The Memoirs of Finn O'Brien Villens: Part 1

Leaving Home

I must start somewhere and I suppose the day that I went to Lemuel’s mound is as good a place as any. So many things that I did not understand for many years happened on that day. I was caught in the early stages of events that would shape my life, although at the time I was just a young boy playing a minor part. Years later, my role would grow and, an honest man having no use for false modesty,  my actions would prove pivotal in saving my family, but on that night, I had no idea of the larger picture. I simply did what I was told me to do and used my wits to avoid dangers that I did not understand. In short, I was ignorant and lucky. The combination has worked for me many times since.

Before I go any further I must introduce a key figure in these memoirs, Lemuel Hawkins. Even now, after spending so much of my adult life involved with that chameleon of a man, I do not know for certain who he was or what his part was in all that follows. At various times in my life I thought I knew, but was always wrong. He was either the most complicated person I ever knew or the best liar. I speak of him in the past tense, as I should, I suppose, for it is widely held that I killed him, but I am not even certain that he is dead.  One of the reasons I am writing these memoirs is to collect all I know of him and perhaps come to a conclusion about the man called Lemuel Hawkins. 

One thing I know about the man is that he wrote an odd book called ‘The Annumpi Chronicles.” It so happens that his book ends with his version of the trip to the Annumpi mounds, with the very day that I have chosen to begin my book. His manuscript sits on the shelf above my desk. I have studied the work as I attempted to discover his secrets. My efforts have failed. However, I fully acknowledge that I may have missed some important clue or revelation in his writing, so I have decided to add it as an appendix to my words. Perhaps someone better at working with words than I will make sense of it.

Lemuel Hawkin’s account of that day is fairly accurate, at least as to my part in the day’s events. I was brought along to be an amiable beast of burden, but I would have endured much more to spend the day with Lt. Villens and Maria Valenzuela. I worshipped Maria as only a boy of fifteen can worship a beautiful and intelligent woman of twenty-eight and, although I had only known Villens a short while, he was already a hero to me, since I witnessed his brave actions when Cupido de la Vega and his men attacked my family. From that day on, I wanted to be like him and sought his approval. I suppose I still do.

Hawkins’ version of that day stops abruptly at the point where we returned home.   I’ve often wondered if this was to hide his knowledge of what was awaiting us. As we approached the edge of the high grass, my brother, Ronan, rushed toward us and signaled that we should be quiet. He drew us off the path and into the tall grass so that we were invisible from the house. He told the others to wait while he and I dragged the cart back down the path and around the bend. I was left to the hide the cart while he swiftly returned to the others. 

By the time I returned to the others, Villens and Maria were gone. Hawkins, Aunt Rose, and I waited while Ronan disappeared down the path. Hawkins and Aunt Rose spoke in quiet, urgent tones. I could not make out what they were saying. I was exhausted from the day’s labors, but  energized by the strange goings on. 

Hawkins asked where I hid the cart and when I told him, he left to get it. I started to follow, but Rose, who had sat down on the ground to rest, called softly for me to stay. I sat beside her and she looked silently at me for a long time. 

“There are men at the house looking for Villens,” she finally said. “We do not know who they are, but your Grandmother and Senor Hernando do not trust them. We must help Villens escape. Much is happening and I do not have time to explain. I do not even know all that is going on myself. You need to do what exactly what you are told, without any questions. Will you do that?” Too startled to talk, I nodded my agreement. 

“If the men ask you about Villens or Maria, you say that you don’t know,” she answered. “You were busy with the cart and then you noticed that they were gone.” She paused for a bit, and I wondered what had happened to them. I was glad that I didn’t know.

Aunt Rose leaned toward me and spoke in a whisper. “When Lemuel gets here with the cart, you will help him with it. The three of us will go home. Let me or Lemuel do the talking. When we get home, clean up, and go directly to your room. If you are stopped, say that you are exhausted and need to rest. Do not say a word about today to anyone, especially to the children. If you are stopped by strange men, act like a stupid boy who wasn’t told anything by the adults. Stay in your room until you hear differently. Rest if you can, you will need your strength.”

Before Aunt Rose could finish, I heard the cart coming up the path. Hawkins had injured his hand and he was having difficulty manhandling the cumbersome cart. The tension energized me and I rushed out to help him.  He shook his head at me and said, “Calm down. You are tired from a long days work. You must not give away that anything unusual is happening.”

