Bringing Ezra Back (7 page)

I about choked at that, but the crowd grew quiet. Then somebody shouted, “If he's a peddler, where's his pack? Could be the money's there.”

The others grew restless again until Beckwith spoke up. “My pack is in the barn of one of your kind neighbors. You're welcome to go search it. But surely you can see there has been no time for me to go there to hide your money. I'm sorry, folks. You
have
been hornswoggled, but not by us. The boy and I were victims, too. Those two scoundrels who perpetrated the hoax are no doubt on their way to a safe haven they established well ahead of time, and we are left to contemplate our own foolishness.”

This little speech by Beckwith brought grumbles from the crowd, but at least they appeared convinced that Beckwith and I weren't the ones who'd swindled them. The bearded man thrust the leather purse and the cloth pouch into Beckwith's hand. Then he tried to rouse the group to chase after the two showmen, but it seemed most of the anger had given way to embarrassment and chagrin. It looked to me like they just wanted to go home and forget the whole thing. I watched them drift off until it was only Beckwith and me standing in the street.

I made my eyes burn into him until he looked my way. To my astonishment, he
smiled
at me. Then he shrugged and held out the pouch. “It was too easy to pass up, son. No harm done, you agree?”

My voice was cold as I said, “I'm no son to you, so don't call me that. You're nothing like my pa. You're nothing but a low-down crook.”

Beckwith sighed deeply. “Nathan, Nathan. Don't get yourself in a lather over this.”

I could scarcely believe he was talking like
I
was the one acting unreasonable.

“Why, we're lucky to be alive. It was only due to my quick thinking and fast talking that we
are
alive.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “I reckon I'm supposed to forget about you stealing my money and thank you for saving my life, when it was mostly your fool snickering that put us in hot water in the first place?”

There was a moment of silence. Beckwith, seeing that his smiles and shrugs weren't working on me, dropped the wheedling tone. His voice grew impatient. “Nathan, you're not a child; you said as much yourself. In this life, a man has to get what he can, however he can. You can be a lamb or you can be a wolf. Eat or get eaten. Take or get taken.

“If you're as smart as I think you might be, you've learned something tonight. If not”—he shrugged again—“well, like I always say, the wolves never have to look far for an easy meal.”

He picked up his socks and boots and walked off barefoot in the direction of the barn. I stood there for a while, feeling rooted as a willow tree on a riverbank. Finally I leaned down and picked up my hat, brushed it off, and put it back on my head. I was glad to see that Molly's locket was still in one piece after the rough treatment it had gotten. I retied the leather string around my neck, then pulled on my boots and followed Beckwith.

I didn't plan on keeping up company with him. The way I figured it, not only didn't I like him, I didn't need him. I had my gold piece back. I'd be able to move faster without him slowing me down. We'd already made it to western Pennsylvania. I could go around asking about the traveling show myself.

But my pack was in the barn alongside his, and I wasn't about to leave my fiddle for him to sell or give to some other boy to play for the crowds. Besides, there was a good bit of food left back at the barn. I aimed to get me a proper night's sleep and fill up my belly in the morning before parting company with the peddler. A wolf wouldn't pass up the chance for an easy meal, and I didn't aim to be a sheep any longer.

As I walked, I tried to puzzle out everything that had happened. I'd wanted to believe in the Devil-Beast of Borneo, and hadn't wanted to believe Beckwith when he said it would be nothing but a trick. I'd believed Beckwith when he told me Honeywell was a thief, but it turned out Beckwith was a thief and a liar both.

I couldn't seem to get my feet under me when it came to people. Beckwith claimed to read folks like a book, but whenever I tried it, the words got wiggly and I read 'em all wrong.

Pa had sent me out to open my eyes to the whole wide world, and I reckon I had. Far as I could tell, it was full of scoundrels, cheats, and liars.

9

WHEN I GOT BACK
to the barn, Beckwith was wrapping himself in his blanket and settling down for the night. I said to him, “I don't believe I'll be traveling with you anymore, Mr. Beckwith. But before we part company, I'd like to buy one of those Barlow knives you got. I'll pay with my gold coin and you can give me back the difference.”

