Читать книгу Fire and the Hammer - Shirley Barker - Страница 6

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The world belonged to Lass Marvayne that night as she rode up through Pennsylvania. The sorrel mare Sam had brought to carry her back to Buckingham moved gently up the long, looping road, with never the jar of a false step to disturb her thoughts, and Sam himself, riding just ahead of her, did not trouble them either. For Sam, sturdy and apple-cheeked and kind, had talked on cheerily ever since they’d left Philadelphia that morning, and now she was so used to the rhythms of his voice that she could say yes and no in the right places without listening to him. Not that Sam was dull, and she’d been eager at first to hear about Sally, but he’d gone so soon to talk of the war and the Congress, and the wickedness of King George, and the war had never seemed very close to her even when Crispin went off to it, partly because her father had not had much to say for either side, partly because she had no idea of war. Now she let Sam talk, while she watched the strange landscape unwind before them, and thought how glad she was to be herself, with new adventures ahead of her, all of them sure to be happy ones.

She had taken leave of her father in the mild, gray morning at the door of Robert Morris’ mansion in Front Street, but she did not think so much of their parting kiss, desperately casual, as she did of the proud moment when she had stood beside Silas by Mr. Morris’ desk in the big, busy counting house the day before.

“And this is my daughter Thalassa,” she could still hear him saying. “I want to fix her credit with you. Take a good look at her face, Rob, and make sure you’ll remember it.”

The merchant, stalky and imposing in bottle-green coat and breeches, bowed forward to reach for her hand, his smooth, round face alight with a genial smile.

“Think there’s any man who wouldn’t? You bring a lovelier one every year, Silas. Have you more?”

“No. This is all.”

Lass stared past him, where half a dozen bent young men seemed to be writing busily in ledgers or crinkling sheaves of paper. It was here that her sister Sally had found a husband. Just so Sally must have stood last year and looked at the sleek heads, black, and brown, and gold, and rumpled chestnut. Just so the river must have gleamed in the background, blue through the dusty windowpanes. Sally had looked, and one pair of eyes had lifted and caught hers, and now Sally was Mistress Sam Bye, and readying a cradle for Christmas time. Lass stared hard, but no eyes lifted to meet her. Oh, well, she wasn’t looking for a husband. She had Crispin, and perhaps he wasn’t the handsomest man in Massachusetts, perhaps there was a handsomer—all ’twas, she just hadn’t seen one. Then she heard her father say, “Then when she shows her face and writes her name, you’re to give her anything she asks for.”

“You mean—anything within reason.”

“I mean—anything she asks for. She knows what I’m good for as well as I do, and she won’t go beyond it.”

That had been yesterday. They had slept at Mr. Morris’ house that night, all pictured tapestry hangings, and spindly carved furniture, with the richest dinner served on the thinnest china Lass had ever seen, and ending with a syllabub and a chilled, syrupy pudding called “raspberry fool”—and no wonder. Mrs. Morris, kind and pretty and brown-eyed, had bustled around in flowered silk cut well down her bosom, and chatted sweetly, but somehow Lass had longed for Hannah’s square, dark face and sharp tongue, for one of Hannah’s every-night suppers of johnnycake and codfish balls, fried in the iron spider and served on brown earthenware. Plenty there had always been in Silas Marvayne’s house, but display and fashion never. In the new house in the high street—well, he was a rich man now, and wanted other ways, or thought he did, the ways of rich men in Boston and Philadelphia. Then, late in the evening, just as a servant was bringing the candles to light them upstairs, Sam Bye had ridden in from Buckingham, and kept them up an hour longer while he talked with his father-in-law and held his calm, Quaker face from showing how startled he was at the beauty of Sally’s younger sister.

