Prentice Alvin

But instead of answering him, she paused for just a moment, and in that moment a gunshot rang out. Alvin knew at once that it came from the roadhouse; he followed the sound with his bug and found where it came from, found a dead man already beyond all healing. And then a moment later, another gunshot, and then he found someone else dying, a woman. He knew that body from the inside out; it wasn't no stranger. It had to be Old Peg.

“Mother!” cried Miss Larner. “Motherl”

“It's Old Peg Guester!” cried Alvin.

He saw Miss Larner tear open the collar of her dress, reach inside and pull out the amulets that hung there. She tore them off her neck, cutting herself bad on the breoking strings. Alvin could hardly take in what he saw– a young woman, scarce older than himself, and beautiful, even though her face was torn with gnef and terror.

“It's my mother!” she cried. “Alvin, save her!”

He didn't wait a second. He just tore on out of the smithy, ru

His good friend and Miss Larner's mother. The only way that could be is if she was the torch girl what run off seven years ago. But then if she was such a torch as folks around her said, why didn't she see this coming? Why didn't she look into her own mother's heartfire and forsee her death? It made no sense.

There was a man in front of him on the road. A man ru

“You, smith!” cried the black-haired Finder. “Glad to kill you too!”

He had a pistol in his hand; he fired.

Alvin took the bullet in his belly, but he didn't care about that. His body started work at once fixing what the bullet tore, but it wouldn't've mattered a speck if he'd been bleeding to death. Alvin didn't even slow down; he flew into the man, knocking him down, landing on him and skidding with hun ten feet across the dut of the road. The man cried out in fear and pain. That single cry was the last sound he made; in his rage, Alvin caught the man's head in such a grip that it took only one sharp jab of his other hand against the man's jaw to snap his neckbone clean in half. The man was already dead, but Alvin hit his head again and again with his fists, until his arms and chest and his leather apron was all covered with the black-haired Finder's blood and the man's skull was broke up inside his head like shards of dropped pottery.

Then Alvin knelt there, his head stupid with exhaustion and spent anger. After a minute or so he remembered that Old Peg was still lying there on the roadhouse floor. He knowed she was dead, but where else did he have to go? Slowly he got to his feet.

He heard horses coming down the road from town. That time of night in Hatrack River, gunshots meant only trouble. Folks'd come. They'd find the body in the road– they'd come on up to the roadhouse. No need for Alvin to stay to greet them.

Inside the roadhouse, Peggy was already kneeling over her mother's body, sobbing and panting from her run up to the house. Alvin only knew for sure it was her from her dress– he'd only seen her face but once before, for a second there in the smithy. She turned when she saw Alvin come inside. “Where were you! Why didn't you save her! You could have saved her!”

“I never could,” said Alvin. It was wrong of her to say such a thing. “There wasn't time.”

“You should have looked! You should have seen what was coming.”

Alvin didn't understand her. “I can't see what's coming,” he said. “That's your knack.”

Then she burst out crying, not the dry sobs like when he first came in, but deep, gut-wrenching howls of grief. Alvin didn't know what to do.

The door opened behind him.

“Peggy,” whispered Horace Guester. “Little Peggy.”

Peggy looked up at her father, her face so streaked with tears and twisted up and reddened with weeping that it was a marvel he could recognize her. “I killed her!” she cried. “I never should have left, Papa! I killed her!”

Only then did Horace understand that it was his wife's body lying there. Alvin watched as he started trembling, groaning, then keening loud and high like a hurt dog. Alvin never seen such grieving. Did my father cry like that when my brother Vigor died? Did he make such a sound as this when he thought that me and Measure was tortured to death by Red men?

Alvin reached out his arms to Horace, held him tight around the shoulders, then led him over to Peggy and helped him kneel there beside his daughter, both of them weeping, neither giving a sign that they saw each other. All they saw was Old Peg's body spread out on the floor; Alvin couldn't even guess how deeply, how agonizingly each one bore the whole blame for her dying.

After a while the sheriff came in. He'd already found the black-haired Finder's corpse outside, and it didn't take him long to understand exactly what happened. He took Alvin aside. “This is pure self-defense if I ever saw it,” said Pauley Wiseman, “and I wouldn't make you spend three seconds in jail for it. But I can tell you that the law in Appalachee don't take the death of a Finder all that easy, and the treaty lets them come up here and get you to take back there for trial. What I'm saying, boy, is you better get the hell out of here in the next couple of days or I can't promise you'll be safe.”

“I was going anyway,” said Alvin.

“I don't know how you done it,” said Pauley. Wiseman, “but I reckon you got that half-Black pickani

“You best never say such a thing in front of me again, Pauley Wiseman.”

The sheriff only shook his head and walked away. “Ain't natural,” he said. “All you people set on a monkey like it was folks,” He turned around to face Alvin. “I don't much care what you think of me, Alvin Smith, but I'm giving you and that mixup boy a chance to stay alive. I hope you have brains to take it. And in the meantime, you might go wash off that blood and fetch some clothes to wear.”

Alvin walked on back to the road. Other folks was coming by then– he paid them no heed. Only Mock Berry seemed to understand what was happening. He led Alvin on down to his house, and there Anga washed him down and Mock gave him some of his own clothes to wear. It was nigh onto dawn when Alvin got him back to the smithy.

Makepeace was setting there on a stool in the smithy door, looking at the golden plow. It was resting on the ground, still as you please, right in front of the forge.

“That's one hell of a journeyman piece,” said Makepeace.

“I reckon,” said Alvin. He walked over to the plow and reached down. It fairly leapt into Alvin's hands– notheavy at all now– but if Makepeace noticed how the plow moved by itself just before Alvin touched it, he didn't say.

“I got a lot of scrap iron,” said Makepeace. “I don't even ask for you to go halves with me. Just let me keep a few pieces when you turn them into gold.”