As the last of the fiddle screeches died away, the huskies drew away from the bloodied man, playing with the items of clothing their teeth had ripped from the prone body; a sealskin boot, the fur-lined hat.
Fitzgerald waded in and pushed the dogs aside, his own words still churning around his head; God's work or the Devil's work. Whichever of those mighty beings was at play here, it seemed neither had any intention of granting Philip Thornton a quick death. The others arrived, staring down at the blood covered figure in morbid fascination. With a sigh of remorse Fitzgerald turned to his assistant, Tommy.
"Let's get him loaded up, take him back."
"No."
Fitzgerald turned to Yan Thoreau, surprised by the hardness in the man's voice.
"He's a murderer, Yan. Killed the Postmaster, Corporal Blake... admitted to killing his own father - your father--"
"He's my brother."
"Half-brother... but it don't exempt him from the law. You know that."
"There's wilderness law too."
Fitzgerald sighed, having come up against this type of situation before. The Cree had laws, the Metis had laws - the territory had yet another set of laws, but Fitzgerald worked for the Territory, so did the murdered Postmaster Therault, and so did Corporal Blake. In this instance he knew he had more of a claim on the young man lying bloodied and torn at his feet than Yan Thoreau. Fitzgerald intended to see Thornton hang for his crimes - should he live long enough to face trial.
"While you are all standing here debating this, he is bleeding to death. Take him to the house."
The men turned to stare at Marie, all except one of them surprised that she should show any compassion towards this murderer; a man who had attempted to abduct her only moments before. Fitzgerald saw the look of admiration and love that passed from husband to wife as Thoreau gazed at the beautiful woman. He sighed deeply and nodded his head. Thoreau's friend, Jean de Gravois, moved forward and between them they carried the unconscious man back to the cabin.
Within moments of setting foot inside the cabin, Marie had a pot of soup and a pot of tea on top of the stove. She felt a little embarrassed that it was not already simmering away, as was the Metis custom, but the last few hours had been a difficult time for her. She added an extra pot of water to heat, for cleaning the bite wounds then turned, watching the men as they finished stripping the heavy, ripped garments off the still figure.
When Philip had been undressed and strapped down securely she relinquished her cooking task to her husband and went over to the makeshift bed, taking some rags and the heated water with her.
The Metis way of cleaning wounds was to pour alcohol over them but, in this instance, she decided to fall back on her old nursing skills. She pursed her lips. Some of the bites were quite deep although his heavy clothing had protected him from being ripped to shreds by the sharp teeth. Little pieces of cloth were embedded into the wounds. She asked Yan to hand her the small knife that she had left to sterilise in the heat of the stove, using the fine blade to dig into the wounds and remove the debris. Once she was certain each wound was clean, Marie chewed on small pieces of spruce gum then applied the mess directly to the wound, binding it tightly afterwards.
She looked up when she felt Philip flinch and found herself looking into confused, pain-filled green eyes. Those eyes left her face and travelled around the interior of the cabin, slowly taking stock of each face. The smoky green hardened to ice when they fell upon Yan.
Yan put down the bowl of Red Willow tea he was drinking and filled up another bowl with the tepid liquid. He carried it across and sat down beside his half-brother, ignoring the daggers of hatred that seemed to stab from the accusing eyes.
Until a few days ago he had not even known of Philip's existence. Even so, until little more than an hour ago, he would have continued playing his fiddle until the huskies had torn the man apart, then let them feed upon his remains. Marie was everything to Yan; she was his life, his reason for being.
What had stopped him was an all-powerful guilt. He had spent his whole life believing his father was a rapist, abducting a fifteen year old Cree squaw, dragging her across the wilderness and then abandoning her, pregnant with his child. As a half-breed, Yan had faced many obstacles, the worst being the death of his beloved mother when he was only eight years old. His mother had never spoken much of his father and so it was from the mouths of relatives that he learned the lies.
When the attorney in Porcupine City had given him the small box containing his father's personal papers and letters he had been stunned. The lie was out, the truth revealed as he learned how his parents had truly loved one another, that he had been conceived out of love rather than in violence. His whole world had changed in that moment. Charles Thornton, his father - the beast - had become a tragic figure, caught in a loveless marriage to one of his own race, for when Yan's mother had discovered the existence of this other marriage, she had packed up her few belongings and trekked back across the territory, returning to her own people in shame and despair.
