The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney Page A

an impromptu silence before turning away. All of them commented on the weather; how lucky that it was cold.
    *
     
    Donald follows the smell of tobacco to the stables, where Jacob smokes his pipe in a nest of straw, and sits beside him in silence. Jacob fiddles with the tobacco in the bowl. To talk about the dead man will be unlucky, he feels sure. But he knows that this is what Donald wants to do.
    ‘Tell me what you think.’
    Jacob is getting used to Donald’s peculiar questions. He is constantly asking what he thinks of this and that. Of course it is normal to be asked what you think of the weather, or the prospects for hunting, say, or a journey time, but Donald prefers to talk about things that are vague and unimportant, like a story he has just read, or a remark that someone made two days ago. Jacob tries to think what it is that Donald wants to know.
    ‘You know he was scalped. It was quick, clean. His throat was cut as he lay down, perhaps sleeping.’
    ‘Could a white man have done it?’
    Jacob grins, his teeth gleaming in the lamplight. ‘Any man can do it, if that is what he wants to do.’
    ‘Did you get a feeling–about who might have done it, or why? You were there.’
    ‘Who did it? I don’t know. Someone who felt nothing for him. Why did he kill him? Perhaps he had done something a long time ago. Perhaps he hurt someone …’ Jacob pauses, his eyes following the trail of smoke up to the rafters. ‘No. If you want to do that, you want him to be awake, to know you have won.’
    Donald nods, encouraging him.
    ‘Perhaps he was killed for what he was going to do, to stop him. I don’t know. But I think whoever did it has probably done it before.’
    Donald tells him about waiting for the Ross boy, and following him if necessary. Mackinley is going after the trader, obviously the most likely suspect, cornering the potential glory of capturing the murderer for himself.
    ‘Maybe he shouldn’t go alone if this man so tough,’ Jacob grins. ‘Maybe he will do him too.’
    He draws his finger across his neck. Donald tries not to smile. Since befriending Jacob he has become aware of Mackinley’s universal unpopularity.
    ‘Don’t you think it odd that no one has seen any … er, Indians, in the last few days? If it was an Indian who killed him, I mean.’
    ‘If an Indian doesn’t want to be seen, he won’t be. At least for our people this is true. For others …’ He sniffs disparagingly. ‘Chippewa, I don’t know, maybe they no good trackers.’ He is careful to smile, to show Donald he is joking.
    Sometimes Donald feels like a child next to this young man, who is barely older than himself. After he recovered from his wound, he started to help Jacob with his reading and writing, but theirs is not a relationship of teacher and pupil. Donald has a suspicion that the book-learnt knowledge he imparts to Jacob is not really his to give; he just happens to know how to tap into it, whereas when Jacob tells him something, he seems to own it entirely, as if it comes from inside himself. But perhaps Jacob feels the same way; after all the world around him is just a series of signs that he happens to understand, in the same way that Donald can discern the meaning of words on paper without thinking. Donald would like to know what Jacob thinks about this, but cannot imagine how he would begin to ask him.

 
    Maria Knox is observing a phenomenon she has seen many times before: the effect of her sister on a young man. She is used to it, since from the time she was fourteen and her sister twelve boys clustered around Susannah, and altered their behaviour in her presence, becoming gruff and shy or loud and boastful, depending on their nature. Maria they ignored; plain and sarcastic, she was either a playmate or, later, someone to copy homework from. But Susannah was of a peculiarly sunny disposition, and as they got older it became apparent that she was also a beauty. She was never precious; she was adept at