We’re even kinda glad to cross into Tennessee but that only shown how little we knowed I guess. We’re soon a day in and we’re beginning to wonder how much of a cook Elijah Magan is. Wondering will there be beds or straw. Either way we’re thinking it will be nice to have this sitting on mules business over. We ain’t just got Trooper’s Back we got Trooper’s Leg, and Arse too. Never once has Winona complained and she’s been a meal for mosquitoes and I never seen a nose so red and raw from cold. You could think she relishes the journey.
Well we’re just ambling along when these four dark-suited men appeared on the road. Early evening and there’s just the black trees and the ten million acres of red sky. December twilights seem made for apparitions. Here are some. Seemed to come up sideways from the bushes out of nowhere. Quiet boys with good horses. Got glistening coats. Boys theyselves not rough neither, sorta well turned out but maybe was sleeping in the wilderness a while. One of them has a short light-blue jacket under his bear cloak. Looks like bear anyhow. They all got hats of not too large vintage and all in all they present a familiar military aspect. But they ain’t soldiers exactly. The man with the Rebel jacket badly hid he also got black whiskers hanging down and a black beard in a cone. Looks like a half-dressed colonel. The horses stamp a bit in the margin of the road and huff out big flosses of steam and go huff the way a horse is ordained by God to do. Each man has a decent rifle at half arms of the sort Starling Carlton envies. Looks like Spencers. We only got a musket behind John Cole’s leg. Lucky I ain’t got too far to go in that skirt to fetch the pistol if needs be. John Cole already drawn his pistol from his belt and has it laid easy and friendly you might say across the mule’s mane. Like it lived there sometimes. Normal. The whiskered man laughs and nods at us. The other three faces stare, looking us over, trying to understand Winona maybe, the way all white men do. Where you heading? says Colonel Whiskers. John Cole don’t reply, he only just cocks his gun as if he were scratching his finger with it. Where you heading? he says again. Paris, says John Cole. You’ve a ways to go yet, says the dark man. I know, says John. This your woman? says another of the men, a smaller, hungrier-looking individual, with a patch on one eye. He got about two dark hairs falling from his hatbrim. He looks dirtier than the other three. Then there’s a fat man as heavy as Starling Carlton but with a handsome visage. The fourth man’s hat is sitting on a froth of russet hair. Mr Patch asks his question patiently again but John Cole has decided he don’t want to answer that one. You Northerners? the red-headed fella says. I guess so. Guess they’re Blue-bellies, wouldn’t you say? Now he’s asking this question of his companion Colonel Whiskers. I don’t doubt it, says the colonel, pleasantly. That pleasant tone ain’t good, we know. Trouble is, them Spencers. John Cole got one bullet for someone and I’ve got another. Maybe while I’m killing someone John Cole can get the musket up and then that’s a third. If we ain’t just dead as crows by then. It would all have to be done so quick. But they won’t be expecting a wife to fire maybe. Anyhow something must be done because we know clear as the Latin mass that they going to do more than ask questions. It sure was nice talking to you, says John Cole, as if he were intending to spur his mule on. What you got on the pack mule, friend? says the colonel. Just clothes and such, says John. You got gold maybe? he says, as simple as a child. John laughs, we ain’t got gold. Union dollars? No, not even, says John Cole. Well, we don’t tolerate no beggars in this county, says the colonel. Then no one says not a thing. The horses snort and their breath blooms. A fitful wind plucks at the leafless bushes. A robin flies down onto the track in front of the men as if he was hoping the hooves had turned up grubs. A robin is a quick-eyed bird. The robin is the labourer’s friend. Just in the moment I’m spotting the robin John Cole decides it’s time to fire his gun. Two of the horses heave back in surprise and a degree of terror. The bullet tears into the colonel’s right hand and God knows where then and I ain’t thinking much about that but fetch into my skirts and draw the pistol and try my damnedest to put the ball into the patch on that other man’s eye. It’s a good target anyhow and I can’t have missed by much because the man drops from his horse as if dispatched from a scaffold. Then John Cole fires the musket at Mr Red. All this in three seconds and both the red-haired man and the colonel get off shots but I don’t know where they go in the ruckus. Don’t reckon they thought John Cole would fire so reckless. Me neither, but here we are now. The colonel has fallen from his horse because I reckon that bullet went on through his hand. Mr Red looks dead enough and the man with the patch got a bullet somewhere. That leaves only the fat man and he fires in the same hand of seconds but a bullet hits him too so as I think for a moment one of our mules must have a gun. No it ain’t a mule it’s Winona. She got a little lady’s pistol all squared and pointed and she just fired it at the fat man and he just fired at her. Little Dillinger gun with a bullet you wouldn’t think would kill salt. She goes back off her mule like a branch struck her in a gallop. The Lord Christ I leap down and throw her up with John and remount myself in a flurry of skirts and we kick on our mules with fearsome desire. The colonel sits against the gravel bank and stares like he been assaulted by the Holy Family. On by we rush and thank God for mules that will run when bid. We never asked them to move quicker than a trot the whole way from Grand Rapids and now we ask them to be gazelles. They oblige, by God, the pack mule and riderless animal deciding it were best to come with us.
Somehow we expecting pursuit and capture so we keep those mules a-clattering on as best our spurs can urge them. The terror in our hearts. John Cole has one hand driving on and the other arm is holding round Winona. Some two miles on the mules is almost beat and by chance then we reach a decent wood and don’t mind how we canter in and blood our legs and hands with brambles. In a clearing then we tie the mules. It’s gotten real dark. John Cole bids me reload the guns in case we’re catched and he lays Winona on the frozen ground just like you would a corpse. He expecting it’s her corpse. Her eyes fast closed. He could bear all the deaths in the world but not this one death. He sees where the bullet torn her dress and he pulls the rip bigger. He’s looking for the hole in her skin so he can tend it somehow. The twilight’s agin him. He seen ten thousand bullet holes but never in Winona. Face blank as night too with sleep. She look so dead but she ain’t since you can see her breath rising. He shakes his head. There ain’t no sign, he says. We got to save her. She all we got, we got to save her. He’s gotten the top of the dress open now. Then he seen the gold coins that Miss Dinwiddie sewed and there’s one with a savage dent. God Almighty, he says. God Almighty.