Arslan. Part 16

He caught hold of my elbow. "Don't get the doctor. I can take care of Arslan."

"You can take care of him all you want to. I'm getting the doctor for Hunt."

He hung on, and I half dragged him along. "You mustn't let him know Arslan's here."

"Don't worry, Sanjar. You can trust Doc Allard not to tell tales."

"No!" he squeaked, his urgency too much for his young voice. He jerked at my arm, and I stopped again and faced him. The moon was down, but I could see that his face was twisted with earnestness. "I can't even trust you!" he burst out. "You see? You're going to tell the doctor!"

Under the circ.u.mstances I couldn't laugh at him. "All right, Sanjar. My story is that Hunt came in with a broken leg and I went for help without waiting to find out how it happened. You hurry back to Hunt now and figure out a nice plausible lie. Don't forget he's got to explain how he got here alone on horseback."

"Thanks! Thank you!" He melted back into the darkness.

The story Hunt told was sketchy, but not unbelievable. He had been thrown and dragged in the neighborhood of Reedsboro, where there was no doctor, and the Reedsboro people had given him the doubtful favor of an amateur bonesetting job and tied him to his horse. People would do things like that these days. It was a funny thing that Arslan's plan of independent communities really had taken effect in some ways. There were business trips like Hunt's, there was trade, and news filtered around fast enough; but by and large, people stayed in their own districts, and they didn't take in strangers.

When the doctor was gone, I made sure Hunt was as comfortable as he could well be and went upstairs. There was no answer to my knock. I opened the door and stepped into the dawn-lit room. A curious noise was going on, a continuous soft rustle punctuated with irregular rasping sounds.

"Sanjar?" I couldn't locate him for a few moments. Then I looked at Arslan in the bed and found Sanjar, too. He had fairly plastered himself onto his father, his arms locked around Arslan's chest, his face profiled against Arslan's throat. He was looking sidelong up at me with a look I knew all too well, the look I had seen in the eyes of dozens of wastrel's sons as they faced their inevitable paddlings-the hopeless, utter defiance of the outlaw's child. The noise was coming from Arslan. He was shaking, shaking helplessly in the grip of his cold disease, and he was not conscious now. His breath came in noisy heaves. Sanjar had put everything available on him-sheet and spread, the blankets he must have found in the old dresser, his own hot body.

I looked at them for a minute. "You're pretty proud of your father, aren't you?" He gazed at me with his steady desperation, the look that accepted h.e.l.l. "Let me know if you need anything," I said.

Those were a peculiar three days. It was hard to get used to the idea that Arslan might very well die in my house. I had to plan burial arrangements without mentioning the possibility to anybody. As for his northward expedition, I'd heard nothing but Hunt's "We won it." The physical results didn't look very triumphal. Arslan himself had changed from a South American peasant's rags to an equally ragged uniform-anonymous khaki, totally without insignia. Maybe that was a step up.

Kraftsville was willing enough to do business with Hunt, but he wasn't what you could call socially popular. The silver lining of that was that we were spared the normal flood of neighborly visits and inquiries. Jean Morgan came, of course. "He's doing very well," I told her. "He's comfortable."

"May I come in?" We were standing in the open front door. Hunt was just out of sight at the far end of the living room.

"Jean," I said, "you know I can't go back on my word."

She set her jaw and looked at me hard. "I'd laugh, if I felt cheerful enough. Just tell me, Franklin, did you ever hear of a more ridiculous situation? My son is in there with a broken leg, and I'm here on the doorstep begging admittance."

But begging was something Jean Morgan couldn't have done. When she saw I meant what I said, she went away without more ado.

I stretched my charity to the point of offering Arslan, through Sanjar, a pair of my pajamas. They were politely declined. As before I saw nothing of Arslan, but this time I saw more of Sanjar. With Hunt immobilized, he undertook to do all the cooking, after he'd asked my permission very prettily. As a cook he was a little less than inspired, but about as competent as you could want for an eleven-year-old. He took whatever I brought into the kitchen, and inevitably he boiled it. We lived on nondescript gruels and uncla.s.sified stews. And while his pots simmered, Sanjar squatted or sat cross-legged beside Hunt's couch, deep in cheery discussion. I left them alone; it was pretty obvious they preferred to speak Turkistani when I was within earshot. I hadn't seen Hunt so animated in years. And since Arslan had come through his chill, Sanjar was all smiles. He hadn't really learned yet that his father was mortal.

But except with Sanjar, Hunt had lapsed back into the inarticulateness of his first days with Arslan. I tried exactly once to ask him what had happened. He fixed me with that remote look of a visitor from another world, as if we faced each other through barriers not simply of language but of perception. "It was a battle," he said. "We won it."

