Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers Read Online Free PDF

reached inside his jacket, popped a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it without taking his eyes off of us.
    There were four of us looking back at him. Pardee Bell, a tall, rangy black man, Tony Martinelli, as short as Pardee was tall but with his game face on, with a hit man's cold-crazy eyes, and Horace, who looked like an aging schoolteacher in his birth-control glasses and rumpled clothes, until you realized just how big he was. Also, of course, my two furry buddies.
    Breen took a single deep drag on his cigarette, burning down half its length, spat something onto the sidewalk, and then threw the cigarette in the gutter. He blew a plume of smoke up into the evening air, just to show us he could hold it, and then sauntered away without a word.
    "At least now he knows," Pardee said.
    "How often does he have to check in?" Horace asked.
    "Daily for the first two weeks, then weekly after that if she allows it. It's up to her, and she hates the bastard already."
    "One of us will be out here each day," Pardee said. "Remind him he'll be going up against a crowd, he tries some shit."
    "Y'all don't have to do that," I said. "He's tough, but I don't think he's stupid."
    Based on their expressions, they did not agree.
     
    The next morning I went out early to have some time on the property before Carol Pollard showed up. Seven hundred acres makes for quitea long walk, but I knew the only way I'd ever see the whole thing was by tromping around on foot. I parked my Suburban at the house so Carol would know I was around and then set out with the dogs for the river bottoms below the main house. It was cool enough but with a hint of humidity, and my boots and trousers were soon wet from morning dew on the grass.
    The Dan River was some two hundred yards wide as it passed Glory's End. The Dan is a substantial, muscular river. From the looks of all the snags and debris along the banks, it was capable of rising up from time to time. Across the river were rocky bluffs but no houses or other signs of habitation. I walked upstream for half a mile until I came abreast of the Confederacy-era railroad bridge abutments. There was a notch visible in the trees across the river, and out in the river itself I could see swelling whirlpools where I assumed the crossing pillars had been. On my side the abutment was still intact, fifty, sixty feet high with two rust stripes running down the face from some long-decayed truss pins. The defensive fortifications were crumbling badly.
    I climbed the bank awkwardly amid a small avalanche of weeds, rocks, and gravel and reminded myself to bring a walking stick the next time. The shepherds passed me easily, scrambling up through the bushes, tails wagging. They loved to go out and just run. At the top I stood on the stone floor of the bridge abutment and surveyed my new kingdom. To the northwest, upstream, there was a low ridge, which Mr. Oatley had told me marked the western edge of the property, from the river all the way in to the road. To the southeast I could see the big house on its hill, surrounded by large trees whose heads were already filling in green with the new leaves. The rest of the property was hidden behind that hill. Three crows protested my sudden appearance.
    I looked around for the shepherds and saw them nosing through the grove of cedars that marked the burial ground. I walked along the overgrown right-of-way, down the embankment, and then up the knoll. It was a peaceful place, overlooking the big river and the sleeping plantation. Glory's End. I could almost picture it--a platoon hurriedlydrafted from the starving remnants of the gray armies, fleeing from Richmond as Grant tightened the vise, riding nervously behind a bottle-nosed steam engine. Coming into the watering station at dusk, feeling more secure now that they were across the river and safe from marauding Union cavalry, twenty-nine of them stepping down from the cars and their precious cargo to stack arms and go for a smoke