Old Tin Sorrows

12

I headed south feeling smug. I knew my Morley Dotes. Curiosity would get him. He'd push his end beyond what I'd hired him to do. He'd go fishing amongst his contacts. If there was something going on involving the Stantnors, he'd find out.

The smugness disappeared after I walked out South Gate.

That's when the drizzle started. That's when I started cussing myself for my distrust of horses. Hell, if I couldn't ride, I could hire a coach. I had a client. I could charge it to expenses. Expenses are wonderfully flexible—especially if the client fails the attitude test.

I got some wet before I reached my destination.

Odd. Most of those big country places have names. The Maples. Windward. Sometimes something that doesn't make any sense, like Brittany Stone. But this one could have been a squatter's hut. The Stantnor place. Ancient family seat and museum but not enough of a home for anybody to give it a name.

I was still a quarter mile off when Jennifer Stantnor flew out the front door, headed toward me. She hadn't put a wrap on. Peters came after her, gaining but not looking like he was trying to catch her.

They reached me at the same time. Jennifer looked irked that Peters had come. Peters looked exasperated at her. I did my best to look puzzled, which isn't hard. That's where I am most of the time. I raised an eyebrow way up. It's one of my best tricks. Jennifer just stood there, panting. Peters, less winded despite being almost three times her age, said, "There's been a hunting accident."

I kept a straight face. "Oh?"

"Let's get in out of the rain."

I looked at the girl. I think she wanted to talk. Grimly, she said, "I don't think it was an accident."

It probably wasn't, if someone had gotten killed. But I didn't say that. I just grunted.

Peters talked while we walked. "We've had trouble with poachers. There are deer on the grounds. A fair herd."

Jennifer interjected, "We put out feed. We don't take many."

"Three all last year," Peters said. "Peasants... The animals make easy targets. They're not so wary here. The past month we've had six intrusions. That we know of."

Jennifer said, "Dad gets more upset about the trespassing than the poaching. He has a thing about boundaries. Like they're lines of steel."

"After the last incident," Peters said, as we climbed the steps to the house, "the General ordered regular patrols. He wanted someone caught and an example made. Today Kaid, Hawkes, Tyler, and Snake had the duty. Hawkes apparently caught somebody in the act. He sounded his hunting horn."

Jennifer said, "When the others got there, he was on the ground with an arrow in him. A gutted deer was hanging in a tree fifty feet away."

"Interesting. And sad. But why tell me? Sounds like something you people can handle."

Jennifer looked puzzled. Peters said, "This is going to sound silly. You're the only scout around here. All these lifers and none of them can follow a trail."

"Oh." Maybe. "It's been years. And I wasn't that good." I recalled my stumbling around during a few recent cases.

"Mediocre is better than what the rest of us are." Peters looked at Chain, who was headed our way. "How is he?"

"I don't think he'll make it. He needs a surgeon."

"You know the old man. No doctors in the house."

"We can't move him without killing him."

Jennifer snapped, "Get a doctor! My father doesn't have to know. He never comes out of his room."

"Dellwood will tell him."

"I'll handle Dellwood."

"Go," Peters told Chain, and Chain got his carcass moving.

I said, "I take it Hawkes is still alive."

"He's fighting."

"Can I talk to him?"

"He's out. Way out. Not much chance he'll come around unless Chain gets a cutter in time."

"Show me where it happened before the rain wipes out the sign."

I got to ride. Lucky me. The horse was hospitable all the way out, but I knew it had heard of me through the grapevine those monsters have. It grinned when it heard my name. It was waiting for a chance.

It was a good ride out. The Stantnors had a lot of land. We didn't talk much. I took in the countryside, getting the lay, the landmarks. I might need to know them.

I'd developed the habit young. It was my apparent knack for knowing my way around that got me volunteered as a scout when the real Sexton vanished.

"Looks like Snake came back out," Peters said as we crossed a rise and came to the scene.

I saw a man under an oak near a hanging animal carcass. "Sarge, I never knew any of these guys when I was in. Did any of them know Sexton?"

He looked at me funny. "I don't think so."

I dismounted, tied the reins to an oak sapling. My mount got a forlorn look. "Thought I'd just drop them and you'd scurry when I turned my back, didn't you?"

"What?" Peters asked.

"Talking to the horse. I talk to horses. They make more sense than people."

"Snake, this is Mike Sexton. Scouted for me in the islands. You probably heard he's here."

Snake grunted. He looked me over. I returned the favor.

If Chain had gone to seed, this one had gone a step beyond. His hair hadn't been cut since he'd gotten out. His beard was a bramble patch. He didn't change clothes or bathe very often. His pants were covered with curious colored stains. He said, "I heard."

"You found anything?"

Snake grunted. It sounded negative.

I looked at the carcass. Wasn't much to it. "Kind of puny, isn't it?"

"Fawn," Snake said. "Just lost its spots."

Yes. A little rusty, Garrett. Why would a poacher take a fawn? If he was after the meat and the herd wasn't spooky, he'd go for a bigger kill. I gave the carcass a closer look.