I tried to settle down, but I was fifteen and not good at concealing my excitement. Hawkins solved the problem by insisting that Aunt Rose ride in cart and then claiming that his injured hand prevented him from helping push it. Hawkins was a small, thin man and not much use for physical labor, but without his help, it was all I could do to manage the cart. My excitement faded as my exhaustion returned. Perhaps that was his plan all along.

We left the high grass and crossed a short strip of packed earth before easing the cart onto the gravel path that led to the house. Two men stopped us. They had rifles carelessly slung over their shoulders. They looked past us, clearly expected Villens and Maria to be with us. 

Hawkins asked who they were and they ignored him. “Were is the Lieutenant?,” the smaller of the two asked. Hawkins insisted that Villens wasn’t with us. He said that Villens had helped us take the cart to the mound, but then he had left. The small man clearly did not believe Hawkins , but before he asked another question, Hawkins said that we didn’t have time for this. The lady was ill and needed to get home immediately. 

I had been watching the exchange between Hawkins and the small man, and when I turned to look at Aunt Rose in the cart I was shocked at what I saw.  Rose was curled up under the blanket we had sat on to eat our lunch. She was shaking and staring blankly. “I must get her home,” insisted Hawkins. Without waiting for an answer, he began to push the cart toward the house. I jumped into place and soon we had left the two strange men behind. I expected a rifle shot any minute and the skin on back twitched in anticipation, but they let us go. The bluff had worked.

At the house, I was hustled to the washroom by my cousin Ethna. Aunt Rose was rushed off to her room to rest, while Hawkins sat at the table in a hushed conversation with my Grandmother and other family members who had gathered around. My mother was at the stove and as I passed she told me that she would send dinner up me. “You must rest,” she said. “We will need you later tonight.” I noticed that my father was not there and I asked her where he was. She kissed me and told me not worry. 

It was strangely quiet in the room I shared with my brother Ronan. No place with Ronan in it was quiet for long, however, it was early in the evening so Ronan wasn’t there. He and I seldom used the small room except to sleep. Neither of us was of a scholarly bent, I’m afraid, and we spent most of our time outside. Wanting to make sense of what was going on, I tried to stay awake, but the quiet of the room and the unusual amount of space in our bed won out and I fell asleep.

It was dark when Ethna’s whispered voice woke me. She sat on the edge of the bed and shook me by the shoulders when I tried to go back to sleep. “You must get up, Finn,” she hissed. “The men are with Don Hernando. If you hurry, you can get to the river without being seen.”

“But I’m not dressed,” I said. I was not fully awake and not yet appreciating her urgency. 

“For God’s sake,” she muttered and smacked the side of my head. “Wake up. You must leave immediately.”

It was not the first time Ethna had slapped me. My cousin was several years older than me and had cared for Ronan and me many times. She was not a patient person and preferred a sharp slap to explaining herself. She also was wildly imaginative and included us in her adventures. The occassional slap to get our attention was the price we paid for time spent with our mercurial cousin. It was worth it.

On that night, it was clear that Ethna was not playing. I put on the clothes I had worn that day as they were they were close to hand.  As I pulled them on, Ethna dug my boots out from under the bed. She handed me a pair of heavy woolen socks. “Dress warmly,” she said. “You’ll be out all night.” She was wrong. I would not return to my home for over a year.

As I laced my boots, I looked around for my knife. My father had forged the long thin blade and set it a heavy ox-bone handle that fit my hand exactly. I used the knife for skinning animals and habitually carried it in a leather scabbard that I laced to my thigh. “Don’t worry about your things,” Ethan said, trying to hurry me.  “Ronan and I gathered what we think you’ll need. The twins have hidden them under the blackberries at the bend in the river. Do you know the place?” I nodded that I did.

“You must go now, while Don Hernando keeps the men occupied. Use the servants’ stairs and do not let yourself be seen. I think they have left guards on the bridge, so you will have to swim the river. Go around the bend so that they won’t see you. Go to the thicket and you will find dry clothes.” She pulled me to my feet and led me to the door. Opening the door, she looked carefully down the hall, then waved for me to follow.

