An Undisturbed Peace by Mary Glickman Read Free Book Online Page A

pounded through his ears. “Gentlemen, you can stop right there,” he said, although the men had halted the moment he’d raised arms against them. Their caution gave him courage. He summoned up the best voice of command he had in him. “Who are you and what do you want?”
    The biggest and roughest-looking of them sheathed his shotgun in a holster strapped to his saddle. He held up gloved hands in a gesture of peace. The others did not holster anything. They glared at him. He glared back.
    â€œWe’re lookin’ for a woman what lives here. An Injun woman.”
    â€œThere is no woman here.”
    â€œWhere the hell is she then?”
    â€œCertainly not here. I don’t know who you’re talking about. This is my place since winter last. As you can see, I am alone.”
    They could not see any such thing, not with Abe standing in the doorway, rifle raised and pointing. The leader tilted his head to the man on his left without taking his eyes off Abe and told him to dismount and look around inside. “That alright with you, son?” he asked, giving Abe a smile that was half sneer. Enough of the man’s teeth were missing to make his mouth look a dark, gaping hole. Abe once more marshaled his courage and said, “It’s alright as long as he remembers who my gun is pointing at.” He stepped aside to a position where he could keep his eyes on the man inside the cabin and the two on horseback both. Never was he so grateful that Marian rejected the feminine trappings of white women.
    The man left the house with his weapon lowered and his shoulders raised as if to say No sign of a female here . He remounted his horse. The leader tipped his grimy hat. They left. Abe began a tense vigil, waiting for his beloved to return.
    Marian appeared again at dusk. This time a large fish dangled from the quiver on her back. She held a spear of potatoes, both sweet and white, balancing it against one leg in the same way the men seeking her balanced their shotguns. Abe felt a great rush of relief, which he struggled to conceal, failing utterly. He stood red-faced and wide-eyed at her door, tongue-tied when she came to him, gave him her bounty, and left to put up her horse. Once she was done and in the cabin, washing up with the water he fetched for her and the soap he’d given her as a gift, he could contain himself no longer. “You sure have a lot of visitors,” he said. She looked at him quizzically. He told her everything in a great spill of words. When he was done, he held his breath anticipating a response worthy of his intense concern but she said only, “Thank you.” He asked what she was thanking him for. “You did well,” she said. “You’ve bought me time.” She dried her hands on a towel. “Were those men what you called once the hirelings of your neighbors?” he asked. She shrugged. “Likely so,” she said.
    Over the next week, they worked side by side to create a series of traps at the edge of the woods around her cabin, traps that would make significant noise when they did their work and so function as a warning system as well as restrain the unwanted. They were ingenious, Abe found, requiring the weight of a man or a horse, or a bear, to set themselves off, leaving the area safe for whatever lighter creatures might approach. When they were done, Marian created a ring of warning around all, using rocks and feathers in designs that looked random enough to Abe but that, she told him, would sound a loud and eloquent alarm to any of her people who came across them. “If,” she said, “they have not forgotten everything their ancestors taught them.”
    It was not five days later that she gave him the boot. “Leave,” she said. “You must make your route or you will bring attention to me.” He wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. He managed to wrest a promise from her that he could return when his