The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,41

people,' she finished pointedly. 'And his camp is close enough that he may well have heard what passed here last night.'

The two cousins departed in opposite directions, and Shaw stood for a time, still fingering the cut end of the branch. 'Think he'll come?'

'It'll tell us something if he doesn't. But that shelter doesn't look like the work of an amateur.' January knelt again beside the dead man, carefully worked one of the gloves from the stiffening hand. 'If this man ever did manual labor, it was decades ago. No calluses . . .' He ran a gentle finger over the soft palm, the unswollen knuckles. The fore and middle fingers were stained with ink - many weeks old - and marked with older and deeper stains: yellow, brown, faded red. The pale body was in keeping with the hands, slender but flabby, certainly not the body of a mountaineer. 'You think he's our Indian Agent?'

'If he is, his party'll be in the camp when we get back.' Shaw bent his long body around, to examine more closely the inside of the shelter. 'An' if they ain't, we can at least have a word with the Reverend Grey about his friend Goodpastor - what you make of this, Maestro?' He touched the scratched cross, and January shook his head.

'That after beating an old man with his fists, breaking three ribs, breaking his knee -' January lightly touched the swollen joint - 'cutting his throat and stripping him naked, the killer decided his victim needed the blessing of God to send him on his way? It's good to know such piety still exists in the world.'

'Well, the Reverend Grey'll purely bear witness to that.'

Shaw's thumb brushed the dead man's smooth chin, where traces of blood had been carefully wiped away. 'The old man coulda cut that cross hisself, when he made the shelter. If he made the shelter. Would a man bruise up like that if'fn he got his throat cut right on top of a poundin'?'

'I've seen it,' said January slowly. 'Not with a throat-cutting, nor with a man this old, nor someone who's lain outdoors naked on a rainy night. But bruises will form for a short time after death. His killer must have hated him,' he went on, contemplating the old man's white hair and silvery side-whiskers, 'to hammer him like that before he killed him. Or been drunk,' he added. 'Or insane with rage, to do this to a stranger.'

'It does, indeed, bear the marks of some of the family sentiment I seen.' Shaw had, January reflected, been a City Guard in New Orleans for eight years. 'Any bruises on the feller's back or shoulders? Long bruises, like from a stick or a whip?'

January turned the body over, revealing no bruises . . . but a deep and bloody puncture just beneath the left shoulder- blade, where a knife had been driven into the old man's heart.

January said, 'Jesus Christ,' and laid him back down again. It was like handling a scarecrow. The old man couldn't have weighed a hundred and twenty pounds.

'Look at where he's bruised,' said Shaw softly. 'He's bruised where you're bruised, Maestro - 'ceptin' Manitou was fightin' you by London Boxing Rules an' so didn't kick you in the stones nor break your knee like this killer done. But the rest of it's same as you: jaw, belly, ribs, all in the front. I'd paste Methuselah hisself that way, if the old man were to come at me with a gun an' I had none. But with a knee broke, an' ribs too, there was no need to stab him in the back nor cut his throat. That says hate to me ... or panic.'

Or madness.

Shaw returned to the fire pit and stirred carefully through the ashes with the tip of his knife. 'Panic, too, not to scalp an' mutilate him, with all the Indians in the world a couple miles away to put the blame on. Might as well leave a sign tacked to his chest sayin': A White Man Done This. You think any of our friends down the camp would panic if they killed a man?'

'Only if they found out too late that he actually knew the way to Clarke and Groot's secret beaver valley.'

Keeping together, Shaw and January worked their way around the outer perimeter of the clearing, Shaw checking the ground for sign and January checking the woods in all directions for Blackfeet - not, he reflected, that