Ethna left me at the top of the stairs. I had used the servants’ stairs many times to sneak out in the night, so I knew which treads squeaked and which were safe. The stairs ran along the back of the house and I stopped by the wall of Don Hernando’s old library. I could hear his deep voice speaking with his usual slow and steady pace, but several unknown voices interrupted him. The strange voices were loud and angry, but I could not make out what they were saying. I moved on swiftly. The servants’ door was locked, but so many generations of young boys had picked the heavy old lock, that a little tap in the right spot opened it. I tapped, the door opened, and I was outside in the starless night. 

There was a quarter-moon somewhere above the heavy clouds, but it was an act of faith to swear to that. I stood in the shadow of the house and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Edging along the side of the house, I peered around the corner and could see two shapes on the bridge. I  drew back into the shadow of the house, then made my way the five hundred yards or so to the river. The bend in the river was about a half mile from the bridge. There was no way that the men on the bridge could see me on such a dark night. I scanned the far bank until I saw the dark mass of the blackberry thicket. 

Quickly stripping my clothes, I shoved my socks into my boots and tied the laces together. I whirled the boots above my head and spun them across the river. I wasn’t certain that they would clear the river, but was reassured by a soft thud. Easing myself into the water, I shuddered at the cold, and began to swim. My cousins and brothers and I had learned to swim silently, all the action beneath the surface. We’d use this method to sneak up on each other when we engaged in our on-going mock battles. As I swam, no sounds carried to the bridge, my presence was marked only by ripples that were invisible on this dark night. 

I scrambled up the far bank and sought the thicket that should be on my left in the direction of the bridge. The blackberries were about thirty feet from where I left the river. As I made my way to the hidden entrance, I stumbled across my boots and nearly fell into the river. Picking myself up and brushing off the gravel and mud, I tossed the boots across my shoulder and continued on to the thicket. 

The huge tangled mass of the blackberries loomed in front of me. The the ticket was nearly thirty feet by twenty feet. There was a secret entrance maintained by O’Brien boys for years. My father claims he and his brothers built it. I found the entrance and carefully lifted aside the branches that obscured it. A narrow tunnel led into the cleared center. My pack was just out of arms reach in the dark tunnel. I lay down and stretched for the pack, but it was farther away than I thought. I crawled into the tunnel, carefully avoiding tearing my naked body on the thorns. 

When I stretched out for the pack once more, it was again father along than I expected. A dim light penetrated into the tunnel, and could see the outline of the pack about six feet ahead at the opening of the open central space. I crawled the final distance, as I stretched and grasped the pack, a voice whispered, “Want to buy some clothes?” in my ear, and the pack was yanked away from me.

Had I been dressed, I would have leapt out of my clothes. My cousin, Daniel collapsed in giggles and I knew that he’d pulled yet another trick on me. A sharp punch in the ribs made it clear that this wasn’t the time. His laughter switched to gasps for air. Daniel and his twin brother were a few years younger than me and were dedicated to playing tricks on their older cousin. The Twins, as everyone referred to them, were inseparable, so I quickly looked around for Michael, but Daniel was alone.  

“They don’t know we’re twins,” said Daniel, reading my glance. “Michael is with the others and two men are guarding them. I slipped away and found Ethna hiding upstairs. We found you asleep and planned your escape. We don’t think the men know about you. We packed some things for you and made it across the bridge before they put guards on it.” He pushed my pack toward me, and said, “We packed your specimen hunting clothes on top. You know you’re naked, right?” 

I glared at him, but he could not see my face in the darkness. He wouldn’t have cared anyway. “I left my clothes on the other side of the river. I was planning on going back across right away to help out with the men at the house.”

“So you came to a hiding place in a blackberry thicket naked,” asked Daniel with false innocence.

“I didn’t think it through,” I admitted angrily. “Ethna woke me up and shoved me out of the house with very little explanation. I didn’t wake up all the way until I was in the river.” I dressed hurriedly while ignoring the grin that I knew was on Daniel’s face. This would be hard to live down.