She hadn’t rightly stopped missing Hannah and the frosty marshes round Newburyport until they’d ridden well out of town along the level roads, through a trim little village called Frankford, over a couple of walled bridges, and into a hilly country of red sand. Then her spirits lifted, higher with every mile, till she seemed to be drifting on clouds that shone like the opal ring her grandmother Peg had left her, rather than riding through a dun-colored, sunless day on a sorrel mare. The warm, fiery heart of the opal was love, and between two sure loves, her father’s and Crispin’s, she felt secure, enthroned, radiant, impervious to any attack or any creeping trouble. Her father had trusted her before his friend with all that he had. There had been swift messages exchanged, and Crispin had sent word that his enlistment term ran out at the year’s end. She could expect him then to come to her in Buckingham. He would keep himself free from the war for a little while, to be her husband, he wrote, let it rain King Georges nine days running.

So she dreamed her way beside Sam, scarcely knowing what they ate when they stopped at the Red Lion Inn, or feeling the closer circle of the trees, or appraising the wide, russet and dull gold farmlands with their scattered, square stone houses. Dusk overtook them finally, with a round, white moon in the deep sky to the eastward, and a wind began to blow, shaking the bare branches everywhere, and swirling the dead leaves across the road, troubling the black surface of the frequent brooks. They rode through a crossroads village Sam told her was Four Lanes’ End, and here he tugged out of his gray coat a great, silver turnip watch, and looked at it, and said they’d wait for supper till they got to Newtown. But when they got to Newtown, and passed up a street of stone houses with an open common before them, and a glint of water down the middle of the common behind a row of willow trees, Sam only turned away from the friendly, lighted windows, urged his horse a little, and said he guessed they’d wait till they got to the Anchor. Lass smiled and slapped her own reins on the sorrel neck, and agreed, “The Anchor.” She knew what ailed Sam. He wanted to get home to Sally. Well, let him. She wasn’t cold, and she wasn’t hungry. She was too excited. She was free and light as the white moon blowing across the wild, dark sky, over the darker ridges before them. She and the moon owned all they looked on. The world belonged to Lass Marvayne that night as she rode up through Pennsylvania.

After they had crossed Newtown Creek and left the lights behind, the land flared upward in a long ridge that tilted east, and Lass could tell from the straining sorrel flanks that they were climbing.

“Is it far now, Sam?” she asked, leaning toward him, laughing inside as Sam drew back a little, because she knew why he drew back.

“No. Just to Wrightstown. About—oh, we can have supper and still be home by ten o’clock. Is thee tired, Lass? Just over the ridge here and—”

Suddenly, faintly, far away but nearing, over the spur of black land, east and under the moon, sounded the rhythmic beat of a song, borne on an undercurrent of lusty shouting. She could hear the cry of it coming down the wind, but not the words.

Sam stopped his horse and fumbled at his coat. “Lass,” he said, “thee take my wallet and hide it on thee. They’ve never robbed women—of money—that I know of.”

“Now what’s this?” she asked him, amused rather than frightened.

“It’s the Doans,” he said, “their song. It was made against them, but they’ve turned it in their own praise.”

“And what are the Doans? Robbers?” She pulled away her cloak and tucked his wallet in the front of her russet dress.

He made a little sound in the darkness that might have been agreement and was certainly fear, but gave her no coherent answer.

“Well. It’s not likely they’ll tear my clothes apart. Do we hide—or go on?”

“We’ll try to make the Anchor,” he said, urging his horse forward.

Over the black ridge came the burst of song again, crude and boisterous, alive with all the life of devil-may-care young men.

“Who is so strong, so strong,

As Moses, Moses Doan?”

Sam drew her suddenly under the shadow of a great tulip tree at the side of the road. His eyes followed the crest of the ridge, white in the moonlight, and she looked there, too. Along the top of the low hill, bare under the clear moon, galloped six black, riderless horses, and all the night swelled with shouting.

“Your gold you cannot save

From Moses, Moses Doan—”

The horses sped down the ridge and out of sight to the west.

“He is the Briton’s friend,

He is the Congress’ foe—”

The sound died suddenly. The black shapes had quite passed by. But ruddy Sam Bye was still shaken.