His next shock had been the discovery that his father had sired another son. Any pleasure in learning of his half-brother's existence had been swept away almost instantly when he realised that his mother's death coincided with the birth of this half-brother. He had always been told that his mother died suddenly through sickness, but now he wondered if that too had been a lie. Perhaps her heart had been broken by the knowledge that her one true love had given his other wife a child... or perhaps she had taken her own life in the belief that this child symbolised the loss of Charles Thornton to her forever.
When Yan had then been told that his half-brother, Philip, was the prime suspect in the murder of their father, having been disinherited only days earlier, Yan had not known what to think. Here was a child who had been given everything; a grand home, education... a child who had grown up with his father's love and still it had not been enough.
It was then that the words of the murdered Postmaster's widow, a wise Cree woman, had come back to haunt him and he had realised that he had to get home immediately. She had read the burning bones and had seen a connection between them all... and that murderous link had been Philip.
That thought brought him back to the present, and the hostile green eyes gazing back at him. It was Philip's hate-filled, anguished words that had stopped him from killing his brother outright. It was the knowledge that his father had taken out all of the resentment he felt at being parted from Yan's mother on an innocent child; beating him, belittling him, blaming him for not being Yan.
Yan pressed the bowl against Philip's lips then sighed, wiping his face when Philip spat the mouthful back at him. He pushed the bowl against the pale lips again, this time placing one large hand over Philip's mouth and nose immediately, holding his hand there until Philip was forced to swallow the tea.
"We have a saying Let food be your medicine and medicine your food. This tea will help you grow strong again--"
"So I can hang?"
Yan looked up at Fitzgerald and saw the hardened look in the Mountie's eyes. He realised he was going to have to do a lot of persuading to convince Sergeant Fitzgerald to leave Philip with him. He wished he could explain that, if what Philip said was true, then his half-brother had already been paying for his crimes all of his life. Philip was like an abused dog, lashing out at those around him. He was a dog that needed a firm but loving hand, and Yan wanted to be the one who gave that to him.
Yan understood the objections Fitzgerald would raise but, in the wilderness, the old laws still held some sway.
A bang on the door caught all their attention and Marie opened it to find the widow Therault standing on the porch. The Postmaster's widow entered the small cabin, her dark eyes falling instantly on the wounded man tied to the bed. She moved across the room, her steps purposeful, and she looked down into the eyes of her husband's killer. Then she looked across at Yan, reading him as if he were an open book. Eventually she turned to Fitzgerald.
"I have read the bones and they say this man did not kill my husband."
"Then the bones lie. He murdered your husband. All the evidence points to him--"
"The spirits have spoken to me."
"Well, it don't matter what the spirits have said. Even if you dispute the fact that he killed Therault, he's still accused of killing his own father, of killing Blake and of trying to abduct Marie Thoreau."
"There was no abduction... I went willingly with my brother-in-law."
Fitzgerald frowned, trying to make sense of all this.
"I understand what you're trying to do but you cannot refute the evidence regarding Corporal Blake. He..." Fitzgerald pointed at Philip "...arrived wearing Blake's clothing, in possession of Blake's papers."
"He stole them from a dead man. It does not prove he killed that man."
"Why, Yan? Why are you trying to protect him? Because he is your brother?" Fitzgerald ran a hand through his hair and stared at Thoreau. He tried a different tack. "The fact that the blood flowing through his veins is the same as yours means nothing. He is still a murderer, a beast without conscience."
"He is what our father made him... but I can undo that Devil's work."
"I have to take him in, Yan."
"No. You do not have to do anything. You can pretend you found the killer, say his body was ripped to pieces by wolves with nothing left to recover."
"And what will you do with him? Keep him as a pet dog?"
"He is right, Yan. You could never trust him. He is crazy... a killer."
Yan gazed at his good friend, Jean, his eyes telling all, and he waited until he saw resignation fill Jean's own eyes.
"As my father's sole heir I have come into much money... but money means little to me... and I have a feeling that it means even less to Philip."