I rummaged through the pack and saw that they had gathered my specimen hunting equipment and a change of clothes. This was a good choice. Maria was a naturalist and had taught me how to gather specimens, plants and small animals, for her studies. She had outfitted me with equipment I’d need to spend days at a time in the field. My father had taught me to move silently in the woods and I was an excellent shot with the fowling piece Maria gave me to bring down birds. Ethna had thought to send the gun with Daniel, and he handed it over to me. A bag of shot and a powder horn were lashed to the pack.  I tied the sheath with the long, thin, bone-handled knife around my thigh. The short, thick bladed knife, I tucked in my boot. 

“Ethna made me steal these for you,” Daniel said, as he handed me a thick leather belt with a pouch on the left side. It was filled with the leather wrapped cartridges for the Baker rifles my father and uncles had used during the attack on General Morales. I was shocked to see the belt. The rifles and cartridges were kept locked away in a closet. I thought that my father had the only keys, but here was Daniel handing me the rifle. I could hit what I aimed at from four hundred yards with the rifle. A musket was useless at about a hundred. This weapon meant that Ethna was serious. She hadn’t had time to explain what was going on, but she’d never steal a Baker rifle unless she thought we were in great danger.

I sat with the rifle across my lap and asked Daniel what the hell was going on. For once, he appreciated the gravity of the moment, stopped clowning, and told me what he knew. While Hawkins, Aunt Rose, Maria, Villens and I had been investigating the mounds and generally taking the day off, six men had come to Don Hernado’s house looking for Lieutenant Eduardo Villens. They would not identify themselves. The family wasn’t certain if they were from the new government or were one of the bands of former soldiers roaming the countryside. These men were known to kidnap or rob officers. The men came at midday, and as the day dragged on and we did not return, they became irritable. 

Ronan managed to slip away and warn Maria and Villens. Maria thought that the man must be from Eduardo O’Brien, another cousin of mine and a big deal in the new government. He had wanted Maria to come the capital and marry him. She refused and had become attached to Villens.  Villens and Maria decided that their only option was to take to the woods and try to reach the lands of the Villens family on the east coast. They would be safe there, as Eduardo’s faction only controlled the western part of the new country. A de facto civil war existed between the eastern and western regions and the Villens father was a senior commander in the eastern forces. If Villens and Maria they could make it across the county, they would be safe. “Go and find them, Finn,” said Daniel. “Help them escape.” 

I was fifteen and armed to teeth. I tried not to think that the largest thing I’d ever shot at was a badger. I’d missed and I had a long scar on my calf from not running away fast enough. “Where are they?,” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. 

I thought about the problem while I gathered my things. Thinking aloud, I said, “Probably to the north, into the woods. That’s my best guess. They’ll try to loop around any pursuers and then head east. You know the trick, avoid roads, move at night. It’ll take them weeks to get through.” 

Daniel shrugged. I knew would I hit him if he shrugged again. I sighed and made ready to go when my stomach growled and I remembered that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. 

I guess Daniel heard my stomach because he pointed to the pack and said, “There’s food. Chicken, sausage, biscuits, cheese, some nuts and apples.” I found the food and sliced a chunk of sausage. I dropped the sausage in a pocket of my shirt and prepared to leave. I’d have to eat on the move. I had one last question for Daniel. “The rifle, Daniel,” I asked. “Have they hurt anyone?”

“No, not yet at least,” he said, stifling another shrug. “Your father told Ethna that there were too many of us. But they are armed and they are serious. I don’t trust them in the woods. Neither does Ethna.”

I sat a few minutes and chewed the sausage wondering if there was anything else I needed to do before I left. I told Daniel were I left my clothes and he promised that he would get them. I didn’t want anyone to know that someone had crossed the river in the night. I thanked Daniel for the food and said goodbye. He nodded at me and in the dim light I saw that he was frightened. He was just a kid, I thought. It took several trips to drag all my supplies down the narrow entrance path. I concentrated on what I was doing and tried to forget that I was only fifteen.

After crawling free of the thicket, I went to the river and carefully worked my way to the bridge. I wanted to discover what the guards on the bridge knew. There was a path that led along the riverbank and ended under the bridge. This time of year it was overgrown and in the darkness I would be hidden. I left my pack and the guns hidden in the catttails along the riverbank. I was about fifty feet from the bridge when a man with a lantern came down the path that leads from the house to the bridge. “Let’s go,” he called.  “He and the girl must have seen us. They’re not coming back. We’ll have to go and find them.” The guards picked up their muskets and trotted over to the man with the lantern. Two others joined them and the men headed north. Like me, they must have decided that Villens and Maria would try to skirt them to the north.

