“Why can’t someone here make powder?” asked Foster. “It’s simple enough to do.”
“Why surely ye ken, Squire Forster, Sir Francis be a King’s man, an’ what wi’ a’ the bad blude twixt the Kirk an’ the King, none wi’ sell Sir Francis the sacred poudre. Och, aye, charcoal an’ bernstane we hae in plenty, but wha’ gude be they wi’oot priests’ poudre, eh?”
The old man could be referring only to niter, Foster thought, something simple enough to obtain, especially where there was livestock. So why all this mumbo-jumbo about sacred powder, priests’ powder?
“Mr. Musgrave, you show me an old dungheap and 111 make you all the powder you can use,” he declared flatly.
The steward’s jaw plopped open, his eyes goggled. “Do I ken y’r meaning? You can make sacred poudre? Frae muckT
“Not exactly from dung, itself,” grinned Foster. “Let’s see if I can explain.”
Musgrave stood up quickly, took a broad baldric from a hook on the wall, slipped it over his head, and positioned the long sword for easy walking.
“Not tae me, Squire Forster, I be but a poor, iggernant wight. But Sir Francis, for a’ I fear me he’s dyin’, be a well-readed gentleman, like y’seP. Tis past time y’ presented y’sel tae him, enyhoo. Tell y’ him o’ this wonder o’ poudre wrought by a laymon.”
He waved a liver-spotted hand at the shotgun and knife.
‘Tak oop y’r weepons, Squire Forster. Willy” he turned to one of the men by the door, wher be the gentlemen’s sword?”
Again Foster saw the man pull at his forelock and bob a bow. “He dinnae hae sich, an’ it please ye Captain Musgrave.”
Foster anticipated the question and, recalling the Civil War saber hanging over the hearth in his den, decided to say, “Your man’s telling the truth, captain; my sword is heavy and it’s a hot day and—”
“And,” Musgrave said as he rounded the table and clapped a hand to Foster’s shoulder in comradely fashion, “any mon wha’ can reload sac fast and shoot straight an’ mek his ane poudre oons scant need o’ a sword, I be thinkin’. But Sir Francis be summat old-fashioned, y’ ken? We’ll find y a sword an’ a’ in the armory.”
Dave and Susan still lay side by side on the floor’before the stereo, the headphones still clamped over their ears, only the steady movement of their chests showing them to be not dead. Arbor Collier still lay asleep in the guest bedroom, snoring with the sound and volume of an unmuffled lawnmower engine. Foster had been gone for something over two hours.
Professor Collier sat in the chair his wife had previously occupied, a long sword lying across his knees and a huge muzzle-loading pistol in his hands. Krystal Kent was curled up in the chair that had been Foster’s, watching the two newcomers on the couch pour beer down their throats almost as fast as they could pop the tops of the cans.
She watched the prominent Adam’s apple of the smaller and younger of the two, Carey Carr, bob jerkily as he chugged down his fifth or sixth brew, and thought that the black-haired, sharp-featured little man seemed to be teetering on the edge of hysteria.
The other man was big, bigger even than Foster, broad at both shoulder and hip, thick-bodied with the hint of a beer-gut. His bare arms were both heavily tatooed and bulging with round, rolling muscles, ending in hands like hams. The light-brown hair on his head was cropped so short that Krystal could see the scalp, his eyes were a bright blue and set well apart over wide cheekbones. He had given the name of Buddy Webster and he smiled often. Also, he had done almost all the talking since they had arrived.
Krystal could see that he was as mystified and excited as the other man, but his almost bovine placidity of nature acted as a shock absorber, protecting him from emotional extreme.
“We was driving,” he had begun, “down Innastate eighty-three, fum Harrisburg, headin’ for Richmond, V’ginya, me ‘n’ Pete Fairley, in ouwuh rig, an’ good-buddy Carey, heanh, an’ Harry Kail in, ovuh my shoulduh, in theirn. We all knowed it’uz a hurr’cain perdicted, but hell, I done drove in all kinda weather. But long about the four-oh-one turnoff to Butluh, Merluhn, it’d got so gadhawful bad awn the road you couldn’ see more’n ten foot ahead an’ the wipers won’t no good at-tall.
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