How the Stars did Fall Read online

  The wooden floor creaked under their weight. They walked slowly, deliberately, Daniel slightly ahead of Faraday, both of his revolvers now drawn, black as ash, like the forward-pointing horns of some underworld daemon. They passed first the living room and the library to their right, where the moonlight passed through the drawn curtains, casting a penumbral web over the sofas and ottomans and bookshelves. Upon looking over this scene, Faraday had a strong sense that he had done this before and that he would do it again. Perhaps not in the same place, nor even as the same person, but the same action and with the same moon looking over him, marking his transgressions upon the tablets of eternity. And together with this sense came a feeling that ahead of him was death, whether for himself or the Tuttles he could not say, and that he could do nothing to avert it for the point of no return was somewhere behind him.

  They continued forward, checking each part of the house for inhabitants, until they caught a glint of light escaping from behind one of the doors leading into the kitchen. Daniel sidled up to this door and very slowly nudged it open. Faraday was first struck by the size of the circular room they had entered and the contrast between it and what they had seen before. For here the floor was not wooden but marble, and etched onto it was a map of the world, and the ceiling was high as a church’s pinnacle and its apex featured a windowed dome the likes of which belonged more to some French palace than a rugged plantation house tucked away in a far corner of California. The light came from a hearth that had been constructed to the side of the circle, just off the eastern coast of Japan, and as they entered the room they saw a man sleeping in front of the fire, two opened bottles of wine and one revolver sitting on the floor next to him. It was the guard.

  Daniel took the revolver from the floor but his movement jarred the guard, and as he blinked awake, his hand instinctually reached out to the spot where he had left his weapon. Not finding it, the guard could do nothing but stare at the barrels of Daniel’s revolvers.

  “Where’s the key?” Faraday asked.

  The guard did not speak. He was on his knees and he swayed to and fro, his intoxication evident in his manner. Daniel holstered one of his revolvers and, taking the butt of the other one, slammed the guard as hard as he could in the face. The guard fell on his hands, blood erupting from his lips. He turned to the thieves and spat at them a mixture of blood and saliva which fell short of reaching either Faraday or Daniel. Then he mumbled something incoherent, took a deep breath, concentrated hard and tried to speak again.

  “I’d rather die,” the guard said.

  The men looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Daniel holstered his other revolver and began to retrieve his bowie knife when the guard struggled up and tried to run away, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs. Struggling to keep his balance, the guard did not make it far. Daniel soon fell on him with precision and force, burying the bowie knife in the guard’s back and then hacking at the man’s flesh over and over again until the blood had splattered all over Daniel’s face and clothes.

  Once the guard had finished gurgling up his own blood, silence reigned over the Tuttle mansion again. Faraday searched the dead man’s body hoping to find the key but the guard did not have it. So they moved on, passing through to a foyer and up a staircase to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. Immediately upon reaching the top of the staircase they knew which room to enter by the wide and well-ornamented set of double doors that had to be the entrance to the master bedroom.

  Inside, they found another hearth lit and an imposing bed of gothic proportions with thick mahogany bedposts. Two black slave women with leashes on their necks were tied to the bedposts like dogs, their backs hideously scarred. Downtrodden eyes and faces without hope. Tuttle was nowhere to be seen. The brothers split to up to search for him, but before they even started, one of the slave women pointed towards an armoire next to the bed. Their master’s hiding place.

  Approaching the armoire, Daniel crouched to reduce his size, a precaution in case Tuttle was armed. Then in one swift motion he pulled the door open and found the old man cowering in the dark, a little golden key hanging from his neck. Rather than kill him, Daniel brought Tuttle out and told him to give over the key. He did. Then a sudden stench of urine began to emanate from the old man and he began to quiver and shake and murmur and beg for his life.

  “What do you think?” Daniel asked Faraday.

  “Let him live if he will not interfere.”

  “You hear that? Will you interfere?”

  “No, no, no. Have at it.”

  With the key in hand, they left the room. The doors to the other bedrooms were open and within them Faraday saw little points of light. Candles lit. In front of the lights peeking through the doorway were the faces of children, black and white and Oriental and even Indian, boys and girls alike. Two or three in each room. And they were manacled like prisoners, chains running from hand to hand and down to each foot. Faraday kept moving despite the horror before him but Daniel stopped and entered into one of the rooms. He came out with both revolvers in hand and walked directly back into Tuttle’s room. The old man was on the floor, tipping back a bottle of whiskey. Faraday turned his back to the scene then and only heard the two shots, two flat cracks upon the bedrock of consciousness, and old man Tuttle was no more.

  Chapter Three

  Inside the cellar, the brothers found far more gold than anticipated. Upwards of two hundred pounds was their estimation. Just about the limit of what they could carry with only two horses. It took them the rest of the night and much of the morning just to carry it all out of that hole in the ground and place it atop the rustic carts they had brought, no more than a couple boards of wood stuck together atop a pair of wheels. The horses were tied to these carts, and by the look of where the sun hung high above them Faraday thought it was about one hour before noon when they were ready to go. He began to mount one of the horses when Daniel intervened.

