But Arliss couldn’t contain himself any longer. He was too excited to listen to Aidan’s explanation. “Wait till I tell the boys,” he said, then he turned and sprinted up the canyon.
Aidan turned to Dobro. “If you want to pass yourself off as a civilizer, you’ve got to stop talking about the Feechiefen.”
“And you need to know about shaking hands,” Percy added.
“Shaky hands?” Dobro said. “No, thank you. My hands is good and steady, and I aim to keep them that way, whether I’m feechified or civilized.”
“No, Dobro, shaking hands-it’s a civilizer greeting. It’s what we do instead of head butting. If somebody reaches a hand out like this”-Percy extended his right hand-“you grip it nice and firm and give it a shake. Try it.”
Dobro grabbed Percy’s hand and began to shake it violently back and forth, like a terrier shaking a rat.
“No, Dobro, not that way,” Percy yelled, wrenching his hand out of Dobro’s powerful grip. “You’re not supposed to shake the other fellow’s armbone to jelly. Watch how Aidan and I do it.”
But Aidan and Percy never gave their handshaking demonstration. Just then Errol appeared from around the nearest bend in the canyon.
He was running toward the three travelers, and running surprisingly well for a white-haired man in his sixties. Just behind him were Jasper and Brennus. Aidan ran to embrace his father. The old man’s cheeks were wet with joyful tears, and he could barely speak-couldn’t, in fact, say anything but Aidan’s name over and over.
Aidan embraced Brennus and Jasper with all the affection of a long-lost brother, and there were more tears of joy all around. Dobro was so affected by the scene that he, too, began to cry sloppily and loudly.
“Father, this is Dobro Turtlebane,” Aidan began, “the feechie friend I have told you about.”
“You are very welcome to Sinking Canyons, Dobro,” Errol said, extending his right hand. Aidan was afraid for a moment that Dobro would seize his father’s hand and shake his arm out of its socket, but instead he fell on Errol’s neck and buried his face in the older man’s shoulder. “Thank you for them kind words, Mr. Errol,” he sobbed. “Any daddy of Aidan’s is a daddy of mine. And I ain’t had no daddy since the gator down at Devil’s Elbow knocked mine out’n a flatboat and et him-and me no more’n a yearling at the time.”
Percy continued the introductions. “Dobro, this is Brennus, our eldest brother, and Jasper, my twin.” Dobro seized both brothers in a single hug and cried again.
Aidan looked beyond his father and brothers and for the first time realized how many men were living in Sinking Canyons. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, all keeping their distance out of respect for the family reunion. Errol noticed the look of astonishment on Aidan’s face. “Our band of outlaws,” he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “Didn’t Percy tell you?”
Chapter Eleven
Percy didn’t tell me there were so many!” Aidan recognized many of the men, but nearly half were strangers to him. “Who are they?” he asked.
Errol led his sons and Dobro to the clusters of men who had been watching them. “You remember the Greasy Cave boys,” he said.
“Of course,” Aidan answered. “We saw Arliss before. Ernest. Cedric. Clayton.” He shook hands with each in turn. “And Gustus, the foreman.” Gustus gave a toothy grin, then broke into an energetic but tuneless version of the song Aidan had composed for the miner-scouts the night they went down to the caverns beneath Bonifay Plain: Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave, They did not think it odd To make their way beneath the clay, Where human foot had never trod.
The rest of the miners joined on the chorus, improving it only slightly: Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.
“King Darrow got it in his head that you was hiding out in the mines at Greasy Cave,” Gustus said. “Thought your old friends was protecting you, which we would have, if ever you had asked us. So he outlawed us.”
“Every last one of us,” Cedric added.
“Your pap got wind of the outlawing and sent Brennus to fetch those of us what might want to hide out in Sinking Canyons,” Gustus continued. “All five of us from the Bonifay adventure come along, plus another eight.” He gestured at a group of men, short and stocky like the rest of the Greasy Cave boys, who waved bashfully at Aidan.
“Their skills have been invaluable here in the canyons,” Errol remarked. “I don’t know how we would have gotten along without them.
“And then there are the Last Campers.” Errol gestured toward a group of men all clad in buckskin.
“Massey. Floyd.” Aidan shook the men’s hands vigorously. “Do you still do any timber rafting? Hugh. Isom. Big Haze. Little Haze. Chaney. Burl. Cooky, are you cooking for the men here too?”
“Yeah,” the old cook grumbled. “Not that nobody appreciates all the trouble I go to. And it ain’t easy feeding sixty folks,”-he gestured at Aidan and Dobro-“now sixty-two folks, on the stringy deer and skinny possum what live around here.”
“Same old Cooky,” Aidan smiled. “Same old grouchy Cooky.”
“We got outlawed for ‘aiding and abetting a enemy of the king,’” said Massey. “You being the enemy of the king, don’t you know. Just imagine it: I don’t even know what ‘aiding and abetting’ means, but here I am guilty of it. Shows you never do know. But if I got to be outlawed for something, I like the sound of ‘aiding and abetting.’ It’s a sight better than cattle rustling or poaching.”
“Jasper come to fetch us when your pa heard we was outlaws,” said Floyd. “And I don’t mind telling you it’s a heap more fun being in a band of outlaws than outlawing alone.”
“These boys have kept us in meat since they got here,” Errol added. “They can always find us a deer or a wild hog.”
“But nary a alligator,” Massey remarked wistfully.
Errol gestured toward two older men whom Aidan knew very well. “King Darrow outlawed Lord Cleland and Lord Aethelbert and their sons when they protested our being outlawed. We all came to Sinking Canyons together two years ago, along with Ebbe and the field hands.” Ebbe, the stuffy old house servant, bowed to Aidan. He didn’t seem quite so stuffy out here in the wilderness, though his tunic was remarkably well kept. Aidan shook hands with the six field hands he had known all his life.
A lot of familiar faces. But there were still plenty of faces Aidan had never seen before. He was surprised to see a dozen men wearing the same standard-issue blue army tunics he, Percy, and Dobro wore. “Soldiers,” Errol explained. “Scouts, actually. King Darrow sent a half dozen men to track us in the canyons, and when they found us…”
“When you found us, you mean,” laughed one of the scouts.
“When we found them, then,” Errol smiled, “they decided that life among outlaws was better than life in King Darrow’s army.”
But that accounted for only half of the soldiers in the group. “Where did the other half dozen come from?” Aidan asked.
“They’re the search party,” Errol said, smiling. “The ones King Darrow sent out to find the first party.”
“And they deserted too?” Aidan asked.
Errol’s smile faded. “These men are not deserters. They are men of honor. Understand this, Aidan, and do not doubt it: We remain King Darrow’s most loyal subjects. It would have been no loyalty to King Darrow if these soldiers had handed us over to certain death, leaving only time-servers and flatterers in Darrow’s service. No, by disobeying King Darrow’s orders these men have done him a great service, whether the king knows it or not.”
Aidan gave his father a long and watchful look. Errol had always taken a dim view of deserters, had always insisted on unswerving obedience to the king. Was this the same father he had always known, now saying that disobedience to the king was service to the king? Yes, things had changed in the years Aidan had been away.
“And who are they?” Aidan asked, pointing at a tight knot of eight or ten men gathered apart from the rest of the group and talking among themselves.