Fitzgerald sighed, knowing when he was beaten. It was true that all the evidence against Philip Thornton was circumstantial but that did not refute the fact that they all *knew* he was the killer. He could only hope that Yan understood exactly what he was doing, otherwise it would not only be Philip Thornton who would be responsible if there were ever any more deaths by his hand.
They had all gradually left leaving Yan alone with his wife and his brother. Yan paused by the side of the bed and stared down at the battered figure. Philip had finally succumbed to the exhaustion and pain, falling into a restless sleep, giving Yan the opportunity to study the face of this half-brother. Yan pulled out the marriage photo that had been in his father's possessions, studying the face of his father. He shook his head. There were only the smallest of similarities, leading Yan to believe that, like himself, Philip took most of his features from the mother's side. It made Yan wonder about his father's first wife. What kind of person was she? Why had she allowed her own child to be brutalised in such a cruel fashion? Had she tried to stop it? Or had she felt the father's heavy hand also? Another victim of his silent abuse.
The dark blond hair was matted with sweat and blood. Yan reached out and touched it before feeling his own, finding his own dark brown hair coarse in comparison. He traced across the dry lips with the tip of his finger then across the more delicate features of cheek and jaw.
"We are nothing alike. I can see no resemblance between us. There is nothing physical to say that we share the same father."
"Except for your hands."
Yan glanced down at his hands then studied the closest one of Philip's where it was tied at the wrist to the bedpost. A sad smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he saw the similarity that lay there, the length and shape of the fingers, the curve of the nails. Musician's fingers... a fiddler's fingers. They both had the same hands but, if anything, Philip's were slightly more delicate.
"Come. It has been a long day."
Yan nodded his head and let out a deep sigh. He rechecked the bonds, making sure there was no way Philip could release himself and then followed his wife behind the thick hide curtain to their bed.
When morning came, Yan crossed back to the other side of the cabin to find wary green eyes open and watchful. Those eyes narrowed, the lips curling back, nostrils flaring with unconcealed hostility, but Yan was a Metis, and he was a trapper. He knew how to be patient. He had spent a lifetime learning how to ensnare a wild animal and he knew this task he had set out before himself would be no different.
Yan sat down by the side of the bed and reached out, brushing the sweaty strands of hair from the tall forehead, watching with sadness the way Philip flinched as if he expected a fist rather than a caress. Yan began to wonder if his brother had ever known any gentleness in his life.
Marie had told him about the moment when she had awoken to find Philip on top of her, and how he had quickly backed away when confronted by her anger. It was a strange reaction for an attempted rape. Philip had the strength and he had the upper hand, yet he had scrabbled away like an immature wolf put firmly in his place after having tried to court the pack's alpha female.
Yan wondered whether this was the key. The wolf pack were a family consisting of an alpha male and female who mated for life, and their siblings. Perhaps he ought to treat Philip like a member of his pack, put his sibling in his place with the same love and attention that the alpha wolves gave to their own siblings.
He waited until the hate-filled eyes found him again and chose his words carefully.
"You have spent a lifetime hating me. You believe I am the reason why our father never loved you. The reason why he beat you. What is it you said? He never spoke to you except when he beat you, and only then to tell you how worthless you were compared to me."
Yan watched the hostility fade into remembered pain and humiliation, the green eyes dropping from Yan's dark gaze.
"Why didn't you let him take me?"
"To be hung like a dog?" Yan smiled but Philip made no attempt to even look at him let alone prolong this conversation. Movement from behind caught Yan's attention.
"I need to check his wounds."
Yan made way for Marie, leaving her to tend to Philip while he filled up a bowl with some of the thick oatmeal porridge. By the time he had eaten his share, Marie had finished. Yan refilled the bowl and returned to Philip's side, holding a spoonful of the glutinous mass close to Philip's tightly pressed lips.
"You should eat."
Two days passed before Yan won the first of many battles, and managed to get his half-brother to eat.
Philip stopped chopping wood for a moment, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The winter snows had long since melted away, the landscape coming alive with the colours of spring followed by a long, hot summer. The heat of the summer brought its own danger, the risk of forest fires increasing as the days lengthened but so far this year, they had been lucky.