Beckwith nodded and said, “I'll sell you the Barlow, but I've got to keep my small coins for making change.”

I shook my head and laughed at the gall of the man. “You don't reckon I'm going to give you my whole five dollars for a knife, do you?”

He looked offended and answered, “Of course not.” He spoke as if he'd never think of cheating a body.

“Simply cut off part of your precious coin equal to the value of the knife,” he said.

I'd heard of people doing what he was talking about. Gold was gold; it didn't matter if it was all in one piece or not. But somehow I didn't like the idea of cutting into Mama's coin. I'd wanted to return it whole to Pa. Still, if I was to be out on my own, I'd need the knife. I'd need it to fashion tools, to make snares to capture food, and to cut branches for firewood and roasting spits.

And, after what had happened with the townsfolk that night, I realized how suddenly a person can find himself neck-deep in trouble. I'd need a weapon to protect myself.

“How do you go about making a cut like that?” I asked.

“You figure it the best you can,” Beckwith said. “I've got the tools for it. You can do it yourself, so's you'll be satisfied I'm not cheating you.”

Then he yawned and said, “I reckon it can wait till morning, though.” He gave me his foxy grin and added, “Unless you're figuring on cutting my throat during the night…” He let out a guffaw at that, and I could hear the insult in it, like he knew I'd never do it. He rolled over with another loud yawn and closed his eyes.

He had me pegged for a sheep, but right then I thought I could have wrung his scrawny neck with my bare hands. Instead, I spread out my blanket as far away from him as I could get, slipped the pouch holding Mama's coin into my boot, and lay down on the straw.

Sleep was slow in coming. It didn't matter how many times I told myself I was better off on my own, I was worried about setting out alone. Maybe a thief and a cheat didn't make the best company, but Beckwith
was
company, and the world seemed a large and lonely place to me.

When morning came at last, I made sure to get a bellyful of breakfast. Then Beckwith and I settled down to the matter of the knife. I said I wanted the biggest one he had and he took it from his pack, saying it would cost me an even dollar. He claimed he was giving me a bargain, making the price a nice round number so as to make it easier for me to figure where to cut.

I was about to try and cut into Mama's beautiful, shiny coin with my knife when Beckwith stopped me. “You'll lose gold to shavings that way. Use these.”

He handed me a small hammer and a chisel. I positioned the chisel carefully and hit it with the hammer, taking off what I figured to be a fifth of the coin. Beckwith watched me as I worked, talking the whole while.

“That coin's known as a half eagle. It's soft and easy to cut, bein' gold. Some coins are a lot harder.”

I hated to ruin the pretty pictures it had on it. Beckwith's share was part of a lady's head on one side, and on the other, part of an eagle's wing. When I handed it to him, he pocketed it without making any comment.

Then he reached into his pack, took out a sheath, and gave it to me. “It won't be any good to you wrapped up in your pack,” he said gruffly. “You got to have it where it's handy.”

Then he gave me a couple of eggs he'd boiled up hard that morning. The man was full of surprises. Just when I had him figured for a purebred louse, he had to go and do something nice. It was exasperating, in a way.

“Thanks,” I said grudgingly. I cut a piece off the rope tying my pack together, put it through the loop in the sheath, and hung it from my waist. I liked the way it felt. “I reckon I'll be going now,” I said.

“Safe travels, Nathan. I hope you find your friend and meet with no further mishaps.”

“Safe travels to you, too,” I mumbled. I was feeling confused by his kindness, and I had to remind myself of his lying and thieving ways.

The sun was just coming up in the east and I headed toward it. I walked steady, telling myself how good it was to be traveling without Beckwith slowing me down. I came to a little town that wasn't much more than a general store and a livery stable, and asked around. But no one there had heard of any such show as I described.