"What happened to Nizam?"

He shrugged, and after a while he said in an answering tone, "What happens to Nizams?"

"I expect they succeed or they die trying."

He nodded slowly. "Nizam's dead."

"What was he trying for?"

"Exactly," he said.

Chapter 24.

The third day, Sanjar was as restless as a young cat wanting out. Arslan's next chill was due tomorrow, and the prospect seemed to infect the boy with jumpiness. For the first time since he was a tot, I saw him get really mad, flaring up at Hunt in the course of their chats, swearing-multilingually-like a trooper over his cooking. But it was with an air almost of contrition that he came to me just after lunch.

"Mr. Bond, I want to catch us some fish for supper. Arslan's asleep. He won't need anything for a few hours, and I'll be back by then."

"In broad daylight, Sanjar?"

He gave me the humbly calculating look of a wise child facing the barrier of adult prejudice-considering how to convince me he knew his business without displaying a confidence that would look like overconfidence. "I can keep out of sight," he began cautiously, and I clapped him on the shoulder and told him to go ahead.

He flushed with relief and pleasure. All the same, he managed to delay for half an hour, fussing up and down stairs, he was so anxious to leave Arslan well provided for. When he finally went, he went through the kitchen window, surging out the way he always did, with the unreal grace of a shadow or a dancer. There was a certain crazy beauty about Sanjar. He preferred windows to doors-and he was ent.i.tled to windows.

It must have been about two in the afternoon when a wagon pulled up in front of the house. I was working in the side garden-somebody had to do Hunt's ch.o.r.es-and I straightened up to watch.

Three men were getting out. One of them I recognized immediately-Harry Flaxman, a trapper from over by Blue Creek. The other two I placed as belonging to the middle-aged generation of town loafers, but couldn't call their names to mind. Flaxman was. .h.i.tching the horses to the gatepost. I headed up front in a hurry. This was a visit I didn't like the looks of. Flaxman was a loner, a childless widower who was said to have worked his wife to death. After Arslan's coming he had let his little farm grow up in brush and taken to trapping for a living. He was a drinker, a poacher, and a chiseler, efficient and mean.

By the time I got to the front walk I had placed the other two: J. G. Sims, a shiftless drunken no-account, like a milder Ollie Schuster; and Cully Johnson, a lanky, gentle-mannered loafer who lived on the charity of his relatives and whose only serious vice, as far as I knew, was absolute laziness. Hunt's dog was yapping and snarling around them, but that little dog wasn't worth two cents, and they could tell it at a glance. I stepped up on the porch, to get solidly between them and the door. There was a gun upstairs in my bedroom, but it might as well have been on the moon. Flaxman was leading the way up my front walk, and he swung a rifle loosely in his hand.

"Good afternoon," I said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, now, Mr. Bond," Flaxman began. He was grinning widely at me. He mounted the porch steps and stood facing me, while the other two formed up behind him. "Mind if we come in and talk about it?"

"I'll have to ask you to put the gun down," I said. "It's a little rule I have-no firearms in the house or on the porch."

He nodded a little exaggeratedly and rested the rifle b.u.t.t on the top step. "We really come to see Hunt Morgan."

I looked quickly at J. G.'s face, and Cully's. If it was only Flaxman's viciousness that inspired them, we had a better chance. But all three pairs of eyes were lit with the same vindictive fire. There had never been a lynching in Kraftsville, to my knowledge, but the conclusion was obvious: they had come to lynch Hunt.

"Hunt's resting, and he's not in shape to talk to anybody. I'm sorry I can't ask you in."

"Well, Mr. Bond, you just don't have to ask us."

So there was no use being polite. "Sorry," I said, in a different tone. "I'm busy. If you have anything to say to me, you can say it tomorrow in my office. If you have anything to say to Hunt, I'll take the message."

"Seems like it's hard to find you in your office," Flaxman said. He was still grinning. The dog had given up and sat down, still growling uneasily. "Least that's what I hear. I don't have much occasion to come looking for you, myself."

"Somebody says to me," J. G. chimed in conversationally, "'If there's ever another war in Kraft County, they'll never make the Supervisor surrender.' I says, 'Why not?' And he says, 'They can't never find him.'"

They all thought that was pretty funny. "I'd advise all three of you to tend to your own business and let me tend to mine. You'll find out I'm in my office, all right."

"Right now our business is Hunt Morgan," Flaxman said.

"No." I saw Flaxman's muscles shift as he tilted just a shade forward, ready to take the offensive, but Cully and J. G. were already losing their nerve. "We've got laws in this town, mister, and you ought to know by now that I enforce them. You can't go around disturbing people in their homes."