  “We ought to eat before we leave. Pantry’s full in there. We ought to take as much food as we can carry on our way out.”

  Daniel had worried that the gunshots were going to attract attention. Perhaps that of the other two guards they had seen— perhaps of authorities of some kind or even bandits. All through the night he insisted they take the gold out in shifts so that one of them could always be watching their backs, ready if someone were to come. And even now with the sun at its pinnacle he insisted only one of them go into the house at a time while the other waited with the horses and the gold, now covered up by cowhides.

  Faraday went in first. In the kitchen he found fresh water, which he drank, and milk, which he smelled first, finding it ripe and putting it aside. On the countertop he found some hard bread and butter and in the stove, still a little warm, the remnants of a lamb pie. While he ate he considered the fate of the women and children on the second floor of the house. They had not released them after killing Tuttle, agreeing that it would be in their interest to leave them chained, believing that someone would show up the next day to free them. But it was now close to midday and no one had shown up. Perhaps the old man and his servant were it and no other soul even knew of the existence of these women and children and if they were to be left in their present condition they would die of thirst before the end of the week. One thing Faraday knew with absolute certainty: he could not leave those people to die, slaves or not. He could not be responsible. So he chewed as fast as he could and while he chewed he took the rest of the bread and stuffed it into the pack he had slung over his shoulder. He found canned pork and beans and soup and he took these, too. The rest of the pie he ate, disposing of the receptacle by hiding it inside one of the cupboards and chasing his last bite with a long gulp of water.

  Then he went back outside and showed Daniel all of the food he had gathered and Daniel took some of it and began eating right there.

  “There’s plenty of water. You ought to refill our skins,” Faraday said.

  “Aye,” Daniel said in betwee
n bites of bread.

  “And we have to unchain the people up there.”

  “Why do we have to do that? They’re not our charge.”

  “They are, since we killed the man that gave them food and water. We leave them chained and we will be their murderers as much as Tuttle’s.”

  “And? Do you think it good that they live? What great work will those children accomplish on the earth now that Tuttle has ruined them? More likely that they will repeat the offenses of their master if given the chance. Besides, they should rejoice at their impending doom. They have been freed of the burden of living. Now they can rest and await the end of their time.”

  “Is that what your Good Man believes? Is that what he teaches?”

  “That and other things.”

  “Well, it ain’t what I believe and if you ask those people I promise they’ll tell you all they want is to live, doesn’t matter how hard their days may yet be. I’ll do it myself.”

  The first thing they had figured out once Tuttle had died was that the golden key he had given them was a master key to the estate. It opened every lock they had tried it upon, including those keeping the women chained in the second floor. Faraday had tested it to make sure and it had worked, then he had chained them up again. But now he made his way back to them.

  Together the women had moved Tuttle’s body off to the side as much as they could given their condition and presently they were lying on the bed, already feeling fatigued and dehydrated. They stood up as soon as Faraday entered.

  “I’m freeing you,” he said to them, enunciating every syllable slowly, unsure whether they could understand him at all. After he had unchained them, one of the women spoke.

  “Thank you,” she said. “This one does not speak your language.” She meant the other woman.

  “Alright,” Faraday said. “Help me with the children. Are any of them yours?”

  “No, I am barren. Both of us are.”

  Together they visited each of the other rooms and freed the children and Faraday told them to go down to the kitchen and eat and drink. And he told them they were free and they all looked up at him as if he were speaking in tongues.

  “They do not understand,” the woman said. “They were never taught any language and no one spoke to them, so they could not learn by listening.”

  “By God,” Faraday said.

  The children communicated with each other through grunts and gestures. They were divided in four groups corresponding to the different rooms they resided in, the variations in their manner like the dialects of different tribes, related but separate, the gulf wide enough that the child of one group could only barely communicate with one from another group. But when Faraday made signs with his hands indicating that he had food and intended to feed them, all of the children understood and followed him.

  He looked over their feast for a time and then he turned to leave.

  “Do not leave us,” the woman said. “The other ones will come and when they find the master dead they will kill us all.”

  “I can’t help you any more than I have. Have you knowledge of any craft or trade? If I were you, I would flee this place to a city and there find a living with whatever talent God bestowed upon you.”

  The woman fell into sobbing then, perhaps realizing that to survive she would have to leave the children behind to fend for themselves.

  Now Faraday went back outside and found that Daniel and the two horses were no longer parked in front of the house. The tracks on the ground showed the way by which he had left, the four lines made by the carts unmistakable on the dirt road. This new development shocked Faraday, almost causing him not to notice a pair of black men passing in front of the house, down the same road, pushing wheelbarrows filled with grain.

  “Hey!” Faraday called out to them.

  The black men continued on without even looking back. Faraday set out towards them but stopped. Instead of trying to keep up with the men, he drew his revolver and fired a round at the sky. This made the slaves stop and crouch in terror and then Faraday was upon them, revolver still pointed at them.

  “You Tuttle slaves?”

  The black men looked one at the other in bewilderment.

  “No hablamos inglés,” one of them said.

