Now, Buck,” Mr. Carson attempts to soothe him. “I know he’s your brother, but let’s try and approach this with a level head. I can’t say I saw any marks on the body to outright convict Charlie. Let’s try to find the boy and talk to him first.”
“Course there weren’t any marks,” Buck retorts. “He was too smart for that. He waited until Albert was out the door and he locked it behind him. What he wasn’t smart about was to know that I’d figure out what he’d done. From the time he came to live with us, that one was full of the devil. Brought his natural inherited wickedness from the streets where he came. Albert did what he could to chase it out of him, but, as you can see, his efforts were of no use.” Buck climbs back into the cutter. “I’m going back there and I’m going to flush him out. I know that little weasel, he’ll only be curled up in the straw somewhere.” He pats the barrel of the rifle.
It’s a thought as evil as he’s made me out to be, but I wish it would accidentally go off.
“Haw!” Buck wheels the team around and starts toward the farm.
“Buck!” Mr. Carson calls after him. A cloud of frosty air drifts from his mouth along with his words. “John and I are going into town for the Mounted Police. If you find Charlie, just hold your temper. We’ll be back as quick as we can.”
John steps forward. He also calls after Buck’s receding figure. “He’s right, Buck. We know what you’re feeling, but there’s no point making things worse than they already are. One corpse is plenty enough, let’s don’t make it two.”
Mr. Carson and John are now hurrying toward the barn for their horses. I dash into the granary, where I dive back into the bin of oats. I can hear the commotion as they hitch the horses to the sleigh. While they work, I consider going out and explaining that I had nothing to do with Albert Brooks’s death. I even climb out of the bin and stand just by the doorway, trying to gather the nerve. From their conversation with Buck, I gather they’d be willing to stand up for me. Still, I hesitate. I guess I’m more afraid that without a lawman around, Buck’s gun will argue louder and quicker than the two of them possibly could.
“He could have done it.” It’s John’s voice. “It could be that Albert drove him to it. Maybe he just whipped him one too many times.”
“Maybe so,” Mr. Carson answers. “But I don’t think so. I can’t believe that Charlie is the murdering kind.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have thought so either. But you never know what a person will do when their life depends on it. Anyway, even if he did it to save his own skin, it’ll make no difference. They’ll hang him just the same. It’s Buck’s word against his. A poor Home boy with no kin won’t ever stand a chance.”
I don’t hear Mr. Carson’s answer as they drive off.
That’s it. There’s no showing myself now. I creep back into the bin. Even after I hear the sleigh jangling down the road, my mind keeps repeating what John said. Even if I didn’t do it, they’ll hang me just the same.
I stay crouched in the bin, knowing I have no hope of staying at the Carsons’. I have to get as far away as I can. I have to tell Tillie. I have to tell her first so she knows I’m not a murderer—then I’ll go. I also have to wait until nobody’s running up and down the roads looking for me, ready to string me up. That probably won’t be until the dead of night, so I decide to stay put until then.
It’s well into the afternoon; I can tell by the shifting light. I’m just about starving, so I sit on the floor of the granary, lean up against a bin and eat a bit of cheese on a chunk of bread. I savor it around in my mouth, it tastes so good. I haven’t tasted cheese in nearly two years. Not since Tillie gave me some from her lunch pail at school. That was not long after I’d first come to the Brooks brothers’ farm. For two months in the fall, I’d gone to school with ten other students. I never had any lunch, so I stayed away from the others when it was time to eat. I didn’t want them to know I had no lunch. But my stomach was also so twisted with hunger that the smell of their food only made it worse.
On a day a few weeks into September, Tillie came to sit with me where I was perched on a rock by the creek. I had a hard time looking at her. She was so pretty and soft-looking with her chestnut hair pinned up in curls, and her yellow dress flowing out from her hips. After smoothing her skirt beneath her, she sat next to me on the bank. She lifted a folded-up newspaper from her lunch pail and delicately began to unwrap it. Plunk in the middle of the paper sat a big slice of bread and cheese. I couldn’t help but see it, sitting beside her the way I was. Tillie stopped what she was doing. I could feel her big eyes on me.
