Chapter 15: The Quartermaster at the Door

My father stood in the doorway of his own house in his sock feet, holding the newspaper.

He did not raise his voice.

"Evening," he said. "Can I help you?"

The man in front wore a leather coat folded over his arm, and he had the flat patience of someone who had done this before.

"Mr. Pierce asked us to collect Miss Rawson for dinner."

"It's not seven."

"He'd like her early."

"She isn't coming."

"Sir, it wasn't really an invitation."

"I understood that," Dad said. "I'm declining it anyway."

From the top of the stairs I could see the back of his gray head and the porch behind it.

I could see all four men.

One of them shifted his weight and opened the coat.

There was a short club in it, and a coil of rope.

"Armed men on Cedar Ridge ground," Dad said mildly, to no one in particular. "That's a treaty violation. I'd like it noted."

"Noted by who?" the man said.

"Me."

"You're the quartermaster."

"I'm the man who wrote down every boot, belt and blanket you people borrowed in the war, and I've kept the receipts."

He turned a page of the newspaper.

"You, for instance. Pair of size eleven boots, one winter, never returned."

The man in front blinked.

Nobody laughed, but a boy at the back of the group looked at the ground and tried not to.

"Step off the porch," Dad said. "I'll say it once."

The man in front put one boot on the first step.

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