared for the day. The three men listened to his story in grim silence, and when Tim finally stumbled to a halt, telling them his mother was still blind this morning, Square Peter gripped Tim by the upper arms and said, "Count on us, boy. We'll rouse every ax-man in town, those who work the blossies as well as those who go up the Ironwood. There'll be no cutting in the forest today."
Anderson said, "And I'll send my boys around to the farmers. To Destry and to the sawmill, as well."
"What about the constable?" Slow Ernie asked, a trifle nervously.
Anderson dipped his head, spat between his boots, and wiped his chin with the heel of his hand. "Gone up Tavares way, I hear, either looking for poachers or visiting the woman he keeps up there. Makes no difference. Howard Tasley en't never been worth a fart in a high wind. We'll do the job ourselves, and have Kells jugged by the time he comes back."
"With a pair of broken arms, if he kicks up rough," Cosington added. "He's never been able to hold his drink or his temper. He was all right when he had Jack Ross to rein 'im in, but look what it's come to! Nell Ross beaten blind! Big Kells always kept a warm eye for her, and the only one who didn't know it was--"
Anderson hushed him with an elbow, then turned to Tim, bending forward with his hands on his knees, for he was tallish. "'Twas the Covenant Man who found your da's corse?"
"Aye."
"And you saw the body yourself."
Tim's eyes filled, but his voice was steady enough. "Aye, so I did."
"On our stake," Slow Ernie said. "T'back of one of our stubs. The one where the pooky's set up housekeeping."
"Aye."
"I could kill him just for that," Cosington said, "but we'll bring him alive if we can. Ernie, you n me'd best ride up there and bring back the . . . you know, remains . . . before we get in on the search. Baldy, can you get the word around on your own?"
"Aye. We'll gather at the mercantile. Keep a good eye out along the Ironwood Trail as you go, boys, but my best guess is that we'll find the booger in town, laid up drunk." And, more to himself than to the others: "I never believed that dragon story."
"Start behind Gitty's," Slow Ernie said. "He's slept it off there more than once."
"So we will." Baldy Anderson looked up at the sky. "I don't care much for this weather, tell ya true. It's too warm for Wide Earth. I hope it don't bring a storm, and I hope to gods it don't bring a starkblast. That'd cap everything. Wouldn't be none of us able to pay the Covenant Man when he comes next year. Although if it's true what the boy says, he's turned a bad apple out of the basket and done us a service."
He didn't do my mama one, Tim thought. If he hadn't given me that key, and if I hadn't used it, she'd still have her sight.
"Go on home now," Marchly said to Tim. He spoke kindly, but in a tone that brooked no argument. "Stop by my house on the way, do ya, and tell my wife there's ladies wanted at yours. Widow Smack must need to go home and rest, for she's neither young nor well. Also . . ." He sighed. "Tell her they'll be wanted at Stokes's burying parlor later on."
This time Tim had taken Misty, and she was the one who had to stop and nibble at every bush. By the time he got home, two wagons and a pony-trap had passed him, each carrying a pair of women eager to help his mother in her time of hurt and trouble.
He had no more than stabled Misty next to Bitsy before Ada Cosington was on the porch, telling him he was needed to drive the Widow Smack home. "You can use my pony-trap. Go gentle where there's ruts, for the poor woman's fair done up."
"Has she got her shakes, sai?"
"Nay, I think the poor thing's too tired to shake. She was here when she was most needed, and may have saved your mama's life. Never forget that."
"Can my mother see again? Even a little?"
Tim knew the answer from sai Cosington's face before she opened her mouth. "Not yet, son. You must pray."
Tim thought of telling her what his father had sometimes said: Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it. In the end, he kept silent.
It was a slow trip to the Widow's house with her little burro tied to the back of Ada Cosington's pony-trap. The unseasonable heat continued, and the sweet-sour breezes that usually blew from the Endless Forest had fallen still. The Widow tried to say cheerful things about Nell, but soon gave up; Tim supposed they sounded as false to her ears as they did to his own. Halfway up the high street, he heard a thick gurgling sound from his right. He looked around, startled, then relaxed. The Widow had fallen asleep with her chin resting on her birdlike chest. The hem of her veil lay in her lap.
