Page 48 of The Autumn Wife
A blood-curdling shout cut through the wilderness, an echo to the unbroken scream in herhead. She inhaled so sharply she sucked in a spray of dirt before coughing and spitting it out. Before the warrior cry ended, she heard a tremendouscrack.
Eduard grunted, and then a great weight pinned her legs. She yanked her limbs from under his weight, shoving her skirts down as she twisted to see what had happened.
Her fiend of a husband lay across the ground, clutching the bloody back of his head. Over him stood Etienne, wielding a flintlock by the bore, the butt of the weapon dripping blood.
Oh, my poor boy.
He’d learned that war cry from the Montagnais chief who had camped nearby, a fatherly presence for Etienne that she’d welcomed in her husband’s absence. Her son had never launched that cry with such feeling. Now he stood heaving, the growing man in him come to the fore for the first time in her eyes.
“Why did you come back?” Etienne shouted over his prone father in a voice that didn’t crack. “No one wants you here.”
Eduard rolled over, clutching the back of his head. “You strike your own father, boy?”
“You’re no father to me.” Etienne raised the butt of the gun, threatening. “I’m not your son.”
She whispered Etienne’s name.
He looked at her, eyes wide, his fingers flexing over the flintlock. “I won’t let him hurt you anymore, Mother. I’m going to kill him this time.”
“No.” She struggled to a sitting position. “Don’t do it. Don’t become like him.”
How many times had she stepped between young Etienne and his father’s cruelty? She’d always feared that growing up in a house of hate would twist her son’s spirit, harden his heart. Now, witnessing Etienne’s untamed fury made her ache to the bone. Yes, maybe Eduard deserved to die. But if Etienne were to kill his father, the boy’s soul would harden in ways she couldn’t heal.
Etienne grunted as Eduard launched a savage kick. Her boy buckled to his knees.
Ignoring a sharp pain in her wrist, she pushed herself up and lunged at Eduard. He shoved her away with enough force to send her sprawling. Scrabbling up against dizziness, she saw the two figures, alike except in height and coloring, facing each other in a crouch.
“The cub’s got claws.” A sneer curled Eduard’s lips as he raised his dirty fists. “Let’s see if he knows how to use them.”
No, no, don’t let him bait you.
But Etienne lunged. Father and son toppled to the ground. Man and boy rolled, grappling, fists flying, toward the riverbank.
Panicked, she looked around for any weapon—a rock, a sturdy stick—and caught sight of her own flintlock on the ground where Eduard had flung it.
She swept it up, noting it was already loaded but still not primed. She seized her powder horn andtapped the mouth against the flintlock pan until black powder spilled. No time to wipe it clean—Etienne grunted, and his mouth leaked blood.
She hefted her weapon, cocked it, and set the butt against the hollow of her shoulder.
“Hell, you’re nothing but a button buck, boy.” Eduard, sitting astride the boy, delivered a vicious blow and then shoved his face close to Etienne’s. “When you pull a gun on a man, you’d better squeeze the trigger.”
The weight of the situation fell upon her like a slung fisherman’s net. She aimed for Eduard’s greasy head, but it was inches away from Etienne’s own. She could aim for the gut, but even if she hit him there, Eduard wouldn’t go down fast. He’d have time to seize his own weapon and kill them both before she could clumsily reload. No, the pellets in her flintlock had to pierce his head or his heart.
She aimed as if under the judgment of angels.
The birds stopped singing. Wind paused in the trees. The gun weighed a thousand pounds.
She tried to take a step closer to the target, but her feet went leaden. She watched as her husband stretched to retrieve his own discarded flintlock.
Etienne took advantage of the shift in Eduard’s weight to scrabble back on his elbows. He threw out a hand to seize his own weapon, lying close. Aloadedweapon.
She didn’t doubt that Etienne, while screaming a war-whoop, had primed his flintlock at a full-tilt runas he’d been taught, her wonderful boy born of this wilderness.
All at once, her husband shot to his feet. Both man and boy raised their weapons.
In the span of a second, she realized this was no longer rough-housing, if it ever had been. Eduard would not shoot wide—and neither would Etienne. Her sight sharpened, finger tightening on the trigger with new urgency. She would not permit Etienne to kill his own father. Better to bear the blood guilt herself, even if she were to be hanged for it.
The flintlock boomed, shoved her back, and sent birds scattering from the trees.
