“I’m not even sure how she feels about me,” he continued. “But when she learns that Mary is in trouble, and that we are trying to help her, I think she will see things as they are.” Still no reply. “You don’t seem overly concerned, Purceville. She’s a hard old woman, and as determined an enemy as you’re ever likely to face. I’m not one to fear her for a witch, but there are other weapons she might employ.”
“She won’t resist us,” said the other strangely. “.....she’s not as hard as you think.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Again no answer. He had been too weary to press the point; he only thought it curious. And when they reached the dark shelter and found the woman gone, the night’s small rest assured, he had been far too relieved to wonder at it. For in the clinging darkness he had not seen the charred tree above, or the withered bones that shrank away from it.
Walking stiffly now in the early morning cold, he approached the Englishman. Stephen heard him, but did not turn. One last ashen limb projected above the rising level of earth in the hole. He began to hurry himself to cover it, then stopped.
“Stephen? What are you doing?”
Purceville straightened. He said, without turning. “I am burying the mother of my sister, and the woman who cared for me as a child.”
At that moment a flock of ravens spoke behind, an evil sound that seemed to mesh the rising web of horror about him. Turning toward the summons Michael saw the tree, as a gust of wind shook its blackened limbs in a dull rattle of death. Then whirling back in shock, he saw the bones.
“What happened here?” he cried. “What have you bastards done!”
In a flash it came to him: the party of horsemen riding hard from the west, the soot-marks of their boots upon the threshold. Anger and hatred overwhelmed him, as before he knew what had happened the pistol was in his hand, and pointed at the back of his enemy.