Rassmussen Plantation part 9

Cinnamon escaped with more money than she had counted on and waited until she was out of the shopkeeper’s sight before she let her hair back down. She suspected she’d be back to that shop again.

The gunsmith was just next door, and so not difficult to find. The man there asked plenty of questions, and verbally doubted that a little lady like her could use such a weapon, but Cinnamon gave him a dubious look and pointed out that she was in overalls; if any girl could fire a gun, it was her.  The man then offered a few more doubts about whether she’d be able to hold her nerve if faced with an attacker, and actually shoot a person.

“Oh, I could shoot a person, mister. I could shoot a person right between the eyes,” Cinnamon leaned forward on her elbow and looked right into the man’s eyes for effect. She could not believe she had to convince this man that she had the nerve of a man-killer to get him to sell her a gun. She hoped she was convincing. 

She was. The man looked taken aback for a moment, and then sold her the two guns she wanted.

Cinnamon looked around town for a place to buy a dog, but didn’t see anything promising. Hunger eventually got the better of her and she shuffled into the tavern at her best attempt at discretion, and shuffled back out with a roasted turkey leg. The turkey leg was a big, oily thing that looked disgusting, smelled heavenly and tasted even better. Eating it was close to impossible without looking like a savage, and so savage she looked, sitting under a gazebo in the town center, eating the first real food she’d had in a while, and feeding bits and scraps to Tybalt, who ate right out of her hand. Cinnamon had not realized how hungry she really was until she realized that she had finished the meat off the leg and was now picking it clean entirely. She pushed her newsboy cap back a little on her head, and wiped the turkey leg grease off of her chin. She leaned back on the bench she was sitting on, stretched and yawned a bit, then leaned back forward and rubbed at her shirt when she discovered dripped turkey oil on her collar and bib of her overalls.

She looked around quickly and, seeing no one, tossed the bone over her shoulder into the bushes growing behind the gazebo. The bone had just barely hit the bushes when Cinnamon heard something crunching on it. Cinnamon startled her to her feet and instinctively whipped her around to face the bushes.

A wolf!

A large, black Timberwolf.

Cinnamon stumbled back in her surprise. The wolf seemed unimpressed. He surveyed her with his big yellow eyes and his black face a moment, then continued with the bone. As he turned his head, Cinnamon was shocked to see that he was wearing a red leather collar.  The black wolf snapped the bone up into it’s mouth and carried it away into the shadows of the swamp. Cinnamon turned to pick up her bag, Tybalt inside it, with his hair on end, and slung it up onto her back.

Later that day, when she had finished up all of her shopping and pawning, Cinnamon started back home. The sun was still pretty high, and, armed with her new pistols and dagger, Cinnamon felt a lot better. She hadn’t been able to find a dog to buy that day, but a shopkeeper had given her the name of a farmer who’s dog had recently had pups; she’d try there maybe tomorrow.

That afternoon found Cinnamon on the tedious trek back home, and late afternoon found Cinnamon back at the mansion, up on a ladder with a hammer in her hand and a mouthful of nails, constructing sturdy bolts for the inside of all the doors. She’d not have any nocturnal visitors tonight! Unless they broke in through a window. Cinnamon shuddered at the thought. Well, at very least, if it came to window breaking, the sound would wake her and give her time to grab her pistol. Or run. Or both.

She didn’t think it would come to that. Bolted doors should do the job. She didn’t have the time to do it today, but maybe tomorrow she could make some sturdy shutters to protect the windows that didn’t have them. All of the windows had thick, velvet drapes, but only a few had proper shutters. If only she had more experience in carpentry! She could fix doors alright, oil hinges and tighten screws better than most girls she knew, and could manage basic jobs like bolts for doors, but hinges seemed more technical, more delicate and complex. Maybe her new friends from town, Cindy and Alexandra Talbot, could help, or at least knew of someone who could help.

The sun eventually sank low and twilight settled over the plantation. Cinnamon decided to stay up a while, at least until she could see the stars come out, so she lit a few oil lamps and lit a fire in the hearth. As the fire got bigger the room got a bit smoky, and Cinnamon made a mental note of this new chore to be done; sweep the chimneys. Cinnamon stirred the fire a bit, so as to let it die out, and took and oil lamp with her out of the smoky room. She remembered that the Talbots had mentioned an “Old Ben” who had reported seeing the lights in her windows, and so went up the stairs to see if she, with a better viewpoint, could see the lights in his. On one end of the mansion Cinnamon had seen an observatory, which she now reckoned would prove quite useful for spying on her neighbors. She hadn’t yet cleaned the room, and so found it very dusty. There seemed to be no end to the dust around the mansion. She made her way across the room to the spyglass near the far window. The glass in both front and back had to be rubbed clean, but it seemed to be in perfect working order. She put her eye up to the glass and swept her view over the panorama, but didn’t see anything. Perhaps she’d looked too quickly. It was getting dark, after all. She took another sweep, more slowly this time. Why yes! Just there was a light. A little house that looked very much like the caretakers cabin on the edge of her own lawn. Wait, though. Was it a caretakers cabin? Slowly, she moved the view a bit more. Sure enough, another mansion, about the size of the one she stood in. She had neighbors after all! But the mansion in her view was dark, and she didn’t see any smoke rising from any of its chimneys. That explained why she hadn’t seen it in her initial sweep. Still, she was pleased to know that someone was nearby. Old Ben, the probable caretaker of the mystery mansion. She stepped back from the spyglass and looked out at the sunset over the swampy geography. She heard Tybalt meowing loudly from downstairs, and so turned to go find him.

Tybalt was irritated. He’d been gone not four minutes chasing after a mouse and when he returned, Cinnamon was gone and the fire had died.

“Cinnamon!” he called, in his own, cat way, “Cinnamon! Where did you get to?”

He heard Cinnamon’s familiar footsteps staccato descending the staircase, and he went to meet her.

“Cinnamon!” scolded the cat, “Don’t disappear like that! We can’t be quite sure about this place yet.”

Cinnamon scooped her cat up into her arms.

“I’m sorry, sweetums,” she said, laying a kiss on his head, “Were you scared?”

“Hardly,” thought Tybalt, purring despite himself.

Cinnamon kissed him on the head again, and murmured some gibberish into his fur, until a noise outside stopped her suddenly.

A voice! And this wasn’t her imagination.  A strong, male voice.

She let the cat down, and quickly retrieved the pistol which she had purchased earlier that day. She was barefooted, and so moved almost soundlessly out the back door and onto her porch. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do, but it certainly wasn’t going to be sit shuddering in her living room.

Cautiously, she walked around the side of her house towards the side where she’d heard the man. In the looming nightfall and evening fog, she didn’t see anyone. She slipped quietly off her porch and onto the wildgrown lawn.

Again! She heard the man’s voice, like a command, in the distance. As she followed it’s sound, she realized it was leading her toward the family cemetery. Her feet faltered just a moment, but she regained her resolve, and walked faster, hoping that no one could hear the pounding of her heart.

She entered the cemetery grounds, trying not to let her hands shake.  Suddenly she heard a wolf howl, very near her, and the figure of a large man loomed from the fog. A werewolf! She screamed involuntarily and fired her pistol in the figures direction.  The figure advanced and she screamed again as it took hold of her, and she fell into a dead faint.