Something on four legs lurched out of the woods. Magnus’ eyes burned, he couldn’t see it clearly for the smoke, but he had the impression of a large animal that was maybe a panther…its flesh brown but blotched and streaked with black, its black head misshapen and unnatural. Foxworth saw it coming and gave a hoarse cry of terror. He tried to get to his feet or get the torch between them, even as the beast reared up on its hind legs, took two strides forward and fell upon him.
Magnus fired his pistol at the thing, but the distance was more than twenty feet and the ball thunked into a tree. He heard the wet sound of flesh being torn. He saw the beast twist its hideous head and come up with a dripping red mass in its jaws. Its face, somehow deformed and monstrous, turned toward Magnus, who for the first time in his life let loose piss into his trousers.
“Kill it! Kill it!” shouted Stamper, crashing back through the woods and lifting his musket to fire. But the beast leapt forward into the thicket, moving not smoothly like a panther but with a strange jerking motion that was like nothing Magnus had ever seen before. Stamper’s musket boomed…too late, the beast had gone into the smoke.
“Foxworth!” Barrows had come back, and Bovie too. They stood over the old man, whose legs still moved in an attempt to escape. Magnus and Stamper joined them, and saw that under the bloodied beard Foxworth’s throat had been ripped open. Foxworth’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he was trying to hold the spurting gore in with both hands. He tried also to speak, but only a harsh rattling came out.
“He’s done!” Bovie backed away, scanning the woods on both sides, his face sweating. He had the musket in one hand and his sword in the other, but fear was his greatest enemy. “He’s done, that thing’s out here with us, he’s done!” His voice sounded near breaking into a sob. “Christ Jesus…save us!” He retreated to where Royce was standing, impassive, his face blank of expression.
Foxworth reached up. Magnus leaned over, took one of the bloody hands and clenched it, and he, Barrows and Stamper watched the old man die.
“Did you see it?” Stamper asked Magnus.
“I saw…I don’t know what it was. A panther, maybe. Big. But…its head…somethin’ was wrong with it. I don’t know.”
“We’ve got to move. Now.” Stamper had seen limbs in the nearby trees starting to catch fire. The wind was still blowing toward the river, sweeping across the grasslands from the northeast, driving the flames before it. “Now,” he repeated, and turned away as Magnus worked his hand free from the dead man’s. Magnus retrieved the torch. Then he backed away also, watching the woods to right and left, not daring to stop to reload the pistol, but thinking that night was going to catch them out here and yet the night could hardly be darker than the day. Still he refused to offer his back to the beast. Finally he had no choice, for the earth was rugged and unforgiving, and here in this brutal wilderness even a giant might fall.
Three
Ball or Blade?
Seventeen
As Matthew, Quinn and the three runaways made their slow progress toward the river, Magnus found himself pushing through the woods beside Griffin Royce. He had reloaded the pistol and kept it in his grip, and he thought that if he really was walking with Sarah’s killer—and it seemed to him so, according to Matthew, Granny Pegg’s story and the cruel ease with which Royce had executed Gunn—then he would stay alert for a musket to be trained on himself, as Royce must realize Magnus shared Matthew’s knowledge. Even so, Magnus couldn’t help but throw the man a little rope with which he might further fashion his own noose.
“Sarah was my friend,” Magnus said, as they moved through the underbrush. Still the smoke pursued them, curling and writhing in the air like the vengeful souls that supposedly haunted this realm. Burning trees crackled at their backs. “I can’t believe she was doin’ anythin’ in that barn but helpin’ Abram learn to read,” he went on, when Royce failed to respond.
“Little you know,” Royce said tersely.
“You ever go into the barn and see for yourself?”
“Muldoon, I don’t want to talk to you, understand?” The hard green eyes took Magnus in and then dismissed him. “That thing out here…and my friend dead, by my hand. Can’t even get his body back for a Christian burial. I don’t want to talk, hear me?”
“I hear,” Magnus replied, pushing a branch out of his face with an elbow as he moved forward, “but still…doesn’t make sense that Abram killed her. Why would he? Like Matthew said…it’s unproven.”
“Gunn saw him standin’ over her body with the knife in his hand. Seems like everybody’s forgettin’ that.”
“Not forgettin’ it,” Magnus pressed on, “it’s just that…seein’ him standin’ over her with a knife is not seein’ him use the knife. He might’ve just picked it up when he came out of the—”
“Muldoon,” said Royce, and the musket’s barrel swung a few more inches toward the black-bearded mountain. Royce’s face was reddening and was further blotched by insect bites. “The black skin ran. If he wasn’t guilty of murder, then why would he run? Why would his blood have stepped in to help him?”
“Too scared to think straight, maybe.”
“Scared of what, if he hadn’t killed Sarah? But tell me this, Muldoon…if he didn’t kill her, who did? Corbett have any ideas about that? And what’s all this about somethin’ he found on her body? What was he doin’, pokin’ around on that girl’s body?”
“Mrs. Kincannon gave him permit,” said Magnus calmly. “And yes, he did find somethin’ of interest.”
“What might that have been?”
“Best he tell you himself—or show you—when we get back.”
Stamper, in the lead just ahead, suddenly called out, “Hold up!” and the others paused. “Here’s where we left Corbett and the girl,” he announced. “Wait a minute…looky here! We’ve got a new trail! Somebody’s draggin’ a leg. Damn me if it don’t look like…three men walkin’ close together. Side-by-side, looks to be. Bovie, you see this?”
“I see it,” Bovie said. “Headin’ toward the river.”
“Three men?” Royce moved forward, past Barrows, to get a look at the wide trail of broken brush. He was no woodsman, but even he could follow a trail this obvious. “The skins? Got Corbett and headin’ back? Why would that be?”
“Don’t know,” said Stamper. “Maybe he talked ’em into givin’ themselves up.”
Magnus took note of Royce’s sudden silence. Royce stared at the ground, as if reading his future in the crushed earth.
“We’ll find out further on,” Stamper said. “Let’s keep movin’, and everybody keep a sharp eye out. No offense meant, Barrows.”
“None taken,” said the other man. “I just want out of this damned hell and back to my wife.” He looked over his shoulder, through the gray smoke, at the fire that was following them and spreading out to burn a wider path. From the heart of the flames a dry wind blew, sending ashes and embers flying and making the fires jump from tree to tree. They had already seen animals—more deer, rabbits and two good-sized brown panthers—fleeing the oncoming conflagration.
They went on at a faster pace, their advance made easier by the trail that had already been broken before them. After another thirty minutes the ground began to become swampy again, indicating the river was near. Gray pools of water stood here and there under the massive gnarled oaks and weeping willow trees, as smoke from the fire behind them coiled in the branches.
“Bootprints over here!” Stamper said, motioning to the prints in the mud. “Five people. One lamed, for sure. Can’t be more than a half-mile ahead.”