Chapter 14 #3
"Who's Cass?"
"He's fifteen," June said. "And he's the reason there's been meat in your tree since the twentieth."
"Start at the beginning," Kindra said.
"That is the beginning."
"Then start further back. Who is he?"
June shifted the baby and fed the fire.
"Cass Tunny. He came to the ranch in August with his mother and she died in October of the same thing that took the man with the teeth." She rubbed her face. "He's fifteen and he's small for it and he's the only one of us who ever went out."
"Went out where?"
"Trapping." June looked up. "That's the whole of it. Wallace put him on rabbits in September because he said a boy that size eats less than he brings in, and Cass learned it off a man who came through in the summer with rabbits and talked too much."
Kindra sat very still.
"Chip Charter taught that boy to trap," she said.
"I don't know his name. There was a fella with two pistols and a beard and he came twice."
"Chip Charter."
"Then yes. Cass followed him around both times like a dog and asked him about four hundred questions." June almost smiled. "And the man answered every one. Every single one. Cass told me about it all winter. He said nobody had ever answered him before."
Kindra put her hands over her face for a second.
"Are you all right?"
"He was in my house for eleven days," Kindra said. "He came up that river and he insulted me inside two minutes and I put a gun on him, and then he died buying us a day, and every single thing that's kept this family alive since October came out of his mouth."
"Then he did it twice," June said.
June told the rest of it over an hour.
On the first of February, Cass had gone east with the eleven men because he was fifteen and because he could walk nine miles on crust and because Wingman had told him to.
He had come back on the eleventh of March, alone, on foot, having walked eleven miles in the rotten snow with a rifle and no rounds and a frostbitten hand.
"What did he say happened?"
"He said not much for the first four days." June's mouth was tight. "He didn't eat right for a week. He'd sit up at night."
"And after four days?"
"He said it worked." She said it flat. "He said they went over on the crust on the first and they lay up all day and all night above a burned bench in the timber, and in the morning there were twenty people in a dooryard down below."
Kindra's whole body went cold.
"That's our house," she said.
June stopped.
"What?"
"The bench. The dooryard with twenty people in it." Kindra's voice had gone thin. "June, that's my house. That's where we lived for eleven years. We got out at four in the morning on the second and we were a mile and a quarter downriver in a hole when it happened."
June stared at her.
"You were there."
"We were the reason it happened," Kindra said, "and we have known that since the twenty fourth of February and we have not said it out loud since, and I'd appreciate it if you'd let me say it now while I've got the nerve."
"Say it."
"He used our house as bait. He'd been working on us since September and the thing he actually wanted was for somebody else to want it too."
June sat with that.
"That sounds like him," she said.
"Tell me what Cass said happened."
"He said four of them went down the draw at four in the morning to sit above it, and the rest lay in the timber on the north side. And at about eight there was shooting up the draw because the four ran into a picket nobody expected."
"We heard that."
"And then at ten o'clock Wallace walked out of the timber into the open ground in front of the burned house with his hands out, on his own, in daylight."
"Alone."
"Alone," June said. "Cass said he walked out there like he was going to a fence to talk about a fence line, and twenty people came out of the trees and the buildings to look at him, because that's what everybody always does."
"And then?"
"And then the men in the timber shot into them for eleven minutes."
Kindra closed her eyes.
"How many?"
"Cass said eight or nine went down in the first minute and the rest got into the ruins and there was a lot of shooting after that and he doesn't know how much of it did anything."
June's hands were flat on her knees. "He said the trucks were four hundred yards down and some of them got to them and got out."
"And Wingman?"
"Cass said he never saw him again after ten o'clock."
The fire ticked.
"He didn't see him die," Kindra said.
"He didn't see him anything. He said he was in the timber with the shooters and Wallace was out in the open and after eleven minutes of that there was nobody standing anywhere and everybody who was alive was behind something."
"So he might be alive."
"Kindra, that man walked into the open ground in front of twenty people on purpose so his men could shoot past him." June's voice had an edge now. "You tell me what that is."
Neither of them said anything for a long moment.
"It's the hardest thing in the world," Kindra said.
"What?"
"Nell said he told her that once. She asked him what the hardest thing in the world was and he said quitting while you're still able to."
June went very still.
"He said that to me too," she said. "In January. When my milk went."
