Above the Harvest Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t sure, but one of the men looked his way and said a few words in a different tone before the two of them took off, immediately lost to sight in the whirling snow. Silas let out his breath in a sigh of relief. He hadn’t known how things would go there for a moment. Waiting to make sure they had really gone before he moved, he carefully made his way to the inert body on the ground, intending to see if they had left anything which might be worth taking.
     
    He stood for a moment staring down at the man who was lying on his stomach. He jabbed at the body with his boot but there was no sign of life. He realised why when he turned the body over. The lolling head was a pulped mess with half his skull gone and his brains showing.They’d done for him all right. Silas knelt in the crimson snow and began a thorough search of the body. The trouser pockets were empty but he’d expected that, and he thought he’d seen one of the men unhook a pocket watch, certainly something which had shone momentarily anyway, before they had made themselves scarce.
     
    The man’s clothes were of good quality, a cut above the norm, Silas thought. He could have been a well-to-do merchant or perhaps the captain of a ship. Certainly his attackers could have been foreign sailors, the way they’d spoken. Maybe the dead man was their captain and they’d got a grudge against him. Whatever, they’d done a thorough job on him; even his own mother wouldn’t recognise him.
     
    A moment later Silas’s hand froze. He’d worked his way under the man’s jacket, shirt and vest and his fingers had found what felt like a money belt. His heart beating fit to burst and keeping a constant lookout for anyone approaching, he pulled off the jacket and undid the shirt buttons to see what was what. A few seconds later he sat back on his heels, the cloth pouch in his hands. Shaking with excitement, he opened the bag and then let out a soundless whistle. He drew out a thick wad of notes. There must be all of thirty pounds, maybe more. A small fortune. Enough to pay the McKenzies what he owed and then some. But wait, how was he going to explain coming by it? And what if someone knew the dead man was carrying a muckload of cash? If his death got in the paper, that someone could well put two and two together and make ten. And ten could hang him.
     
    His fingers tightened greedily on the small pouch. He wanted this money; he’d had nothing to do with the man’s death and what was the point in looking a gift horse in the mouth?
     
    He continued to sit for a few moments more, his mind racing. An idea came to him, an idea so beautiful, so perfect, he marvelled it hadn’t occurred to him immediately. He began to strip the clothes from the figure on the ground until the man was as naked as the day he was born. Then Silas hastily divested himself of his own clothing, shivering as he pulled on the dead man’s underwear and then his other garments.The shirt was badly stained with blood as was the collar of the jacket, but if he knotted his muffler round his neck it’d do for now until he could get somewhere quiet and rub the stains out in the snow until they were faint enough. He’d take his cap too, it didn’t look as though the man had been wearing a hat of any kind, something which again suggested he might be a foreigner.
     
    Dressing the body in his own clothes was much more difficult than he’d thought, but eventually it was done. When he tried to fit his boots on the dead man’s feet, though, he ran into a problem. His boots were a good couple of sizes too small. He hadn’t noticed that when he’d pulled on the other boots - they were calf length, of a fine good leather and infinitely superior to his hobnailed ones. They’d slipped onto his feet like a lass’s caress.
     
    He frowned. The body would have to be bootless. It wouldn’t matter.The law would assume someone had made off with them.
     
    When he’d finished, he was panting slightly. He now