The man stopped swaying. “I tolt the truth. They teased me cruel about my shootin’.” He jerked his head in the direction of the shotgun. “Else why would they have given me that crooked piece?” The man pointed to one of his eyes. “Look here at my wanderin’ eye....”
Red said, “Shut your face.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Red slept, but Tim was too cold to sleep. He looked up at the boughs of the sheltering tree. He gazed into the cold night sky. A full moon was shining somewhere behind the pines. The wind moaned softly in the boughs, filling the valley with mournful music. The brighter stars winked clear in the crystal air. Tim rolled out of his blanket and moved away from their camp, swinging his arms and working his knees to restore circulation.
He sat in the open on a jagged rock and picked out fragments of constellations. There was Pegasus to the west, and if he turned his head he could see Orion’s Belt above a hill in the east.
This was their second night under the stars since the death of the woman.
Tim had kept his mind on things that lay ahead. He had dreamed of home, of sleigh rides and skating on the pond behind the schoolhouse and thawing out in the blacksmith shop.
Now he remembered a winter so cold that the river had frozen clear across. He and Peter Gleason had skated all the way to the other side. Cold was fine, as long as you could thaw out, sitting by a fire with a cup of chocolate in your hand.
For the first time he let himself think back to the thing that had happened on the ridge.
They had stripped the cartridges off the dead men and taken their firearms. They had left the bodies where they had fallen. They had ordered the third man to mount his horse and had sent him on his way, burbling off a stream of thanks for sparing his life.