“Well,” said Lass, urging the sorrel out of the hazel bushes below the tulip tree, and fingering haws and dead leaves from her hair, “now tell me, what was that? I can see there’s things goes on here doesn’t go on in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

“ ‘Twas the Doans,” replied Sam stubbornly, as they turned into the road and headed once more for the Anchor. “An’ I got uncommon cause to fear. I’m a tax collector, and they’re sworn against all tax collectors.”

“Six black horses?”

“There was men on them, Lass; riding so close to the mane, the Indian way, thee couldn’t tell—thee, from New England—where things been settled and done a long time.”

He did not talk any more, but urged his horse forward between the dark farmlands with lighted windows pricking out the darker bulk of houses, sometimes houses close to the road, their gray stones shining whitely in the moon. Finally they turned into the yard of a tall stone box-like building with a row of tiny windows close to the roof making a third story, and a ship’s anchor carved in yellow pine swung over the wide front door. A tow-headed boy, in ragged breeches and a fringed hunting shirt, came around the corner of the inn when he heard the clatter of hoofs on the pebbled strip that led from the roadway, and took the reins to lead the horses away to fodder at the rear.

“You got back all right, Sam,” he said with easy friendliness. “Lucky, too. The Doans be out tonight, I hear.”

“Yes,” said Sam, lifting Lass down from the sorrel. “Who’s within, Thomas? Anyone of Buckingham or beyond? We could use company going that way—after we’ve broken our journey with food.”

Thomas did not answer. He had pulled a twig from the grapevine that scrolled across an arbor at the side of the tavern, and was chewing on it, covertly watching Lass. Lass smiled at him, straight and open, with no thought of coyness, not knowing her smile said there was no man in the world quite like Tom, the stable boy at the Anchor. Sam smiled wryly, shoved open the nail-studded door, and stepped aside for Lass to enter.

A great fire blazed at one end, but there was little other light, save for a thin, flickering candle set here and there in a battered sconce tipped half sideways. Patches of shaggy beam stuck out through the thin coating of gray plaster on the walls, and dust obscured the tiny windowpanes. Not a tidy, shining place, but dim, and malty, and full of the rich, brown smell of roasting game. Two great pine slab tables nearly spanned the room, with a dozen or so twig bottom chairs flanking each. Six men, in the drab wool clothes of farmers, had drawn their chairs to the fire, drawn a settle into their midst to rest their ale mugs on. They turned and stared wordless at Lass, then, more slowly, greeted Sam.

“Has thee had a favorable journey, Brother Bye?” asked one, elderly, lean-jawed, balancing a broad-brimmed Quaker hat on his knee.

“Fair enough, thank thee,” said Sam, leading Lass toward them. “Friends, this is Mistress Bye’s sister, come here from Massachusetts, to dwell the winter with us.”

Lass curtsied and bowed her head demurely, her bright hair all hidden under the russet hood of her cloak.

“These, Lass, are all my good friends.” His eye moved around the circle as he introduced them, John Penquite, the old Quaker who had bid them welcome, Landlord Croasdale, bald, ruddy, and round as a pot; then two flinty, gray-faced men, with worry in their eyes. “Arkle and Aiken! Has either of thee heard?” He turned back to Lass. “Their sons, Dick and Henry, were in Magaw’s troop at Fort Washington. News has come back they may be captured, or—There was a battle—” His voice trailed off.

Arkle cleared his throat and spat into the fire. “We ain’t heard,” he said sharply, “aught of the boys. All we heard was, whole damn Continental Army’s fleeing across Jersey like game running out when you fire the woods.”

“That’s right,” echoed Aiken in a deep, growling voice, “but they better stand at Delaware, they had. I say, we’ll all be getting our guns down and loading them within a week. It ain’t Bunker Hill and New York Island no more. It’s Bucks County. What do they say about it in town, Sam?”

