A WILDERNESS OF TIGERS

She moved through the heat-clotted dogtrot. She pushed open the door, stepped into the other room and paused just over the threshold. She listened. No whimpering or coughing came. Evidently, the child was asleep. She moistened her lips, then slowly raised the lamp. In the dull yellowish-orange glow, she saw the cradle, its back toward her, on the floor at the foot of her and Moses’ bed. As she stepped slowly forward, a strange coldness seemed to still her heart. A premonition had seemingly scratched at her mind. But a premonition of what? Some kind of doom? Surely they would not harm her or Jimmy. Crazy as they were, they were after all, Moses’ friends. But her soul shivered. She rounded the base of the cradle and raised the lamp. Her left hand flew to her parted mouth and stifled a shriek. She saw upon the baby blankets the soaking redness.

“No! No! Moses, no!” she heard her voice screaming. She was somehow aware too she was stepping backward. The room seemed strange, huge, unknown—a room in a dream. She whirled to the right, wildly searching for someone among the shadows—Moses, her dark-bearded, kind-eyed father (she did not know who!)—and saw only the chest her aunt had given her. The old woman had promised it to her when she still had been Lady Red Bird so long ago, so happy long ago. She stumbled and spun to the left and saw only the bark-covered logs of the wall. “Oh God! Dear God!” she screamed. She knew it wasn’t happening.

She stumbled into the dogtrot and turned. Wiley Harpe stood before her, barring the door that opened upon the yard. The blade of a hunting knife protruded from his white fist. She could not flee outside into the safe, enveloping cool darkness. Her heart seemed to twist completely about.

“In there,” he said bitterly, and shoved her into the room where the brothers had been eating. Micajah Harpe stood before the table. In his left hand, he held a scalping knife; in his right, the blade with which she had cut the ham. The points were downward. His face was hard.

Wiley wrested the lamp from her nerveless fingers. Only then was she aware that she had carried it from the other room. But she forgot the glow. It no longer existed. All that had meaning was Micajah Harpe towering before her with the poised knives.

“If you’d of stayed here, you’d of lived a few minutes longer,” said his quivering voice.

A scream pierced her ears. For a strange, lingering second, she did not know its source. Then she knew it welled from her throat. Roughly, Wiley Harpe pinned her arms behind her back. But she did not feel the pressure of his clamping fingers. She did not move.

Micajah Harpe stepped toward her; his face was muscle-knotted. “Clean pots in hell,” his mouth said with almost a whisper.

The two knives rose like fangs of a monster serpent.