River Thieves Read Online Free PDF Page B

the desired end.
He said, “There was an act of retribution, I assume.”
    John Senior passed his empty plate to Cassie and she gathered up Buchan’s as well, carrying both to the pantry. “We had a right to spill some blood as I saw it,” John Senior said quietly, as if he was afraid of being overheard. “I mounted a party the following winter and we made our way up the river, swearing to kill big and small for the hurt they had done Harry Miller.” They’d walked in all hours of daylight and, when an early moon allowed it, in several hours of darkness besides. The ice was flat and clear and they made as good as twenty miles a day. They ate only hard tack and bits of boiled salt pork and seemed to subsiston fury and talk of revenge. A day beyond the second waterfall on the river they came upon a camp of Beothuk nestled in a copse of trees and the men pulled up to load their weapons and shrug out of their packs.
    Having come within hailing distance of the Indians, the mood among the men shifted suddenly to one of unease and uncertainty. “Some of the men overtopped their conscience and said they would not kill women and children,” John Senior explained. “And I could not argue with them on that point, so I says to the gang, ‘We’ll give them fair play.’” He was talking directly to the light of the candles on the table now, as if the officer wasn’t present. “We moved in at the ready then, prepared to take our pick of their materials if they run off. If they chose to stand, we swore to kill one and all and no quarter given.”
    He told the officer how, at the first sight of them approaching, the occupants of the camp scattered to the woods. A few shots were fired to chase them off and they echoed back and forth across the river as the shouting of the Beothuk died away in the trees. They stood alone in the clearing then and looked at one another. A crow scolded them from a treetop. John Senior raised his rifle and fired at it and the bird sailed out above the river before circling back over the camp, then disappearing into the woods. They spent a night in one of the mamateeks with two men at a time on watch and in the morning they set fire to the shelters and left for the coast with all they could carry of furs on sledges and fresh caribou meat in their packs.
    There was a silence in the room when John Senior finished speaking and Buchan sat back in his chair, sighing quietly. Without some concession from this man, he knew, nothingwould come of the governor’s undertaking. At the moment, it looked rather hopeless.
    Cassie came back into the kitchen and he turned to look at her. It was odd that a woman of her age should have remained in service for so long and to be unmarried still. Her face was beginning to darken and line with weather and age, but there was a peculiar quality about it that he found compelling. Something of the whole was slightly off-centre, her nose or her close-lipped smile. She had one lazy eye that winked nearly shut as she went about her work. She had barely spoken a word all evening and it occurred to him suddenly that she might be an idiot. “Miss Jure,” he said, “I am curious as to your opinion on these matters.”
    She said, “I have a position, Lieutenant. Not opinions.”
    Buchan smiled up at her. “I see,” he said. The barely perceptible imbalance he saw in her face niggled at him and he turned away, scanning quickly around the room as if something else might come to his assistance. “Would you excuse us for a moment?” he asked her finally.
    Cassie looked to John Senior and he nodded his head without taking his eyes from the lieutenant. “Gentlemen,” she said.
    “I would like to apologize,” Buchan said. “Perhaps I have misrepresented my meaning. If you think I have come here this evening with a threat, you misunderstand me. It is true that things can no longer be done as they once were. There is a court established in St. John’s. The Red Indians are under