Philip glanced down at the chain secured around his ankle, tethering him to the ground nearby and he smiled. His imprisonment was just an illusion for he knew he could easily pull the securing pin from the ground, but Philip no longer had any inclination to run.
He remembered back to the early days when the daylight hours were short and Yan would sit beside him and talk to him through the long dark evenings. In those days he was secured firmly, neither Yan nor Marie prepared to take a chance on him, and he had been forced to listen to not only Yan's life story but that of their father's too. Yan had read aloud all the letters handed to him by the attorney, notes detailing his father's passion for the young Cree squaw that was Yan's mother. At first Philip had been enraged, hearing his father's loveless thoughts towards his own mother while other letter's revealed the depth of his father's grief when Yan's mother had died.
Slowly, Philip had started to tell Yan his own story. How his mother had died in childbirth, leaving him to the tender mercies of a series of uncaring wet nurses. From Yan he learned to understand the reason for his father's rage, his birth being the catalyst for the deaths of both women, leaving their father with no-one except this sickly, motherless child.
It took a long time before Philip could accept the frequent, gentle touches from his half-brother without flinching; a raised hand always having been the precursor of pain, but Philip came to realise that Yan was a compassionate man, using touch to convey his affection for his wife, for his dogs - and even for him.
It took longer still before Philip could look Yan in the face with something other than mindless hatred passing through him. Looking back Philip realised what a burden he had been on his half-brother for, despite the wealth Yan had inherited from their father, Philip had been an extra mouth to feed, giving nothing back in return.
The soft woman's voice carried through the slight breeze, bringing him back to the present.
Philip watched Marie as she carried a basket full of roots and flowers towards the house. His unhealthy obsession with her had faded with his growing adoration of his brother, and with the knowledge that all he had seen in her was a reflection of his own mother. He wondered if Yan realised how much Marie looked like the few surviving photographs of Clara Thornton. He wondered if Yan would ever understand how the abused child had clung to those photographs in the belief that his mother would come back to earth one day to save him from his father's fists and harsh words.
Philip recalled the Caribou dance where he had first seen Marie Cummins dancing with her first husband. He had gone there with the intention of finding and killing Yan Thoreau, and it was only the sight of this beautiful woman who looked so much like his long dead mother that stayed his hand. He had truly believed God was finally smiling on him when John Cummins died of the smallpox, and when he learned that Marie had married his hated half-brother instead, Philip had put this down to the Devil's work.
The loss of Marie to his hated half-brother was the final blow that snapped his mind.
Now he had come to realise that God had never intended her to become his wife but rather a surrogate mother. He grinned, wondering what Marie would say if he ever let her know what he thought, especially as she was several years younger than himself.
It was a scent on the slight breeze that brought his attention back. He sniffed and stared about him wondering what it could be. A connection was made and Philip glanced towards the cabin but there was no telltale spiral of smoke reaching into the clear sky from the chimney. With a thoughtful expression he gazed west, his eyes narrowing when a deer raced into the clearing momentarily before leaping back into the dense undergrowth opposite.
Fire.
His heart began to race when he remembered Yan mentioning something about searching in the forest for Red Fox, and maybe a rabbit of two for supper. Philip gazed towards the tall trees that ringed the large clearing, hearing the rustling of the slight breeze through the leaves and the shrill cries of birds as they took to the wing. In just a few moments the smoke had thickened, wisps rising above the tree tops. He knew he and Marie were relatively safe here in the clearing but some inner sixth sense was screaming at him.
"Yan!!"
Marie had smelled the smoke and was racing towards the edge of the forest clearing. Without further thought, Philip pulled he stake from the ground and raced on an interception course, reaching her before she stepped into the undergrowth beneath the tall trees.
"No, Marie. Stay here. I'll find Yan."
He read the indecision in her eyes, saw a reflection of the fear that held her during the early months of his captivity from a time when she was not prepared to trust Philip with her husband's life. He shook her gently.
"Trust me now. I will find him."
She nodded and moved back when he let go. Philip hoped she would have the good sense to wait near the cabin... and prepare for the worst. He bundled up as much of the chain as he could and shoved it into his pocket then pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his mouth, plunging into the smoke that grew denser with every step taken. When he came to the small tributary flowing out of Beaver Lake, Philip swept his handkerchief into the water, squeezing it out and holding the damp cloth over his mouth once more. The smoke stung his eyes, making them water but Philip stumbled on, removing the makeshift mask occasionally to yell out his brother's name.