I hurried back to my supplies and ran through the trees that lined the river. Keeping on the opposite side, I slowed when I could hear the men. They made so much noise, they had to be from a city. I had heard that Eduardo drew most of his men from the slums of capitol. They followed the river and I kept slightly behind them on the opposite bank. I would keep the river between us until the next bend, some ten miles north, where the river turned east, then I’d see what they did. 

I followed them for several hours and began to worry that dawn couldn’t be too far off. I would have to hide when the sun came up. Twice they veered away from the river and both times I considered crossing the river to keep them in sight, but both times they soon returned. In the dark, overcast night, the city men found the going much easier by sticking to the river. 

The men were passing around a bottle and getting louder, when the small man who was clearly the leader held up his hand and hissed for silence. He pointed into the woods and following his guide I could see a small fire through the trees. He spun his finger in a circle and the men separated. They fanned out and slowly moved to encircle the fire. 

I quickly stashed my packs and guns beneath a tangle of fallen branches. I checked that I had the short, thick bladed knife in my right boot and the long, thin-bladed dagger on my thigh. I dug through the pack and removed a few of my bird hunting tools and found a pistol I hadn’t noticed earlier. I loaded the pistol and slipped it in my belt. The river was broad and shallow here and I found a place a short way upstream where I could leap from rock to rock dry-footed. I was now to the north of the camp fire. I hoped that I was still behind the encircling men. I started to move toward the fire, watching for movement in the woods, not around the fire. 

I had no idea what I would do if I found the men, but I knew I had to do something to help Villens and Maria. Remembering that they were city men and would have no idea that I was following them, I stopped and listened until I heard movement about twenty yards to my right. I could make out a dark shape moving toward the fire. He was slightly behind me, so I waited until he passed me and then I slid in about ten steps behind him. He crept a little closer to the fire and then stopped, raised his musket, and took aim at something I couldn’t see. 

Without thinking, I ran at him, making no effort to be quiet. He turned toward the noise, swinging his musket at me. I ducked under the gun and slammed my shoulder into him. He was taller than me, but I was thick and heavy for a boy and I drove my shoulder into his chest knocking him onto his back. His musket clattered against my back as he fell. I landed on top of him and kneed him in the stomach as we tangled together. Drawing my long knife, I smashed the bone handle on his head. He growled and tore at me with strong hands. I smashed the knife twice more and felt his skull crack. He sagged and stopped struggling. I rolled off him and crawled away into the brush. I caught my breath and tried to calm myself. The man lay unconscious or dead. I couldn’t tell which and didn’t have time to check.

I was certain that someone must have heard the fight, so I waited in the undergrowth until my breath came back to me and my heartbeat returned to normal, or close to normal. No one came, so I decided I better go looking for them. Moving silently through the woods, I kept the camp fire in the corner of my eye and walked in a circle around that central point. The next man I saw was much closer to the fire. He was kneeling behind a large rock and peering  around it to the right and left. He had laid his musket in a groove in the rock. The gun was aimed at the camp fire and he appeared to be searching for a target.

I approached from his left when he suddenly leaned forward and picked up his musket. Before he could fix on his target, I pulled out of my pocket a small weighted net I used to catch birds. I twirled the net over my head and spun it toward the butt of the musket. The net wrapped itself around his hands, pinning them against the stock. Before he realized what had happened, I threw myself on him and slammed him face first into the rock he was using for cover. There was a sickening hollow thud and a low moan. He fell back from the rock and lay still. His face was a bloody mess. I untangled my net and went to find the other men.

The third man found me. I had only gone a few steps when a man stepped out from the shadows and leveled a pistol at me. “Who are you,” he demanded. “Where is the Lieutenant?” 

I didn’t answer and he softly called a name. When there was no response, he lifted the shield of a dark lantern and shined the narrow beam of light on me. “If that is blood on your clothes, boy, I will kill you,” he said in a dispassionate tone that left no doubt that he would do what he said. He stared at me for while then said, “They are not here. Where are they, boy?” His voice was calm, dispassionate, and utterly unnerving. I was too afraid to say a thing. Up to now every thing I’d done was a reaction. Now I had to think and I’d never had to think with a pistol aimed at my head. I wasn’t good at it. 

