Chapter 12 #4
Up close it was better made than it had looked. Flat river stone, laid in courses, four feet at the base and tapering, with the gaps chinked with smaller rock.
An hour's work. Maybe two, in February, by somebody with cold hands.
The tomahawk stood in the top course, head driven down between two flat stones, haft vertical.
Tom looked at it for a long time and did not touch it.
Then he walked around behind the cairn, because that is what you do with a thing that has a front, and on the back course, on a flat stone at eye height for a kneeling man, somebody had scratched four lines.
Not with a nail this time. With something harder, cut deep into river rock, which takes an hour by itself.
THE OLD MAN WAS RIGHT ABOUT YOU
I COUNTED 6 AND THE DOG
THE FLATS ARE EMPTY NOW GO THERE IN APRIL
19 AT THE RANCH 4 ARE CHILDREN
Tom read it four times.
Then he sat down in the mud in his own dooryard and read it again.
Kindra came and knelt beside him and read it and did not say anything for a full minute.
"Tom."
"Yeah."
"What is this?"
"I don't know."
"Is it a trap?"
"It might be the best one anybody's ever built."
"Or?"
Tom put his hand flat on the stone.
"Or a man ran out of road," he said.
They sat in the mud and worked through it line by line, out loud, because that was how this family thought and it had kept them alive.
"The old man was right about you," Kindra said. "That's Chip."
"That's Chip. And it's the second time he's said it. Nell heard him say it in October when he put the knife on the shelf."
"So he's telling us he knows we know about Chip."
"He's telling us he knows we found the knife and that Nell got here." Tom traced the letters. "Which means he knows exactly where she went, and he's known since December, and he didn't come after her."
"He didn't come after her because he was coming anyway."
"He was coming in the last week of January," Tom said. "And he came, and he walked into twenty people."
"Second line."
"I counted six and the dog." Tom sat back. "That's an accounting. That's him saying I know the size of your family and I did not get any of you."
"Or he's saying I know there's six and I've only got some of them."
Tom's stomach turned over.
"Say that again."
"Tom, he doesn't say six got away," Kindra said slowly. "He says I counted six and the dog."
They looked at each other.
"Shyla," Tom said.
"He's telling us he knows there's a dog and he's not telling us what happened to her."
"Or the dog's the only one he got."
"Which is a message too."
Tom stood up and walked four steps and stood with his hands on his head.
"Third line," Kindra said. "The flats are empty now, go there in April."
"That's the Tolliver flats. East over the saddle. Three houses, a barn, a hand pump well."
"That's where we sent the Clubmans."
"That's where we sent them, and they never got there, because the orange beard took them in a wash two miles above it." Tom turned around. "And now the flats are empty."
"Empty of who?"
"Empty of Stan-Lar," Tom said. "Kindra, that's what happened here. That's the whole story in one line. Stan-Lar came over to this side with twenty people on the second of February, and he brought most of what he had, and he left his place thin."
"And Wingman."
"And Wingman had four men in the draw at four in the morning and he knew it. He'd been watching for two days. He knew there were trucks downriver on the thirty first of January, because we heard them and he was nine miles closer than we were."
"So he didn't walk into it."
"He walked into it on purpose."
Kindra sat down on the cellar step.
"Say the whole thing," she said.
"He came at ten in the morning in the open with his hands out, exactly the way he always does, because that's what everybody expects him to do," Tom said. "And twenty men who did not belong in this drainage came out into that yard to deal with him."
"And his people were already in position."
"His people were in the draw at four in the morning, above everything, which is the exact thing I assumed was a blocking force meant for us."
Tom's voice had gone flat and fast. "Kindra, they were never after us. There was nobody in this house to block. He knew we'd be gone, he's known since November we'd be gone, he told his own men we'd be gone."
"Then who were the four men in the draw for?"
"For the people who'd be standing in the open in my dooryard at ten in the morning."
Kindra put both hands over her mouth.
"He used us as the bait," she said.
"He used our house as the bait. It's the most valuable property in this valley and everybody wants it and he's the only one who ever figured out that you don't have to own a thing to use it."
"And then he walked away from the flats."
"And then he went east and took the flats while they were empty," Tom said, "because that's what this was always for. He doesn't want a cabin on a bench with one door. He wants three houses and a barn and a hand pump well on flat ground in the sun."
"And he's telling us to come take his leftovers."
Tom read the last line again.
19 AT THE RANCH 4 ARE CHILDREN
"That's not leftovers," he said.
"Then what is it?"
"That's an inventory." He put his hand on the stone. "Kindra, that's the exact number Nell gave us in December. Nineteen. Four children."
"So?"
"So why would he tell us that?"
Kindra did not answer.
"There's only one reason a man tells you how many people are in a building," Tom said.
"Tom."
"There is exactly one reason and I have been turning it over since eleven o'clock this morning and I cannot find a second one."
"Don't say it."
"He's telling us what's there and he's telling us where he isn't," Tom said. "He's telling us that nineteen people are sitting in a ranch nine miles east and that four of them are children, and that he has gone to the flats, and that the flats are empty, and that we should go there in April."
"That's not."
"He left his hatchet in a rock in my dooryard."
Kindra stood up.
"No," she said.
"Kindra."
"No, I've heard enough and I want to go back to my children and I want to think about this for a week before anybody says another word about it."