I made camp that night by a stream, built myself a fire, and cooked a little ham. It was awful quiet without Beckwith's eternal talk. I was thinking how nice it would be if Duffy and Winston were there, curled up beside me. People were altogether too shifty and unpredictable, whereas a dog was straightforward in its dealings. You could count on a dog.

I was just warming up to this line of thinking when I heard the snap of a twig. I jumped up and reached for my knife, and there stood Beckwith with his foxy grin spread wide across his face. “You'll find it ain't easy to get shed of somebody when you're both traveling by foot and going in the same general direction,” he observed.

“I reckon not,” I said, returning my knife to its sheath. “I heard tell bad luck has a way of showing up. And here you are.”

His grin grew bigger, and I smiled back in spite of myself. “Come on and set,” I said. “Here I was, wishing for four-legged company, and, sure enough, up walks a skunk.”

I was pretty proud of that comment. Beckwith laughed and put down his pack with his usual groaning and carrying-on.

So the peddler and I fell in together again, though I was warier of him than before. We stopped at a few farms along the way to do some peddling, and on the third day we came to a small village. After I'd fiddled and drawn a crowd, I stood back and watched Beckwith work. I had to admire his talent.

Once Beckwith had made his sales, I took out the handbill featuring the show Ezra was part of. “Anybody heard tell of such a thing?” I asked.

It turned out the show had come through town just two days before and folks were still full of talk about it. Never in all their born days, as they told it, had they seen such peculiar sights.

“It was enough to give a body nightmares,” one lady said with a shudder.

My heart began to pound against my rib bones. “Did they still have a man who—who didn't speak?” I asked. “One they called a”—I stopped, hating to say the words—“a White Injun?”

“You mean the savage without a tongue?” a man said. “He's part of it. He's downright creepy, he is.”

“He ain't human,” another man put in.

“Same for all of 'em,” said someone else. “Sent straight from the Devil, the whole bunch of 'em.”

“I heard it was the Devil took that Injun's tongue.”

I wanted to say it
was
a devil who took Ezra's tongue, a savage devil named Weasel. I wanted to say that Ezra was more human than Weasel and plenty of other folks I could point to. But I didn't. Instead I asked, “Where were they headed?”

“South and east toward Vestry,” someone said.

“And after that, to Milltown.”

“You should be able to catch 'em in a day or two or three. They move slow with them wagons, and they might spend two, three days at the same place, long as folks keep coming.”

I'd found Ezra's trail at last.

10

TIME CRAWLED ALONG
slow as a centipede for the next three days, as we traveled to Vestry. Every minute we spent there was an agony to me. While Beckwith peddled his wares, the townsfolk talked about how the show had packed up and left just the day before for Milltown, after staying for two nights' worth of performances.

They marveled at how skinny the human skeleton feller was, and how teeny Little Miss Mary was, and how big the Amazing Amelia was for her age. But what they talked about most was “that wretched soul,” the White Injun who had no tongue. One man said it showed what savages Injuns were.

Beckwith and I moved on, and I had lots of time to think as we made our way eastward. I thought about Weasel and how he was as close to pure evil as a man could be, and more savage than any Indian I'd ever heard of.

Orrin Beckwith was a puzzle. He talked about a man being either a wolf or a sheep, but I didn't think it was that simple when it came to most folks. Why, Beckwith himself had a way of being a wolf one minute and a sheep the next. Besides, even wolf mothers suckled their young, and sheep sometimes trampled one another to death when they got to running scared. Thinking about it near wore me out.

When Beckwith and I finally dragged our sorry, tired selves to the outskirts of Milltown, we saw a handbill on a tree just like the one I'd been carrying in my pack ever since we left home. I'd been pushing Beckwith hard, and we hadn't stopped to rest much the past few days, or to wash up the way we usually tried to do. I reckon we didn't look like much, but what did I care? I was close to Ezra. Soon he and I'd be on our way back to Pa and Molly and the harvest.

“You're twitchy as a sack of wet cats,” Beckwith complained. “You go on to town and find your friend and I'll set up camp here by the river. Then I aim to have me a bath.” He eyed me. “Some would say you should do the same.”