The man shifted his stance and I saw a shadow gliding toward him. He looked me in the eyes and I realized that he was going to shoot me. I saw him steady the pistol, and then in a swift blur of motion an arm reached around him and roughly pulled his head back exposing his throat. In a single motion a knife sliced through his throat and he sank down at his killer’s feet. My father cleaned his knife on the dead man’s jacket and looked me over. “Are you alright?,” he asked. I nodded, unable to speak. “Have you seen the other two?”

I pointed over my shoulder, then swallowed hard and said, “Back there.” 

“Both of them?,” he asked. I nodded, my voice deserting me again.

Noticing my bloody shirt, he asked “Alive?”  

“Don’t know. Maybe,” was all I could say.

“Show me,” he said and I took him to the men I’d fought. One was dead and my father dispatched the other. We walked quietly from the dead man and retrieved my pack and the rifles. My frowned when he saw the Baker rifle, but he said nothing. On the way back to the dead men, my father told me that he set the trap of the false camp fire and had killed the other men. He could tell that I was upset about our killing the men. “They held guns on our family,” was his only explanation. Pa never wasted words.

When we reached the river, it all caught up to me. I vomited and began to cry, partly overwhelmed by the violence and partly in fury and embarrassment over my tears. My father waited until I was finished vomiting and helped me wash up. He put a strong arm around my shoulders, waited for me to gather myself, and then said, “You did good, son. When you fight men like these, Eduardo’s men, kill them when you can.”

We buried the bodies without speaking, taking turns using the small shovel that was part of my gear. Silence was my father’s preferred state, but usually I would fill the silence on my own. In those early morning hours, I had plenty to say, but the words wouldn’t take shape. I had killed a man, helped kill another, and my father had killed four, one right before my eyes. They were wicked men I told myself. They had threatened my family and likely would have killed Villens and Maria. I had no doubts about that when I attacked them, but now wasn’t so certain. I wanted to ask my father if there had been another way we could have dealt with the men, but the words, the words just wouldn’t come.

Dawn had broken when we piled brush on the last grave. I offered some of my food to my father, but he refused. I wasn’t hungry either. He asked me if I knew of a hunting shack about an hour north. I didn’t so he lead the way. My father was a big man, but he moved through the woods without a sound. He carried the Baker rifle and cartridge belt and had slung my pack over his shoulder. I followed trying not to think about the sticky mess on my shirt.

The shack was a simple, low lean-to, made of thick oak branches, enclosed on three sides. It was perched on a small outcropping that rose twenty feet or more above a swift, rocky creek. The floor was packed sand and the open side faced east, across the creek. The roof was a rough thatch of branches that we quickly repaired. The shelter was about four feet deep and six feet long. It was built for one man to spend the night or to wait out a storm. My father told me to go inside and lie down. Before I did, I stashed my things in the back. I untied my blanket roll and stretched out on the packed sand wrapping my blanket around me. “Give me your shirt,” said my father. I pulled it off and handed it to him. He took the shirt and walked down to the creek. I watched him scrub the blood out of my shirt and tried to stay awake so that I could to talk to him when he returned, but it was no good, I soon fell asleep. 

When I woke, the sun was high in the sky. My shirt was hanging from a tree branch to dry. My father had placed the shirt so it would shade my face from the rising sun. He was sitting with his back to me, and I thought he might be asleep. He must have heard me stirring for without turning around he softly asked, “You awake?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“That’s good,” he replied. “I’ve got to get back.” He stood up, turning toward me. I wanted him to say something, and I wasn’t sure that he would.

“You’ve been in these woods with Maria, haven’t you,” he asked.

 

“Yessir,” I answered. “Many times.”

He nodded and stood thinking for a while. I crawled out of the shelter and stood next to him. He was gazing north along the creek. He began talking as I was following his thoughts, which I guess I was. “They have no food or guns. They’ll need to find food and shelter soon. If it was you, where would you go?”

I thought for a minute or two and then said that I’d follow the creek a ways, then find a deer path headed north. That should take me to a small valley where there were several small farms.

“Is there a good way east from there?,” he asked.

“There’s a trail that goes southeast through a gap in the hills. I don’t know how far it goes.” 

