A Different Flesh Read Online Free PDF Page A

go on. He seemed to make up. his mind. He and Lucas bent by Wingfield. Together, they manhandled Wingfield to his feet, guided his stumbling steps over to Joanna’s cradle.
    He moaned again. It was empty.
    Anne sat on a hard wooden chair, her face buried in her hands. She had not stopped sobbing since she returned to her senses. She rocked back and forth in unending grief. “God, God, God have mercy on my dear Joanna,” she wailed.
    â€œI will get her back,” Wingield said, “or take such a vengeance that no sim shall dare venture within miles of an Englishman ever again.”
    â€œI want no vengeance,” Anne cried. “I want my darling babe again.”
    The colonists’ first efforts at pursuit had already failed. They had set dogs on the sims’ trail less than an hour after the attack. With the blood Wingfield had drawn, the trail had been fresh and clear. Only for a while, though: the ground north of Jamestown was so full of ponds and streams that the dogs lost the scent. Further tracking had had to wait for daylight—and with every passing minute, the sims took themselves farther away.
    â€œWhy?” Anne asked. The question was not directed at anyone. “Why should even such heartless brutes snatch up a defenseless babe? What are they doing to her?”
    Wingfield’s imagination conjured up a horde of possibilities, each worse than the one before. He knew he could never mention even the least of them to his wife.
    But her first agonized question puzzled him as well. He had never heard of the sims acting as they had that night. They killed, but they did not capture—he felt heartsick anew as he worked out the implications of that.
    Caleb Lucas said, “I fear me they but sought specially tender flesh.” He spoke softly, so Anne would not hear.
    Wingfield shook his head. The motion hurt. “Why take so great a risk for such small game?” He gritted his teeth at speaking of Joanna so, but went on, “They would have gained more meat by waiting until one of us stepped outside his cabin to ease himself, striking him down, and making away with him. If they had been cunning, they might have escaped notice till dawn.”
    â€œWherefore, then?” Lucas asked. Wingfield could only spread his hands.
    â€œWhat do you purpose doing now?” Allan Cooper added.
    â€œAs I told Anne,” Wingfield said, rising. His head still throbbed dreadfully and he was wobbly on his feet, but purpose gave his voice iron. “I will search out the places where the sims encamp in their wanderings, and look for traces of Joanna. If God grant I find her living, I’ll undertake a rescue. If it be otherwise—”
    Henry Dale stuck his head in the cabin door. His lips stretched back in a savage grin. “—Then kill them all,” he finished for Wingfield. “’Twere best you do it anyhow, at first encounter.”
    â€œNo,” Wingfield said, “nor anyone else on my behalf, I pray you. Until I have certain knowledge my daughter is dead, I needs must act as if she yet lives, and do nothing to jeopardize her fate. A wholesale slaughter of sims might well inflame them all.”
    â€œWhat cares one pack of beasts what befalls another?” Dale asked scornfully.
    Allan Cooper had a comment more to the point. “Should you fare forth alone, Edward, I greatly doubt you’d work a wholesale slaughter in any case—more likely the sims would slay you.”
    That set off fresh paroxysms of weeping from Anne. Wingfield looked daggers at the guard. “I can but do my best. My hunting has taught me somewhat of woodscraft, and bullet and bolt strike harder and farther than stones.” He spoke mostly for his wife’s benefit; he knew too well Cooper was probably right. Still, he went on, “You’d try no less were it your Cecil.”
    â€œOh, aye, so I would,” Cooper said. “You misunderstand me, though.