"We ain't going to disturb you one bit, Mr. Bond. We ain't even got to come in if you bring him out."

"Get back," I said. Flaxman's face twisted as he tried to stare me down, and I felt a swell of comfortable warmth. They weren't so tough. "Mister, you've still got time to leave quietly and there won't be any charges. But don't you forget, the KCR has an interest in preserving law and order, too."

Now they were all three whipped. Flaxman half turned away, riding his hand loosely up and down the gun barrel, figuring out his parting sneer. The gun might not be loaded; on the other hand, if anybody still had cartridges, it would be people like Flaxman, too selfish to turn them in and too smart to waste them. "We'll get him, Mr. Bond," he said with a travesty of pleasantness. "Don't you worry, we'll get him. There's other ways." He took the first slow step down.

"We got the proof, Mr. Bond," Cully blurted. "That's the G.o.d's truth."

A brown flush surged over Flaxman's neck, and he spat on the steps to clarify his stand on Cully's insubordination. "Get off my property," I said. Flaxman turned his vicious face, surprised. "I mean you. Take that gun and get out, and don't come back here or I'll have you jailed."

Flaxman teetered murderously, not sure whether to show his teeth before he slunk off, but J. G. and Cully, looking chastened, were already started toward the gate. "You come back here, Cully," I said. "I want to talk to you." He turned back hastily. Flaxman shrugged, and dawdled down the steps, pa.s.sing him. "What proof have you got of what?"

He came up close to me and said, in a husky, confidential voice, like somebody discussing a dirty disease, "We just happened to find out, Mr. Bond. All three of us, we seen him with our own eyes." He nodded. "Hunt Morgan's a spy for Arslan."

Flaxman had stopped halfway down the walk, looking back. "Out!" I called to him, and motioned with the back of my hand towards the gate, and he shrugged again and went on out to the wagon where J. G. was already waiting.

"What did you see, Cully?"

He shuffled a little, or managed to look like it without actually moving his feet. "We was out on a fishing trip. First time in a long time, I mean a real trip like that. You know how it is, n.o.body goes out of county no more. Don't know why-do you?"

"How far did you go?" You had to be patient with Cully. Flaxman and J. G. were leaning against the side of the wagon, watching.

"Clear up to the Wabash. Nearly far as Clairmont, I reckon. Spent most a month, if you can believe it, Mr. Bond. I mean if you count coming and going." If he had had a hat, he would have taken it off now and turned it round and round in his hands. "And it was up there we seen Hunt Morgan. Riding that there red horse of his. I'd of knowed him and the horse both, five miles off. Seen him ride up to a little old house there was, one of them little summer houses some people used to build up there, and he waited there most near half a day till somebody come and met him. And you know who it was, Mr. Bond? A soldier. Yes, sir. One of Arslan's soldiers, I'll swear. He had the uniform and all. And they was talking there all evening from noon till clear up dark. We was watching the whole thing from the river bank, all day long, first to last. Then we seen them ride off again back the way they come, Hunt south and the soldier north. He wasn't just no private, neither; he was some kind of a officer."

"When was this, Cully?"

"Near two months ago." He screwed up his eyes and rocked on his feet. "It was six weeks, Mr. Bond. When we got home, we heard as Hunt was out of town again, so we figured we'd get him when he come back. Then when he come back hurt, it seemed like a G.o.d's judgment. We don't none of us figure you had a thing to do with it, Mr. Bond. I know I don't."

I stepped back across the porch to the front door and opened it, and held it open while I motioned to Flaxman and J. G. They straightened themselves and came up the walk grim as death, not a hint of a grin between them. "I'll take the gun," I said to Flaxman.

"No, sir," he said, snapping his mouth shut. That meant, most likely, that it was loaded. Guns were a lot easier to come by than ammunition.

"Then you wait out here." He nodded curtly. "You two come in. You can say what you think about Hunt to his face. If it's more than hot air, the whole business belongs in court." There were no treason laws in Kraft County-we hadn't been able to agree on how to word them-but the KCR had its own rules. It was one thing when Hunt was a virtual prisoner, with Arslan's hand on his throat; it was another to ride a hundred miles out of county to tell his little tales behind my back.

Hunt on the couch looked at us with eyes no more wary than usual. He didn't speak. He couldn't help knowing that something was up, but he was prepared to be polite if the situation allowed. J. G., not sure what had been told, wasn't about to say anything, either. As for me, I didn't feel much like doing favors for any of them. "Tell Hunt what you just told me," I said to Cully.