He nodded and said, “Then you better go the to valley.” With that he turned away and began walking south toward home. He took a few steps and then stopped.  “Be careful,” he said without turning around. I watched him walk away until I lost sight of him in the trees then I packed my things. Climbing carefully down to the creek, I began following it north toward the valley. The shirt was damp against my chest. A faint, dark stain remained.

It was early afternoon when I stopped under a willow and rested. I ate a little and wanted to sleep, but I made myself get on my feet and start walking. By now I was deep in the forest and a long way from home. I couldn’t help thinking that I should have gone with my father to protect my family. But then he hadn’t asked me to come back. There were many men  he could call on for help at home. He knew that I knew these woods better than most, save Maria, so I guess it made sense for me to search for Maria and Villens. 

The problem was that I no idea where to find them. My confidence in finding them at the farms in the northern valley dwindled in the isolation of the woods. I tried to remind myself that I’d found birds and animals Maria had sent me after. It was a matter of knowing how they lived and searching those places that fit their needs. The farms best fit the needs of Villens and Maria, so I continued on. I often relied on bird calls to find my prey. Maria had taught me many of the calls. Somehow I thought it unlikely that I’d hear Maria singing.

I left the creek when it played out and went underground. I found a deer path nearby that was heading north. The path was heavily used, and I hoped that it led to the grassy valley. From the position of the sun, I knew I’d been walking six or seven hours since I’d rested at the willow. The lengthening shadows were a warning that I needed to find a place to bed down. There would be no hunter’s shack tonight. The sky had cleared and the night promised to be dry, but I‘d been caught in sudden rainstorms before, so I began to watch for a place to rest. I found a shallow ditch beneath a thick shrub. From the faint rank smell, I guessed that a deer must have spent the day sleeping there. I crawled in and lay down. After eating the last of the chicken and a biscuit and drinking from my water bottle, I closed my eyes.

I woke in darkness. The night was clear and the moon bright. I felt rested and decided to get going. I scrambled onto the path, shouldered my load, and checked the stars to orient myself  to the north. Walking down the path, I realized that for the first time since this whole thing had started, I was enjoying myself. It was a beautiful night and I was in the woods alone. True I was carrying more than I liked. I preferred to travel light. Of course, I couldn’t fool myself forever. This time was different. I needed to find Maria and Villens soon. For the first time I began to worry that something bad might have happened to them already. Who knows, maybe more men had been sent after them.  I picked up pace, eating my breakfast as I walked. I wanted to get to the valley as early as possible. If they were there, they wouldn’t stay long and would leave early in the morning. I wanted to catch them before they left the valley.

Walking along that path in the quiet of early morning darkness, I kept turning over in my mind the likelihood that I’d find them there. It made sense to me, and I couldn’t think of any more likely place for them to go. It’s what I would have done, but Maria knew the woods better than I did and she might have a better plan. Villens was a experienced soldier. He would know how to escape from pursuers.  

Never had I needed Ethna more than in those dark pre-dawn hours. More exactly, I needed a slap to the head to make me stop thinking. I was following my best ideas, the doubts were getting me nowhere. “Twack,” I said softly, tapping my head in a much gentler version of Ethna’s slapping the nonsense out of your head slap.

The sun was rising when I caught a glimpse of red among the greens, browns, and shadows of the woods. A small blaze of red stood out from the gloom about a hundred yards down the path. I couldn’t make out what it was until I was almost upon it. Two red feathers were wedged into a cut in the bark of a tree. They formed an upturned V pointing north along the path. My heart leapt. The feathers were a sign that Maria and I would use when we’d separated while searching for specimens. The arrow pointed in the direction of a meeting place. I started running, then dropped back to a brisk walk. I wasn’t sure how far I had to go, so I had to pace myself. As I walked, I searched for another sign. It occurred to me that the feathers probably meant that they’d eaten last night. I found a sign every thousand feet or so, and began to think that I must be getting close.

The sun was clearing the eastern hills when I left the woods and entered the valley. Crossing a rolling meadow, I headed for the nearest farm. I found two red feathers woven into the wire gate. They formed a downward arrow. Maria and Villens had stopped here. I left my rifle and fowling piece by the gate and walked to the door of my farmhouse. I smelled breakfast cooking and, through an open window, I heard Villens’ voice.