“Where’s your lunch, Charlie?”
I pulled my eyes from the newspaper in her lap. I poked the stick I was fiddling with in the creek. “I already ate it.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I’m a fast eater.” I finally got the gumption to look at her. “I’m sort of a magician that way, I guess.”
This made her look at me strangely. I’d meant it to be funny, which, of course, it wasn’t. She smiled a little anyway. “Well, you must have been very hungry to make it vanish that fast. Here, have mine too. I wish you would.”
I hadn’t eaten anything since the sour bowl of turnip soup Buck Brooks had given me the night before. I could have eaten that bread and cheese faster than any farm dog, but it was Tillie’s lunch and she had to be hungry too. I shook my head.
“Charlie,” she insisted, pushing the newspaper toward me, “I can’t possibly eat it. I had a breakfast big enough for three. My oldest brother, Tom, moved to town to work at the bank, and my mother can’t get out of the habit of cooking for him. Please, if you don’t, it will only go to waste.”
She now made like she’d never had any intention of eating it and that it was annoying her to have to hold it at all.
Not wanting it to go to waste, I began to think maybe I should take it. “You’re sure?”
“Surer than I am that it’ll snow before the winter’s out. Here.”
I accepted the newspaper and what was in it. As I ate, she continued to chat about what we were doing at school, pretending not to notice how I gobbled that bread and cheese.
After that, Tillie brought lunches big enough to feed the whole school. We’d sit by the creek, and now and again she’d sigh and tell me that her mother just couldn’t keep in mind that she wasn’t packing for Tom.
The barn door creaks, causing me to just about jump out of my britches. I haven’t been paying attention—some fugitive-on-the-run I make. If I don’t keep my wits about me, I’ll be hung and stretched out on the table next to Albert before the day is out. I hop back into the oat bin, cover up and listen.
Whoever it is, they’re treading very softly. They’re so quiet going about their business that if I hadn’t been listening intently, I wouldn’t have heard them at all. The cows begin to low in their stalls directly across from the granary. It’s not a bothered sound, but peaceful, like they’re waiting for something that’s part of their routine. A bit of wood scrapes against the floor. Soon I recognize the tinny sound of milk splattering into an empty pail. It has to be either Mrs. Carson or Tillie, come to milk the cows.
I peek around the door. Tillie is sitting on the milking stool with her back to me. She’s speaking in a hushed voice. I don’t want to scare the wits out of her, and I’m still not certain it’s only her. I listen, but I don’t hear anyone, so I dash quickly behind her, into the stall next to the one she’s in.
“I’m sorry, Marigold,” she is telling the cow she’s milking. “I didn’t mean to be so late. There’s been a lot of commotion today and it couldn’t be helped.”
The cow I’m squatting beside suddenly decides to complain about me being there and hollers. I nearly die of a stopped heart myself.
“Dolores, I’m sorry to you too,” Tillie tells her. “I’ll be milking you right away. As I said, it’s been a rather disastrous day. It seems Albert Brooks is dead, and they’re looking all over for Charlie because Buck says he did it.”
I can’t listen any longer. “Tillie,” I whisper. I don’t want to talk too loudly because I’m still not one hundred percent certain she’s alone.
Tillie keeps on milking.
“Tillie!”
Tillie jumps up, knocking the stool over. I peek above Dolores’s back. Tillie’s looking at Dolores like she’s grown another head. Her eyes rise to me, standing above the cow, and her face darkens. Her hands fly to her hips. “Charlie! You just about scared me to death. I thought Dolores had got a voice.”
“I’m sorry. But I couldn’t exactly stand in the middle of the room to announce my presence.”
Tillie’s frown disappears as she wipes her hands on her apron. “Of course you couldn’t. Charlie, where have you been? What happened?” Her skirt swooshes across the floor, sweeping up straw dust as she comes over to Dolores’s stall and brushes oats from my hair.
“I’ve been hiding. Albert must have wandered out when I was sleeping and got turned around in the blizzard. I had nothing to do with it. When I found him he was already dead.”
She nods. “Charlie, you know you’re going to have to get out of here. Buck already has it in for you. You don’t stand much chance against him.”