When they reached her house on the outskirts of the village, he offered to see her inside. "Nay, only help me up the steps and after that I'll be fine-o. I want tea with honey and then my bed, for I'm that tired. You need to be with your mother now, Tim. I know half the ladies in town will be there by the time you get back, but it's you she needs."
For the first time in the five years he'd had her as a schoolteacher, she gave Tim a hug. It was dry and fierce. He could feel her body thrumming beneath her dress. She wasn't too tired to shake after all, it seemed. Nor too tired to give comfort to a boy--a tired, angry, deeply confused boy--who badly needed it.
"Go to her. And stay away from that dark man, should he appear to thee. He's made of lies from boots to crown, and his gospels bring nothing but tears."
On his way back down the high street, he encountered Straw Willem and his brother, Hunter (known as Spot Hunter for his freckles), riding to meet the posse, which had gone out Tree Road. "They mean to search every stake and stub on the Ironwood," Spot Hunter said excitedly. "We'll find him."
The posse hadn't found Kells in town after all, it seemed. Tim had a feeling they'd not find him along the Iron, either. There was no basis for the feeling, but it was strong. So was his feeling that the Covenant Man hadn't finished with him yet. The man in the black cloak had had some of his fun . . . but not all of it.
His mother was sleeping, but woke when Ada Cosington ushered him in. The other ladies sat about in the main room, but they had not been idle while Tim was away. The pantry had been mysteriously stocked--every shelf groaned with bottles and sacks--and although Nell was a fine country housekeeper, Tim had never seen the place looking so snick. Even the overhead beams had been scrubbed clean of woodsmoke.
Every trace of Bern Kells had been removed. The awful trunk had been banished to beneath the back porch stoop, to keep company with the spiders, fieldmice, and moortoads.
"Tim?" And when he put his hands in Nell's, which were reaching out, she sighed with relief. "All right?"
"Aye, Mama, passing fine." This was a lie, and they both knew it.
"We knew he was dead, didn't we? But it's no comfort. It's as if he's been killed all over again." Tears began to spill from her sightless eyes. Tim cried, himself, but managed to do it silently. Hearing him sob would do her no good. "They'll bring him to the little burying parlor Stokes keeps out behind his smithy. Most of these kind ladies will go to him there, to do the fitting things, but will you go to him first, Timmy? Will you take him your love and all of mine? For I can't. The man I was fool enough to marry has lamed me so badly I can hardly walk . . . and of course I can't see anything. What a ka-mai I turned out to be, and what a price we've paid!"
"Hush. I love you, Mama. Of course I'll go."
But because there was time, he went first to the barn (there were far too many women in the cottage for his taste) and made a jackleg bed with hay and an old mule blanket. He fell asleep almost at once. He was awakened around three of the clock by Square Peter, who held his hat clasped to his breast and wore an expression of sad solemnity.
Tim sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Have you found Kells?"
"Nay, lad, but we've found your father, and brought him back to town. Your mother says you'll pay respects for the
both of you. Does she say true?"
"Aye, yes." Tim stood up, brushing hay from his pants and shirt. He felt ashamed to have been caught sleeping, but his rest the previous night had been thin, and haunted by bad dreams.
"Come, then. We'll take my wagon."
The burying parlor behind the smithy was the closest thing the town had to a mortuary in a time when most country folk preferred to see to their own dead, interring them on their own land with a wooden cross or a slab of roughly carved stone to mark the grave. Dustin Stokes--inevitably known as Hot Stokes--stood outside the door, wearing white cotton pants instead of his usual leathers. Over them billowed a vast white shirt, falling all the way to the knees so it looked almost like a dress.
Looking at him, Tim remembered it was customary to wear white for the dead. He understood everything in that moment, realizing the truth in a way that not even looking at his father's open-eyed corse in running water had been able to make him realize it, and his knees loosened.
Square Peter bore him up with a strong hand. "Can'ee do it, lad? If'ee can't, there's no shame. He was your da', and I know you loved him well. We all did."
