Read Online Ashes In the Wind by Christopher Bland - Free Book Online

leads her into the small stable opposite the farmhouse front door. She drinks thirstily from the bucket, then sets about the hay-net while Tomas runs his hands down each leg in turn. Sound as a bell and all four shoes still on, he says to himself. Good girl, Cora.
    The next morning they take the pistols up the hill to a small quarry where Frank puts up a couple of makeshift cardboard targets. Tomas is surprised at how close they stand.
    ‘We’re none of us Wild Bill Hickok,’ says Frank. ‘These are accurate at close range. They’re revolvers, pull the trigger each time, watch the kick as you fire. Stand square on, brace your right wrist with the left hand and pull steady, don’t jerk.’
    Tomas gets the hang of it quickly. After a week he is putting three shots into a soup-plate-sized ring every time.
    ‘That’s fine,’ says Frank. ‘We’re not snipers. If you have to fire from forty yards it’s to frighten them off. You’ll hit anything only through pure luck. Remember, close as you can, two or three to the body, one to the head to finish him off.’
    Denis takes longer. Frank is patient, showing him the grip and the stance and the pull again and again.
    Practice with the revolvers takes an hour a day; the rest of the time they spend in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and reading back numbers of Ireland’s Own , all they have to stave off boredom. On the third day the farmer returns from Cork City.
    ‘You’ve looked after Cora all right,’ he says. ‘Better than I’d expect from a Kerry man.’ This is high praise.
    The farmer has brought a message from Michael Collins.
    ‘Here’s our man,’ says Frank, spreading out a two-week-old copy of the Cork Constitution .
    The picture on the front page is of a moustached figure in British Army uniform. Underneath he is quoted as saying to a group of Auxiliaries, ‘If the persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets or are in any way suspicious, shoot them down. You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped and you are bound to get the right persons sometimes.’
    ‘Colonel Gerald Smyth, DSO and Bar. All the way from Banbridge in County Down to make our lives a misery in Cork. He’s attached to the Auxiliaries – they’re the ones who roughed up Maureen O’Hanrahan and Kitty the day we left.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’ says Tomas angrily.
    ‘Because I didn’t want you heading off back to Cork to no purpose. It could have been worse if the Auxies hadn’t been called away.’
    ‘You should have told me.’
    ‘Maybe. Any road, the colonel goes to the County Club every day for lunch, and reads the paper in the smoking room after. One of our boys is a waiter there. You, Tomas, are to go in and shoot him. Denis here will watch your back.’
    ‘Go in and shoot him, do I? Just like that,’ says Tomas. What a world am I in, he thinks, where I can be told to kill a total stranger.
    ‘Just like that,’ says Frank. ‘You’re not being asked to do anything I wouldn’t do, haven’t done, myself.’
    ‘How will I recognize him?’
    ‘Easy enough. He’s only the one arm – lost the other in the war. Always in the armchair on the right of the fireplace.’
    ‘One arm?’
    ‘Never mind that. It’s his left he’s missing, and he’ll use his right to shoot you if you give him half a chance. You’ll be on your own, the two of you. They’re on to me in Cork City.’
    The next morning Tomas and Denis set off with Cora back to Cork; this time the revolvers and ammunition are in a box on the underside of the trap.
    At the start of their journey they come round a corner beyond Lissagroom and run into a small good-humoured crowd, mainly men, a few women, all heading the same way.
    ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘Road bowling,’ says Denis, excited. ‘Don’t you have it in Kerry? Stand up in the cart and watch – we’ll not get past until they’re done.’
    Tomas sees a man