"Yan!!"
Ahead Philip could see licks of flame jumping from tree to tree, the bright red and orange only slightly dulled by the thick grey smoke that curled around, dancing with the flickering flames until they appeared as two living entities entwined. A crack above his head sent Philip leaping forward, a burning branch tumbling to the ground where he had been standing. He looked up from the warm ground in time to see a smoke-wreathed figure stumble out of the undergrowth and collapse to the ground nearby.
Philip ran forward, ignoring the pain in his lungs as he pulled in the hot air. He reached the large figure and realised with immense relief that it was Yan. Using all his remaining strength, Philip pulled the heavier frame over his shoulder and staggered back the way he had come.
Around him the smoke grew denser, his breathing becoming laboured as he inhaled more of the heat and smoke. He saw spots of darkness before his eyes as his oxygen-starved brain failed to decipher the images lying ahead. Suddenly he was falling, his body landing heavily, the unresisting weight of Yan pinning him to the ground for a moment as Philip strove to push the dead-weight from his back. With no energy left to carry his brother, Philip began to tug at the unconscious man, fingers digging into the buckskin coat as he tried to drag Yan to safety.
Another loud crack sounded nearby and a wall of flames sprang up in front of him. Philip crawled on top of his brother, trying to protect him from the searing heat, beating out the flames that licked at Yan's coat with his bare hands. He raised his head, looking first one way then another, horrified when he realised he no longer knew which way to go. Philip lay his head down, pressed closed to his brother's cheek and whispered his regrets, sorrowfully aware that he had failed his brother.
As the last of his will started to seep from his body and he prepared to die, Philip thought he heard Marie.
"No. We won't die here."
He made one last effort, crying out as he dragged the unconscious man over his shoulder then he stumbled in the direction of the voice he thought he had heard.
Suddenly, he could see an opening in the smoke curtain before him and he staggered towards it. Other voices joined Marie's, strong male voices and Philip used the last of his breath to cry out before collapsing to the ground, the flames dancing before him, their flickering fingers reaching out to lick his body. Stronger arms appeared from nowhere, wrapping around him, lifting the heavy burden of Yan from his body before carrying him away from the dense smoke and into the clearing. His last sight before he gave in to the darkness was of Sergeant Fitzgerald's concerned face peering down into his own.
"He'll have a few scars but, fortunately, his hands are not too burned. He will not lose the use of them."
"I expect they both took in a lot of smoke and heat. Won't be up to talking for some time."
"I'll get some Red Willow tea into them, to help with the healing."
Philip opened his eyes and gazed about the cabin, a strange sense of deja vu falling over him. His hands were bound again, but this time they were not also tied to the bed frame. A familiar face appeared above him and Philip realised that the earlier sight of Sergeant Fitzgerald filling his vision had not been part of a dream.
Fitzgerald looked down at the injured man, then looked across to where Yan Thoreau was struggling to rise. As he watched Yan move slowly to Philip's bedside, he remembered his words to Yan all those months ago--
'The fact that the blood flowing through his veins is the same as yours means nothing. He is still a murderer, a beast without conscience.'
Fitzgerald recalled Thoreau's response--
He is what our father made him... but I can undo that Devil's work.
As he gazed down into clear green eyes that held no hint of their former madness, Fitzgerald was fully aware that Philip had willingly laid down his life for his brother, not prepared to leave Thoreau behind in the fire even when it became apparent that he could not save him and would die also.
Fitzgerald grudgingly admitted Philip's survival, in this case, was irrelevant; his actions speaking far louder than any words, proving that Yan Thoreau had been right, that the Metis trapper had been able to see beyond the damaged mind to a shining inner core that had been untarnished by the brutality of their father.
Fitzgerald watched as those green eyes lifted to his brother's face, and saw the look of adoration that passed between the two as Yan reached out to brush a lock of heat-frizzled hair from the tall forehead.
Fitzgerald knew Philip Thornton still had a way to go before he would be accepted as part of his brother's community but, suddenly, he was positive that Yan Thoreau would succeed at even that.
THE END