“Yes,” I tell her, “I’m aware. I just wanted you to know before I set out. I didn’t want you to think I was the sort that would have done something like that.”
Tillie throws her arms around me and pulls me close to her. It causes me to just about melt at the knees. “You didn’t need to risk yourself to stay around and tell me that. I know it isn’t in you to kill someone. I know how Albert and Buck treated you. Charlie, you should head west. To British Columbia. They’re building the railroad and maybe you can get work.”
I’m relieved. Tillie must believe me to be considering my situation. But she isn’t able to continue. Her voice is drowned out by the sudden ruckus coming from the farmyard: a peal of sleigh bells, stamping horses, and men shouting orders and directions like they’re running to the hounds. I rush to the crack in the wall. Tillie follows. Mr. Carson and John have returned. With them are men from Macleod—officers from the North-West Mounted Police post, sitting tall astride their Irish thoroughbreds. They wear navy uniforms with shining brass buttons, and they carry revolvers at their sides. Buck bounces from the cutter.
“Let’s spread out,” he barks. His gaze then falls on the pitchfork John had left leaning against the woodpile. He grabs for it before whirling toward the barn.
“Buck!” One of the constables lays a hand on his arm. “I’m warning you again. We only want to talk to the lad. If you find him first, you bring him back here. No bloodshed, do you hear me? Or it’ll be you that’s going on trial.”
Being told what to do only gets Buck madder. He elbows the officer before marching toward the barn.
“Quick!” Tillie grabs my hand. “Under the buggy.” She pulls me toward the farm implements in a corner of the barn, but on the way I have a horrifying thought and break loose.
“My rucksack!” I tear back to the granary to collect my belongings. I’d left them on the floor by the oat bin. Nabbing them quick, I catch up with Tillie. She grabs my arm again and tugs me over to where an old horse buggy, the leather cracked and the wheels broken, sags against the wall. Tillie motions for me to crawl beneath it. “Get under it! Quick, Charlie! Don’t come out until I come back after they’re gone!”
It’s a very tight fit, despite my being so thin-waisted. But I squish beneath it and pull my rucksack against my face. Tillie only has time to get away from the buggy before I hear the barn door get thrown open. I peek around my rucksack. Tillie is picking up her milking stool and moving it over to Dolores’s stall. With the force of a bull, Buck storms into the room past her.
“You seen that little coward come through here?” he roars.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Charlie Sutherland? You seen that skinny Home boy’s hide? He’s skulkin’ around somewhere, but I’m going to get him. You seen him?”
“No, Mr. Brooks. I’ve just been milking Marigold and Dolores. I haven’t seen Charlie in—well, must have been last summer when I was picking saskatoons down by the main trail.”
Despite being scared to the bottom of my broken shoes, I smile inside. For someone so pretty, Tillie sure is a good liar. I would have never guessed it could be in her.
Buck ignores her. He begins rooting through the haymow, stabbing it with his pitchfork in a way that, if there were something living under there, it’s not likely to emerge alive. Within a few minutes, Buck is joined by four or five of the Mounted Police. I can just see the door to the granary—two of them disappear into it. The rest spread throughout the barn.
Buck gives up on the haymow. He starts toward the horses’ stalls, not ten feet away from me. I shrink against the wall beneath the buggy. He knocks something over. It falls, jolting the buggy. Burying my head behind my rucksack, I hold my breath.
I remain scrunched beneath the buggy long after I hear the clatter of horses and cutters leaving the Carsons’ farm. It’s now evening, but I can’t shake the picture of Buck standing silently over the buggy in the dark, just waiting to run me through with the pitchfork when I emerge. It’s a fearsome enough image to keep me huddled where I am.
I may have drifted off awhile, I can’t quite remember. It’s Marigold and Dolores lowing softly that makes me jump. A light—a lantern, I determine, after peering around my rucksack—casts shadows like giant hawks soaring around the open barn. The light becomes brighter as it comes closer to the buggy.
“Charlie?”