“In town? In Philadelphia?” Sam looked grave. “Well, ’tis true, Congress sets uneasy there. ’Tis a dark time for the country. But General Washington says even if we be driven beyond the Delaware, beyond the Alleghenies even, his men will rally to him and he will fight on from there. Looks like it might happen that way. We are fleeing across Jersey—’twas no lie thee heard—an’ Lord Cornwallis coming after. There’s some talk the capital’s threatened.”

Two men remained whose names Lass did not yet know, and one of them stood up and came forward from the shadow to hand an empty mug to the landlord. He was tall and raw-boned, young, with brown hair and eyes and a beaky face. “Capital!” he scoffed. “We ain’t got no capital; no great city with towers like I hear they has abroad. We can load Congress into a haycart, and haul it off, and set it up anywhere—and to my way of thinking, it’s better so.” He stopped; stood looking at Lass.

“This is Will Hart,” said Sam, “and yonder, back in the corner’s his brother Samuel. Is thee going home to Plumstead tonight?”

“You mean,” said Sam Hart, and even in the shadow Lass could see that he looked very like his brother, “you want our company as far as Buckingham, since the Doans be about, and you’ve likely got a bit of tax money on you.”

Sam reddened. “Well—about that, Friend.”

“Oh, we’ll see you home, won’t we, Will? Always sleep better in my own bed anyway. In a hurry?”

“Yes, but not till we have supper.”

Landlord Croasdale had been seating Lass at the table and bustling back and forth between kitchen and taproom. Now he set out cups of heavy brown ale, a loaf of wheaten bread, and a platter heaped with the dark, sweet, oily flesh of wild pigeons, skewered between pink slices of ham and browned on the spit. Lass clapped her hands and threw off her cloak. Sam sat down beside her and they began to eat. The fire snapped and crackled; dead leaves swirled against the windowpanes in the moonlight, and the men left off their troubled talk of war. Finally, when no voice had been lifted in the room for at least five minutes, Lass swallowed the last morsel of pigeon on her plate and asked of anybody who would answer her, “Who are the Doans? And why is Sam afraid of them?”

For a moment nobody replied. Landlord Croasdale shifted uneasily in his chair. Will Hart had been polishing the long barrel of his pistol with a bit of rag. Now he spoke, mild, and unhurried, and very sure of himself.

“You shouldn’t say Sam’s afraid,” he reproved her. “A man don’t like to have that said of him. Say he’s cautious when there’s Doans about.”

“Well? Why is he cautious?”

“ ‘Cause he’s got no wish to stop a bullet with his head,” answered Sam Hart.

“Thee’s never known them shoot a man!” cried old John Penquite vehemently. “They was always good boys—Friends—until—”

“No,” said Will slowly, “they haven’t killed yet. But that’ll come. First off, all they did was make fools of folk—tickling feet with feathers and such. But ’twas no jest, what they did to William Darrah.”

“How is Brother Darrah?” asked Sam. “I been from home so much—”

“Dr. Rush doubts his burns will ever heal. The flesh rots away beneath them and runs out in foulness. The Doans—”

“The Doans,” continued Will Hart, as if nothing had interrupted him, “went to school with us. All Plumstead schoolhouse was spilling full of Doans and Harts ten or fifteen years ago. We leaped and wrestled and hunted with ’em, and swam Tohickon Creek, and fished the Delaware. They was Quakers and we was Presbyterian, but no matter. They was good boys, and my friends. But come the war, we saw things a different way. Sam and me come out for the Congress. Old Joseph’s boys didn’t want aught to do with war, but when they kept losing land ’cause they’d neither fight nor pay fines not to, and their cousin Abe lost his sweetheart the way he did—they turned wild-like—started their own war on everybody. First they stole horses and sold them—to get back their own, they said. Then they started robbing tax collectors; wouldn’t take a man’s private funds, they’d boast; only what belonged to the Congress. But it’s growing on them—the wildness, I mean. I say, they’ll kill, and I’d rather face up to Howe’s cannon with a slingshot than be chosen tax collector of Bucks County.” He looked steadily at Sam Bye.