"What was the context?"
"I asked him to give me more food and he said no." June's jaw was working. "And I said you're going to let her die, and he said yes. And I said how do you live with that. And he said, June, the hardest thing in the world is quitting while you're still able to, and I haven't got there yet."
Kindra put her hand on the woman's arm and left it there.
"What happened after Cass came back?" she said, after a while.
"Then it was the worst month of my life and I'd like to say it fast."
"Say it however you want."
June counted on her fingers.
"Nine of us at the ranch. Me and Wren. Birdy, eleven. Two boys, Cass is fifteen and Petey's seven. A woman named Loreen who's about sixty and can't walk a mile. A man named Hobby with one leg who's been there longer than anybody. And two women, Frankie and Dee, who came in October."
"Nine."
"Nine, and eleven days of food on the first of February, and Cass didn't get back until the eleventh of March."
"June."
"We ate the seed corn," June said. "That's the sentence. That's the whole month in four words. On the twenty first of February we ate the seed corn out of the barn because there was nothing else, and everybody knew exactly what we were doing while we did it."
Kindra sat with that.
"How much was there?"
"Forty pounds of field corn and about eleven pounds of garden seed in envelopes."
June's face was terrible. "We ate the corn. We did not eat the envelopes. Loreen wouldn't let us and she stood in front of the shelf and told a fifteen year old boy she'd bite him, and she was right and everybody knew she was right and we all hated her for four days."
"You've still got the garden seed."
"We've still got the garden seed and it's in a coffee can and it's been in a coffee can since the twenty first of February and nobody's touched it."
Kindra's hand had gone to her mouth.
"What's in it?"
"I don't know. Beans. Squash. Beets, I think." June looked up. "Why?"
"Because we lost ours," Kindra said. "Our entire seed store was in the cellar of that house and they took everything, and we've got four rows of parsnips going to seed in August and that's it, and we have been circling that fact for six weeks and nobody's said it plainly in front of the children."
June looked at her for a long moment.
"Then we've got something," she said.
"Yes."
"That's different, isn't it."
"That's completely different," Kindra said, "and I want you to know that I would have fed that baby anyway, and I want you to know that I'm glad you've got it, and I want us both to notice that those two things just changed what we are to each other."
"How?"
"Because ten minutes ago this was charity," Kindra said, "and charity runs out. That's a trade. Trades last."
Cass came on the third day.
He came down the rock rib at 4:40 in the afternoon and he did it badly, walking in the open the whole way, and McKenzie saw him at eleven hundred yards and clacked from the rib and Tom was in position four minutes later.
He was fifteen and he looked twelve.
He had a rifle slung on his back, muzzle down, and Tom watched him come four hundred yards and never once take it off his shoulder or look behind him.
"He's not careful," Kindra said, when Tom got to her.
"He's not careful, and that's the most reassuring thing that's happened in three days."
"Why?"
"Because if that boy were part of something, somebody would have taught him to walk better."
The boy stopped forty feet out and squinted at the shelter.
"June?"
"I'm here."
"Is the baby."
"She's fine, Cass. She's better."
He stood there and Tom watched him stop being able to hold his face together, and then get it back in about four seconds, which was a trick Tom had seen McKenzie learn in October.
"You left in the night," he said, accusing.
"I did."
"You didn't tell anybody."
"I told Loreen."
"You didn't tell me."
"Because you'd have come," June said, "and there's nine people at that ranch and eight of them can't hunt."
The boy's chin went.
"Son," Tom said.
He came up out of the rocks with the .22 in one hand, pointed at the ground, and the boy's hand went toward the sling and Tom said "don't" in a voice that stopped him.
"That rifle's empty," Tom said.
"How do you know?"
"Because you came four hundred yards down an open rock rib without once looking at your back trail, and nobody does that with a loaded gun and something to lose."
Cass Tunny's face went red.
"It's empty," he said.
"How long?"
"Since the ninth of March."
Tom set the .22 against a rock, deliberately, out of his own reach, and sat down on the ground.
"Sit down," he said. "I'm Tom Thorn. That's my wife. There's food on that fire and you're going to eat some of it and then you and I are going to have a conversation about a man named Chip Charter."
The boy sat down very suddenly, the way June had.
"You knew him," he said.