Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

saw him, and unless he had left a mount up by the road, it would take him close to an hour to walk home, drop his goods, and get back here.
    Still, no point in dallying.
    Why she thought the pistol might be hidden here, she couldn’t say. Mrs. Day had said she had thrown it into the creek, and throwing it into the creek would be the smart thing to do. However, Alafair’s derringer was a fine little gun, worth a lot of money, and it seemed to her that a person like Jim Leonard would be loathe to throw it away. And if he had shot Harley with it, Leonard would be disinclined to hide the gun on his own property when he had a perfectly good hiding place right here. And so, following her intuition with her customary faith, she launched into a search.
    Alafair peered into the big tin tub, hoping she wasn’t going to have to sift through gallons of fermenting mash, but it was empty, and she sighed a sigh of relief. She squatted down and removed one mitten, then reached under the pot into the fire hole and pulled out a handful of ash, crumbling it between her fingers. She studied the pile of charcoal and ash that had been raked out of the fire pit, then stuck her hand down through the top of it, carefully brushing and crumbling. When she had sifted down to the bare earth and come up empty-handed, she sat back on her heels and puffed a foggy breath, thinking. Her gaze swept the clearing, searching for anything of significance. She paused to eye a long branch, which was leaning at an unnatural angle against the trunk of an oak. Then she saw a similar branch, and another, covered over with twigs and dead leaves—a small lean-to at the perimeter of the clearing, so cunningly constructed that had she not been squatting just where she was, she’d have never seen it.
    Alafair fell forward onto her hands and knees and crawled around the side of the lean-to, where she found a neat opening. She peering cautiously into the dim interior, checking for hidden dangers, before poking her head in. The little shelter was larger than it appeared from the outside. A makeshift bed of blankets stretched down the side, under the leaning roof of branches. The blankets were cold, but relatively clear of detritus. Someone had been sleeping rough.
    Alafair felt around and under the blankets and came up with nothing. She felt more hopeful about a makeshift shelf of old brick and a few rocks, which had been constructed at the foot of the pallet, but was disappointed to find only a tightly sealed jar of jerky, a tin cup and a small lantern. A little cloth-wrapped bundle which held two pieces of quartz and a turkey feather piqued her interest, and she wondered in passing whether it had been Harley or Jim who possessed the sensibility to appreciate such pretty things.
    She put the bundle aside and turned her attention to the neat pyramid of empty stone pint jars laying on their sides next to the trees, under a loose pile of leaf litter. One by one she lifted the jars, turning each one over and shaking it out, then running her fingers inside just for good measure. As soon as she lifted the fifth jar, she could tell by the weight that there was something in it, and her heart leaped. She backed out of the lean-to with the jar in her hand, into the better light of the clearing. She turned the jar over, and an object fell out into her hand. It looked at first like a large lump of charcoal, but when she shook the ash off of it, Alafair could see that it was a small packet wrapped in an old flour sack. She unwrapped the dirty cloth, and there it lay in her hand—a silver-plated derringer with an ebony handle.
    She actually gasped. “I declare,” she exclaimed. “I declare!”
    Alafair rewrapped the gun with shaking fingers and redeposited it in the jar, then carefully replaced the jars where she found them, all the while praying her thanks for the inspiration. She was smoothing the disturbed leaves at the entrance to the lean-to, when she heard the tiniest rustle of branches behind her. She leaped to her feet and turned to face Jim Leonard, now infinitely more inebriated than when he had accosted her an hour before. They gazed at one another in silence for an instant, both equally taken aback.
    “I knew you was coming to steal from me,” Leonard suddenly roared.
    “Now, Jim…” Alafair began, but before she could finish the sentence, Jim Leonard drew back his fist and punched her right in the jaw.

Chapter Thirteen
    Alafair came up slowly to a