  “No English? Okay. Dónde encontro uno caballo? Necessito caballo.” Faraday pantomimed the riding of a horse.

  “Sí, caballo. En la villa.” The black man pointed far in the distance to a cluster of buildings just barely visible on the horizon.

  “Gracias,” Faraday said.

  That cluster of buildings turned out to be nothing but a bunch of old huts where the slaves lived and at that time of day it was almost entirely deserted save for a few slaves, men and women, coming and going on some errand or another. These slaves, catching sight of Faraday, stared at him as if he were not human like them but an aberration from some other plane or world. As soon as he found the stable, Faraday broke out into a run and, finding an open window into the space, discovered there were no horses there. But he did find another building, this one better preserved than the slave huts. It had a chimney and from it issued a steady stream of smoke, and it had a porch and tied to the beams were three horses, their heads dipping into a trough that had been left in front of them.

  These horses were saddled and Faraday came up to them at a run, certain that they must belong to Tuttle’s men. Three guards, three horses. Faraday picked out the larger and stronger of the three and began to untie its reins from the wooden beams when he heard a door open and a drunken man stumble forward, a rifle slung over his shoulder. Faraday crouched, his back against the trough. Then the man came and stood over the trough and unzipped his pants and pissed into the trough. The horses neighed at him.

  “Settle down, ye crowbaits,” he said and placed his hand over the head of one of the horse’s. “I’m almost done.”

  The piss seemed to never end. Faraday felt a few droplets graze his arm and he pulled back, compressing his body against the trough as much as he could. He would wait it out and then leave, he thought. No one would see him.

  “What in God’s name?” the drunkard said as the stream of urine finally came to an end. “Jeremiah, come out here.”

  “What you hollering about?” Jeremiah said.

  Now Faraday looked back the way he had come and saw the same thing those men were seeing. Two slave girls stood some eighty paces from the cabin, large twine baskets filled with oranges in their hands. They stood staring directly at the cabin. Directly at Faraday.

  “Get on back to work,” Jeremiah yelled at the girls. “Goddamn foolish girls. Get on back.” The man had begun his descent of the porch when Faraday, left no other choice, got up and fired at him. The first bullet hit Jeremiah in the shoulder. The second went into one of his rib cages. The other man, drunk as he was, had managed to aim his rifle at Faraday but his shot was errant, hitting the nearest horse twice. It shrieked as it collapsed, the beast’s weight bending the beam on which it was tied, nearly breaking it. Now the other horses entered into a frenzy and tried to run away, pulling at their reins, and this force was enough to snap the beam like a twig. The loss of that single column was enough to destabilize the whole structure of the porch, the awning cracking off the rest of the cabin, falling and just missing the drunkard by a hair as he jumped over the steps and off the porch.

  Holding on to the reins of the largest horse, Faraday tried to calm it down and mount it, but its fury proved uncontrollable and Faraday soon lost his grip on the reins. By now the drunkard had reloaded his rifle and aimed it at Faraday from a prone position. The shot caught Faraday in the thigh just as he found cover behind the fallen awning. He fought through the pain and, knowing the drunkard would have to reload before he could fire again, came out of cover and unloaded his revolver’s last three shots into the man, killing him.

  By now a small crowd of black slaves had come together to watch the altercation. Most of them were women, but from behind them came a man b
earing a machete. He inspected the bodies and, finding the men dead, put aside his machete and stood over Faraday like some ebony colossus, his skin slick with sweat.

  “I need help,” Faraday said. “Can any of you dress a wound?”

  If the slave understood he gave no sign. Instead he lifted Faraday off the ground and carried him away, into one of the slave huts. Then he had one of the slave women come in with a bucket of water and some rags and she ripped Faraday’s pants up around the wound and wiped it.

  “You have to get the bullet out,” Faraday said.

  The woman also did not appear to understand. She continued wiping and when she was satisfied she took the rags and dressed the wound, tying the pieces together tight as she could manage to stop the bleeding. Then the black man urged Faraday up from the bed with gestures and pointed outside, where another slave had calmed one of the horses down and given it water and hay.

  “Thank you,” Faraday said. “Thank you.”

  He mounted up, wincing as he did so, for the wound stung badly, and he looked up at the sky. The sun had begun to descend in the west and Faraday rode hard in that direction. He remembered that there was a town near the Tuttle estate, on the coastline, and he needed a doctor with some urgency. He knew abandoning his brother’s trail would make it almost impossible to find Daniel later but the wound had left him with no choice but to postpone his quest for the moment. While the horse negotiated the terrain, Faraday thought about his brother. Before bringing the idea of robbing Tuttle to Daniel, Faraday had considered the possibility that Daniel could take the gold for himself. But he had dismissed this risk as one worth taking if it meant freeing his family from debt. Now there he was, wounded and on the doorstep of death, with nothing to show for it. He tried to think about what his best course of action would be once he was healed, but the pain clouded his thinking, and he decided to put off all thought of the future and concentrate on saving himself. The sun burned hot and steady above him and Faraday thirsted for water and thanked God for his hat and the small shadow it carved out for him in that hot and inhospitable land.