"Well, like I was telling you, Mr. Bond-"

"Tell it to Hunt."

He mustered some of the patriotic indignation, or whatever it was, that had slipped away from him. "Hunt, we seen you up on the Wabash."

He raised his eyebrows very coolly, but I'd lived with Hunt long enough to recognize the quick shrinking look in his eyes-hurrying to acknowledge defeat before the fighting started.

Cully was back on the track now; his voice shrilled and trembled. "You been spying for Arslan all along, ain't you? There ain't nothing never went on in this town but what you told him, ain't that right? Living right here in this here house and everything. There's a lot of folks always said so, and now we know it. We got the proof!"

But it wasn't for Arslan, it was for Nizam. Hunt shrugged. He had been looking steadily at me, and I at him. "Am I being charged with something?"

"I'll have to check out the legal aspects," I said. "One way or another, we'll see that justice is done."

Fear and humor washed like rotating colored lights across Hunt's face and left him looking tired and injured. He nodded vaguely. Six weeks ago. He had believed then-at least he could have believed-that Nizam was still Arslan's selfless right arm. And four weeks later, he had ridden north again to battle against Nizam.

"I don't hear him deny it," J. G. observed contemptuously.

"He can deny it all he wants to," Cully shrilled. "But we seen it with our own eyes!"

The door sc.r.a.ped open. Flaxman was well into the room before I took my eyes off of Hunt. "Cully," I said, "you know Ward Munsey's house. You go tell him or his brother we've got a charge of collaboration to investigate. If you can't find them home, get me Leland Kitchener or-"

"You just stay put, Cully," Flaxman said. Five minutes earlier he wouldn't have dared cross the porch with that gun. Five minutes earlier I wouldn't have let him. There was a kind of justice that replaced legality sometimes-the kind of justice that dragged a careless hand into the gears of a machine.

"Hey!"

I didn't understand for a moment what had happened. Flaxman, with his startled shout, had dodged back, jerking up his gun. Cully wavered, then leaned his long reach forward and scooped up something from the floor. It was Arslan's knife.

He was leaning on the bannister. His face shone with sweat. His mouth was drawn into a grimace or a grin. J. G. was swearing softly.

"By G.o.d, it's him. Is it him?" Cully said, in a voice of awe, looking from the knife to Arslan and back. Flaxman leveled the rifle.

"Wait," I said, and "Wait," said Arslan at the same instant. His hoa.r.s.e voice rasped. As he spoke, he forced himself upright from the bannister, his arms trembling with the strain. "I make you an offer," he said steadily. "You see that I am weak-even too weak to throw a knife properly. You see that I am alone. You want Hunt. Will you trade him for me?" His voice was gathering strength and color. "I will surrender myself to you, in return for a promise." I wouldn't have surrendered a tenpenny nail to those three for all the promises they could make. "You will promise-you will swear-before Mr. Bond and before your G.o.d, that you will never come to this house again, that you will never attack this house or anyone in it. Do you understand?" It was ridiculous, of course, but inside I was cursing whatever had made me keep the whereabouts of my gun strictly to myself. If I'd told Hunt about it, Arslan would have known by now.

They looked uneasily at each other, with dawning greed. Flaxman had lowered the rifle. J. G.'s mouth twisted. "Looks to me like we got you both," he said fiercely. "We don't need to make no promises. What's to stop us just walking up there and getting you?"

"This." Now the grimace was unmistakably a grin. He raised the second knife-Hunt's knife, it must be-turning it in front of his chest to make it glint.

Cully cleared his throat. "Well, h.e.l.l." He sounded embarra.s.sed. "We can just shoot you, and take Hunt anyways."

"I am dying," Arslan reproved gently. "Which do you want more: Hunt Morgan, or Arslan-alive, in your hands?"

They looked sidelong at each other, and suddenly they all three moved, drawing together and mumbling agreement. "Okay, drop the knife," J. G. ordered.

"When you have sworn. You first."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Who says you can take anybody out of my house?"

"Mr. Bond," Flaxman said patiently, "if you don't shut up, I'm going to shoot you dead. I ain't promised nothing yet."

"Then wait just a minute. I'm going to get a Bible for you to swear on." I started for the stairs.

"If that ain't a Bible on that there table"-the gun muzzle dipped towards the coffee table for half a second-"my mama sure didn't teach me right."

"You first," Arslan repeated. I held the Bible, and J. G. laid his hand on it unwillingly, looking past me to Arslan.

"Repeat what I say. 'I swear upon this Bible that I will never set foot in this house-'"

"I swear on this Bible I'll never"-he faltered over the words-"set foot in this house."

"'Or on its grounds-'"

"Or on its grounds."