“How about Abe Doan and the girls?” rasped old Aiken. “Be them stories true?”

Will Hart shook his head. “That he forces them against their will? Couldn’t be! The girls had an eye for Abe before he could aim a rifle or smoke a pipe of tobacco. If he takes a girl, it ain’t agin her will—at the time of it—no matter what excuse she makes after.”

“Mose is better-looking.”

“They’re afraid of Moses. Indians say he’s an evil spirit, since he got the live steel into their boy, Walking Thunder. Once when he was swimming the Delaware under a full moon, they say, they caught the flash of hoofs and a tail.”

Lass leaned forward, elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, her red hair tumbled out of her hood and down on her russet clad shoulders.

“Quakers set up for hotspurs?” she murmured. “Well, I never heard—”

The men went on talking.

“Which one was it got Farmer Nugent down below Bristol last week?”

“That was Abe. Gil Nugent was heading home, sleepy, from market, and give a stranger a ride. He offered to drive while Gil took a nap, and when Gil woke up, he was alone in the woods, less his watch and twenty pounds. They ain’t so careful to take just tax money as they was. But Gil’s a good Whig, and has talked all over lower Bucks how he’d like to see the Doans hanging in a row.”

“Abe’s worse than a Mohawk,” said Landlord Croasdale, “but still it’s Moses is the heart and soul of them, and it’s he they follow. Aaron and Levi’s got no special harm about them. Aaron can think up more pranks that are all laugh and no particular hurt than any man in the county. But they’d both of them jump off the top of Jericho Mountain if Moses told them to.”

“Mahlon—?”

“The runt of the litter! All he wants is to go back in the woods gunning, and not be bothered at all having to suit his ways to other men’s. But he’s as true to Moses as the rest be.”

“At Long Island?” asked John Penquite, in his quavery, old man’s voice. “They say Moses was there. ’Tis hard to believe. I knew his father—What did he do?”

“Whatever it was, they say he got five hundred dollars for it. That’s more then Iscariot got for selling Christ.”

“Aye! Mose was in with the British, right enough. Now Joe—he’s the dandy. When he goes down to Philadelphia—”

Lass sat up suddenly, listening to a faint patter of sound that she took to be raindrops on the roof, but when she turned to look out the window, she saw that the moon still shone. Then she knew the sound for hoofs, coming nearer, nearer, sweeping into the tavern yard under the grape arbor. She heard scattered shouts; a curse; a laugh. Then the door burst open.

The first man to enter was huge and brawny, with strongly cut features and deepset, glowing eyes under shaggy brows. He wore his black hair Indian straight, and a red silk handkerchief at his throat. He moved lightly and covered the taproom with a thick, short-barreled pistol. After him swarmed three others, equally tall and fierce-looking, dressed like their leader in brown linsey-woolsey coats, knee breeches of sheepskin, and the broad, gray hats of Quakers, worn at a wicked tilt. The fifth intruder differed only in his costume, proud with silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes, plush breeches, and a gilt-buttoned coat with a touch of lace under the chin. And then, last of all, a little diffident, moving as lithely as an Indian through the western forests, came a slight lad in a deerskin hunting shirt, his dark head bare. He was carrying a rifle and looking down.

The leader stood still, holding the gun trained on the little group with Lass at its center, while the others massed beside him.

“Ales around, Landlord,” he said finally, in a deep voice, rough but not frightening. “We Doans be dry.”

Landlord Croasdale scuttled to the small bar in the corner and raked an armful of thick, brown bottles from the shelf behind it.

“Don’t you put no coals in my hands, Moses Doan,” he quavered. “I ain’t gathered no gold for the Congress.”

“Ah, Congress,” sighed Moses, keeping his gun level, his eyes steady. “Congress is hogs. I’ve a mind to go over to Durham Ironworks some night and blow their powder up.”

