Free The Constable's Tale by Donald Smith Page B

before he really knew what he wanted to say.
    “I’ve already forgotten about you, Harry,” she interrupted. “Let’s leave it that way.”

CHAPTER 8
    40: Strive not with your Superiers in argument, but always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.
    —R ULES OF C IVILITY
    “AS OF YESTERDAY I’D NEVER SPOKEN TO AN INDIAN,” NOAH SAID AS he and Harry rode out the next morning to fetch Comet Elijah. “Now I’m to be living with one. How exciting.” From his way of speaking, Harry could not decide whether he was really excited or just making fun.
    Their plan was to have him settled into the barn in time for Harry, Noah, and Toby to proceed into New Bern for the Campbells’ memorial service, which had been set for two o’clock.
    “An old man like that has no business staying out in the open,” Harry said as they continued along. “He’ll be fine in the barn until we can figure out something else. I’m sure you’ll be glad, too, when you can make other arrangements.”
    “Actually I’m growing rather fond of the cows. We’ve had some interesting conversations.”
    They almost missed Comet Elijah’s camp in the thin morning light filtering through the pine tops. All that was left of the longhouse was a scattering of tree limbs and loose bark.
    “It appears he decided to seek other accommodations,” said Noah.
    “I don’t think so,” said Harry, poking through the shapeless heap that was Comet Elijah’s belongings. At the bottom was the cooking pot. Lying next to it, a trade ax. This was nothing more than a simple tool: brute, unornamented steel built for hard use. Chopping wood and dispatching small animals. Age and wear had darkened both the metal head and the handle. Harry tested its heft. Flipped it in the air one revolution, catching the wood as it came around. Showing off a little for Noah. The ax had a familiar feel. Harry allowed himself to think it could have been the very one Comet Elijah had used to teach him the customs and methods of the tomahawk.
    “It’s not the first thing you turn to when you need a weapon,” Comet Elijah had told him when Harry first had showed curiosity. He could not have been much more than eleven. “In fact, it’s the last thing you go for. You shoot first. Musket and pistol, in that order, or whichever is closest at hand. Then, if they’re still coming on, use your spear if you have one. You want to take care of them before they get in too close. Only when they’re right on top of you do you draw out your small blades.”
    Comet Elijah spent several years teaching him the surprisingly large number of offensive and defensive maneuvers possible with the ax alone and in combination with a long knife, the other object a woodsman always carried with him. He began with the foot stances available for use depending on the kind of threat posed. “Your legsare your fighting platform,” he told Harry. “You have to have a good way of standing, firm and balanced, the basic one with your feet about shoulder-length apart, one foot some little ahead and the one behind turned out, just so.” Then came the different ways of carrying the blades, whether both on the left or right side or one on each side, or both or just one of them in the small of the back, out of sight. Each spot had its advantages and disadvantages depending on a person’s amount of skill and inclinations. The overriding idea was to get them in hand with the proper grip, and into action quickly, once the need became evident. Young Harry took in these mysteries eagerly. They were parts of the grown-up world that Comet Elijah and Natty lived in, not the tiresomely prettified world, as he thought of it then, of the Judge McLeods and the Reverend Reeds and the vestrymen and storekeepers of New Bern. Harry felt he was being brought into a secret society, a priesthood of the forest whose rites were as intricate as any Masonic ones he could imagine.
    After Harry mastered the preliminaries, Comet Elijah