It was ten years since I'd done my own butchering, but this job looked amateurish. Like it had been done by someone who'd seen animals butchered but who hadn't ever done it himself.

"This patrol this morning. Was there a set plan? Specific assignments?"

Peters said, "We had a routine, if that's what you mean. Routes we'd figured so four men could cover everything."

Not exactly what I wanted to know. I couldn't be more specific without giving away more than I wanted. "Where was Hawke when he was hit?"

"Up here."

I followed Peters. The spot was obvious once you got there. Hawkes had thrashed around after he'd fallen. He'd lost enough blood to draw flies too stupid to go for the bonanza in the tree. The spot was fifty feet from the deer. A blind archer could have made the shot.

I picked out what I thought was Hawkes' back trail. I followed it, found a place where he'd stopped. "I'd guess this is where he sounded the horn. Then he went down and stopped again there."

"And the poacher let him have it."

Somebody did. "What time did it happen?"

"About nine."

"Uhm." That fawn had been dead a lot longer than that.

I walked back down. Snake still stood staring at the carcass. I asked, "You look around some?"

He grunted. "Why'd anybody want to do that to a little fawn?" An old buddy getting an arrow through the brisket didn't bother him. The fawn did.

I took another look at the carcass. I couldn't find its death wound. "Was there an arrow in it?"

"No."

Snake wasn't going to be much good for anything.

The tree where the fawn hung was a loner ten yards from the edge of a wood that followed a creek. That wood was only a hundred yards across. I headed downhill, swinging back and forth, looking for the poacher's trail

I found it. Somebody in a big hurry had charged straight through the underbrush. Understandable, if you've just plinked some guy and you know he has friends coming.

Peters followed me. I asked, "Was there a set pattern to who rode where on these patrols?"

No way to keep him from wondering why I asked. He frowned. "No. We mixed it up so we wouldn't see the same ground every time."

Then the sniper hadn't been after somebody in particular, just somebody. Assuming the arrow hadn't come from the bow of a panicky poacher but someone who had laid a trap.

I was sure that when Hawkes stopped the second time, he'd seen whoever let him have it. That he'd been startled into halting. Otherwise, he'd have kept moving.

How much of that was Peters figuring out? The man wasn't stupid.

"How do you get along with your neighbors?"

"We ignore them. They ignore us. Most of them are scared of us."

I'd be scared if I had neighbors like them.

The sniper had become less panicky after fifty yards of flight. He'd turned onto an old game trail. There were too many leaves down for the ground to take good tracks but I could tell which way he had gone by the way they were disturbed. "Got any dogs? Or know where we could get some?"

"To track with? No."

The game trail went down to the creek, split. One fork crossed over, the other ran along the bank. My quarry had taken the latter.

A hundred fifty yards along, that path dipped into a wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed section of creek. And didn't come out the other side. I looked around. "I've lost it."

"God damn it, look again."

I looked, satisfied that he hadn't noticed the horse apples in the shallow water. Whoever had come down here had ridden away, down the streambed. No big deal, since the water was never more than a foot deep.

How many peasants forced to poach deer could afford to keep a horse?

"Sorry. There's nothing."

"Then I'll find some damned dogs."

As we walked back uphill I asked, "Who takes care of the stables here?'

"Mostly Snake, with help from Hawkes and Tyler. I don't get Snake. Takes care of the animals. Likes to. But you can't get him on a horse to save his life."

That made sense to me, though it was a little extreme.

I asked questions that got me curious looks but no answers. Unless they were liars and fast to boot—or in cahoots—none of the men on patrol could have dropped Hawkes. And Hawkes didn't do it to himself. That narrowed the field of suspects, but not enough. I wanted rid of Snake and Peters so I could prowl down that creek to wherever the sniper had left it.

"Shit!" Black Pete exploded. "We've got our heads up our asses."

"What?"

"What did we do every time we hit the Venageti on the damned island? What did I pound into you guys every damned day we were there?"

He'd gotten it. "Yeah. You don't leave tracks on water." Before a raid we'd always made sure we had an escape route crossed by a lot of water.

"The bastard walked down the creek. That's why you couldn't find anything."

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

"I'll check it out. No need you taking any more time off."

He looked at me hard, checked to see where Snake was. "What're you thinking, Garrett? I've seen you like this before. I haven't forgotten the stuff you pulled."

"I'm doing my job the best way I know. Nothing personal, but everybody's a suspect till I prove otherwise. No matter how well I think I know them."

He started getting angry.

"Can it. You wanted me to find out who's killing the old man, right? Which one of you guys would do that? None of you. Right? But one of you is. Till I nail it down you get treated like everybody else. If only because I'm supposedly looking for a thief. Get me?"

"You want to play a lone hand. You're the professional. I'll put up with it. For a while."

"Good. You don't have a choice, anyway. And that's nothing to get mad about."

He got mad anyway. They always do. They all think they ought to be the exception to the rule.

He rode off in a huff.

I didn't care, so long as he rode off.