The bottles passed from hand to hand among the Doans till all were supplied. Then Moses spoke again. “We don’t mean harm here tonight, so thee needn’t fear, Landlord. We’re not all that people say we are. We be poor Quaker lads who’s brought thee their small custom.” He flung a gold coin on the table, where it struck, and rang, and circled off to fall on the floor, whence no one retrieved it. “We want thee to join us in a toast to King George, our rightful King. Mahlon—” The slight lad moved forward. “Thee look to the Whigs. I like to shut my eyes when I drink a toast.”

As his gun went down, Mahlon’s came up and leveled. The other Doans lifted their bottles.

“Stand up!” said Mahlon, in a voice sharp-edged as the crack of a rifle.

Sam and the landlord, the Harts and the old men, scrambled to their feet. After a second, Lass stood up too. Lord, she was thinking, aren’t they handsome! I couldn’t see they’d have to force anybody.

“To George—his England!” said Moses soberly. “With a short swallow.”

“Drink it!” snapped Mahlon.

And seven good Bucks County Whigs drank briefly, bitterly to George the Third.

“And to the Doans—Free America! Drink while thy breath lasts thee.”

Everyone drank long and deep.

As Moses lowered his bottle and looked around, he seemed to see Sam for the first time. Twirling his pistol, still under the protection of Mahlon’s gun barrel, he stepped forward.

“Sam Bye! Well met, Brother! I’ll bet thee’s carrying Doan money on thee. Money thee stole from us for the Congress. Try him, Aaron.”

A tall, brown-clad brother stepped forward, thrusting his hands into Sam’s pockets, pulling his shoes off, shaking his hat—finding nothing. Sam held himself stiff and looked at the floor in sullen silence; neither helped nor hindered.

Joe Doan walked close to Moses then, the skirt of his coat a-rustle in its taffeta lining. He whispered, and he laughed, and both men looked at Lass.

“Is thee taking home another wife, Sam Bye?” Moses asked. “Thee thinks well of thy manhood, sure. The first one was uncommon fair, but this one surpasses all I’ve ever seen. If some day I’ve time to go a-wenching—”

Sam stood taut in helpless anger.

“Girl—did thee come here with Sam Bye? Is thee hiding our money on thee?”

Lass smiled at Moses. “How can I tell your money from any other? Does it have your name on it? Mine carries the King’s picture and nothing more. Can you prove claim to that?”

Moses roared with pleased laughter. “A proper hellcat! Put it on the table and I’ll pick it up. That’ll be my proof.”

Lass hesitated a moment. I—I don’t have to, she thought. He won’t search me. He won’t shoot me. I just won’t do it.

She smiled again, then shut her lips tightly like a stubborn child and shook her head.

Moses’ laughter turned into blank surprise, then back into mirth.

“Then we’ll shake it out of thy petticoats ourselves. Boys, who’s to search the lass? It’ll be rare sport for the right man. Shall we draw for it?”

Joe bent forward again, smiling out of his gay, dark eyes, smoothing his powdered hair.

“Suppose we let Mahlon do it, Mose. He needs experience.” He laughed tauntingly.

Mahlon turned a dull red, his rifle barrel wavered for a moment, and Sam started forward. It steadied, and Sam stopped.

“Not I,” muttered Mahlon. “Let Abe—”

Once more Moses aimed his pistol before him. “Levi’ll hold thy gun, Mahlon,” he cried, an edge of sternness in his voice. “Do as I tell thee!”

“Pick her up by the heels and shake her, Cousin,” bellowed Abraham, tilting his head back and lifting an ale bottle.

Levi, grinning, snatched Mahlon’s rifle away and shoved him rudely forward till he finally stood face to face with Lass, close enough to touch her if he reached out.