It’s Tillie’s voice. I push aside the rucksack and crawl out. The smell of manure and sweaty animals rushes into my nostrils, but after being holed up all afternoon, it’s a smell sweeter than lilacs blooming in May. I sit up and blink into the ring of lamplight. Marigold and Dolores loom in their stalls as dark ghosts behind the lantern’s glow. Tillie sets the lantern on the floor. A sack hangs off her shoulder, and in her other hand, she holds something behind her pinafore.
“Charlie, are you alright? You must be just about starved. Here, I brought you some rabbit stew.” She brings forth a bowl giving off such a delicious aroma I think I might faint. “Eat up. You’ll like it.”
She doesn’t have to ask me more than once. I nod and, taking the bowl, try not to bolt it. Tillie also offers me a big slice of bread. Once she’s satisfied that I’m eating, she swings the sack off her shoulder and sits next to me on the straw.
“You’re going to have to get out of here tonight. Buck’s rounding up a search party at the Macleod Hotel and coming back tomorrow. I’ve got some supplies together. If you head to British Columbia, you can get on logging or maybe fishing, and on the way you can work on the roads to get by. I overheard Father talking to John, and they’re paying two dollars and fifty cents a day to the road crews. There’s no stopping Buck. Father said he’s got it in for you, even though no one else is convinced you bolted the cabin door and killed Albert Brooks. He’s mean, Charlie. Buck doesn’t have any kindness in him. He’s spiteful and he’s cruel.”
All this has come out in a rush and Tillie is now staring at me, breathless. Her cheeks are rosy with the cold.
I’ve shoved enough food into my stomach so it isn’t painful to stop eating. I smile at what she’s said. “I know that about Buck.”
Tillie’s eyes drop to the lantern. “I’m sorry, of course you do.” But just as suddenly they are flashing right back at me again. “Then you know what I’m saying is true.”
After polishing off the stew, I set the bowl aside. I steady Tillie by the arms—I think her nerves are even worse than mine. “I’ve been thinking about it too. I’ll start by heading into the mountains. There are the roads to work on, but there’s also the railroad. Maybe I can get on with them.”
Tillie motions toward the sack. “Father’s old moccasin boots are in there. There’s not much left of your shoes, and you’re likely to lose your toes in this cold. I also packed in John’s too-small mackinaw. Oh, and a new set of coveralls that belonged to Tom. He hasn’t much use for them now that he’s working at the bank. There’s a little food, and a tin of matches and a skillet. And Charlie,” Tillie pauses, like I’m not going to want to hear what she has to say next, “Buck’s going to be passing it around. You’re going to have to change your name.”
I smile a little. “But I’ve got so fond of it. Drunken Alice gave it to me herself.”
“Drunken Alice?”
The cabin door slams. “Tillie!” It’s Mr. Carson’s voice.
Tillie’s voice drops to a hush. “Go on up to the hayloft and wait. They’re not going to be checking up there anymore tonight. You can start out in a couple of hours when everyone’s sleeping.”
We listen to the crunch of footsteps as her father approaches the barn. Tillie grabs the lantern and stands up. I don’t know where my boldness comes from, but before she has a chance to turn for the door, I pull her to me. I think I’m just so pleased to have someone believe in me instead of thinking I’m low-down and no good. Tillie doesn’t say anything. It just stops her a moment.
“Tillie!”
She gives me a little shove toward the ladder leading to the hayloft. “Coming, Father.” I scramble up the ladder as Tillie meets her father at the door. “I was just checking on Marigold and Dolores.”
“Well, come on now. Mother’s got your supper on.”
I crawl beneath the eave in the hayloft, where I pull on Tom’s new coveralls, the mackinaw and moccasin boots, and bury myself beneath the loose straw to stay warm. I picture Albert’s frozen face. I then picture Buck’s grizzled one. My heart takes a leap and I flinch despite the image of Buck only being in my mind. Once I recover, I realize I can no longer go back and work for him, even if the police say I’m innocent and even though I’m bound by the contract of Dr. Barnardo’s Home. I haven’t much of a plan about where I’m headed, and I don’t know how I’ll feed myself. But those mysteries aren’t nearly so frightening as the thought of going back to live with Buck in that ramshackle cabin, all alone.