She had never been frightened in her life, and she was not frightened now, but as she looked at Mahlon Doan, she felt a change come across her, as if her blood had turned in her veins and started to flow another course. She knew the way a river feels at the one moment of tide-turn, when it waits immovable, poised between end and beginning. She knew the way a tree feels when the warm flood of lightning pours into it from the sky, and it receives at once its glory and its death. And like river and tree, she did not understand her feeling. She only knew that she was terribly shaken as if by some invisible storm blown out upon her from another world. She could only dig her fingers into the rough pine table, and stand there, and look at him.

She saw a slender lad with straight, dark hair and shy, brown eyes, avoiding her own, his face thin and finely featured, his naturally sweet mouth drawn to a harsh line. His head was flung back, and every muscle about him warily taut, like a wild deer, testing the air, ready to streak off through the trees at the first whisper of danger. She did not see all of time and the generations that had gone into the making of Mahlon Doan, but she could sense the wild, free spirit in him that had come down from his old kin who ranged the Delamere Forest and rescued the Black Prince at Crécy, a spirit that all of Plymouth deaconry and Plumstead Meeting House had never quite killed and rooted out. It spoke to a free spirit in her—a spirit that had crossed the sea under Peg Magoon’s peat-stained shawl from the dripping oakwood glens of Derry. Other men she had looked at all her life, and known, with a look, what they were, but this man she would never know, not even if she were to live as close to him as his deerskin hunting shirt, all the days of their lives. And as he was the one mystery she could never solve, just so, she recognized him, too, as the most familiar thing she had ever seen in all her life. When she stood and looked at Mahlon Doan, she was looking, too, at Lass Marvayne.

Desperately she fought for composure; to hide her confusion till she could be alone with it, and take it out privately, and try to understand it. And as she struggled with herself, she could hear his brothers calling raucously to Mahlon.

“What ails thee, lad?”

“Be thee a Doan?”

“Put thy hand in her bosom!”

“Ha! He’s afeard of what Ruth Gwydion will say!”

Again they shouted with laughter. Joe stepped forward and prodded him between the shoulders with his rifle. Then Lass looked again at Mahlon, and saw how he hated the whole thing, the ridicule, the compulsion to do a deed he despised, the forces trapping him and driving him to do it. She had intended to scratch and bite and pull hair, to save Sam’s money if she could, but all she wanted now was to free Mahlon from the plight he was in. She groped with her fingers for the wallet, lying warm in the lace of her underbodice, pulled it out and held it toward him.

“Here. Take it,” she said, her voice shaking.

He flushed, muttered, and looked down at his own fingers as they closed over the sleek leather. His brothers were cursing in good-natured dismay that their fun had ended so quickly. Mutely, he handed the money to Moses, seized his rifle from Levi, and slipped through the doorway into the night.

Joe and Abe were aiming their guns now, while Moses took off his hat and bowed sweepingly. “Good night, Friends. Thee can rest easy, Sam Bye. We have expiated thy sin of thievery and lusting after thy neighbor’s goods.” He was retreating through the doorway, his brothers all around him. “And remember,” he spoke very soberly, a deep light glowing under his shaggy brows, “Moses Doan can have as clear a word from the Lord as ever the prophets and apostles had.”

Then with a rush they were gone, the door torn at one leather hinge and hanging open, moonlight streaming through—then hoofbeats dying in the night.

Lass sank into a chair and put her head down on the table for a moment, then she straightened up and shook back the riot of her hair. Everybody was running this way and that, muttering about what they’d have done if they’d only had their guns by them; the landlord slopping their cups full, babbling that it would be free and they needed it. “They ain’t never dared before to come out so plain,” he exclaimed hotly. “Folks can’t go on looking the other way much longer.”

Sam came close and put his hand on her arm. “We was lucky, Lass, that none of us took hurt—that we lost only the money. I am glad thee had the wits to give it to him. But thee looks so queer. Is thee sick—or only frightened? ’Tis no wonder if thee be so—”

“No—no, I’m not frightened, or sick, and yet—something—”

She took a deep swallow of the foaming brown stuff in the pewter cup before her, then lifted her blue eyes and looked straight at him.

“It’s strong ale they brew in Bucks County,” she said.