The Seekers

by John Jakes

  Mrs. Cato seized the leg he’d dropped. She bashed him over the head. The Tennessean hardly blinked.

  “—the original yella blossom of the forest! A ring-tailed roarer, by God! Men see me comin’ ”—snap went another leg; Mrs. Cato howled obscenities—“they step outa the way! They know I can crow like a rooster, neigh like a stallion—an’ jump ten feet in the air and bust their heads with my heels!”

  Snap, snap—that was the end of the table. Men scrambled for the pieces, holding them up as souvenirs. The whores fought to take them away as the Tennessean kept bellowing. “I can stand three bolts of lightning without a blink! Look a panther to death! Put a rifle ball into the moon pretty as you please—!”

  Jared ducked as someone in the melee flung another whiskey bottle. It sailed over his head and shattered in the dark behind him. On the floor of the parlor, he glimpsed the unconscious form of a slight, well-dressed man with a goatee. The Frenchman who’d set the big man on his rampage—?

  Jared’s eyes had adjusted to the poor light in the foyer. At the rear, a staircase led upward. On the second floor, voices complained about the noise. Jared looked speculatively at the stairs as the Tennessean, overwhelmed by two of the whores trying to kiss him, tumbled over backwards. He fell on top of the Frenchman, still whooping with laughter.

  Mrs. Cato extricated herself from the crowd, rushing straight toward Jared in the dark foyer. “Abel? Abel, fetch the solders before Weatherby puts me out of busin—”

  She saw Jared and clutched her throat. “Jesus and Mary, you scared me to death! I thought you were my nigger boy—” Breathing hard, she looked around. “Abel, where the hell are you?”

  “Mrs. Cato—”

  “Leave me be, damn you! That fool’s demolishing my parlor. I should be whipped for ever letting a Kaintuck in the front door—”

  Jared grabbed her arm as she swept by. “I want to speak to you!”

  Mrs. Cato started to curse again. She saw his face in the light from the parlor. Something in the starkness of his expression made her catch her breath.

  “You had a man staying here a while ago. Went by the name of Wilford Black—”

  “He’s still here. Second door on the right, upstairs.”

  Then she was gone into the gloom. “Abel, I’ll switch your black ass if you don’t answer me—”

  Jared ignored the sounds of carnage in the parlor, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and drew his seven-barrel English pistol from his belt. He climbed the stairs two at a time, thinking one uneasy thought: If there was ever a time you needed a cool head, it’s now.

  iv

  The upper hallway smelled vinegarish. At the far end, a dim candle in a tin wall sconce provided the only illumination. Behind a doorway on his left, he heard the steady thumping of a man and woman making love.

  As he tiptoed along, a door opened further down. A bearded face poked out. “Who the hell’s makin’ all the racket downst—?”

  The man saw Jared, who had stopped in the center of the hallway, the seven-barrel in plain sight.

  Jared raised his free hand to signal silence. The bearded fellow eyed Jared’s face, the pistol—and disappeared.

  Jared stole up to the second door on his right. He leaned his head against the wood, his breathing thin and reedy. He heard irregular snoring.

  Good.

  He crouched, examined the crack at the bottom of the door. He detected light inside. That was good too. He wouldn’t be operating in total darkness.

  He wondered why the occupant of the room had gone to sleep with the lamp lit. And the door—it was unlocked.

  He inched it open slowly, saw the answer to both puzzles. The tiny room had a sour odor compounded of whiskey and sweat. Its occupant, dressed in a filthy nightshirt, sprawled on the bed. A jug lay on the floor near the man’s dangling right hand. He had evidently fallen asleep in a befuddled state, left the latch off and the lamp burning—

  Jared’s jaw clenched. He could feel anger starting to seethe within him. He fought it, swallowed once, slipped through the door. At the bedside, he bent over, lowering the seven muzzles of the loaded pistol to within an inch of the head of Reverend William Blackthorn.

  Then he pulled back the cock—a loud sound against the background of shouts, oaths, shattering furniture downstairs.

  “Wake up.”

  v

  He repeated it, louder. The ungainly man on the bed mumbled, fluttered his eyelids—

  The lids lifted. Jared stared into black dots at the center of greenish pupils.

  The man stiffened, hands pressing the filthy sheet. Jared leaned one knee on the edge of the bed. Next to the head of the bed, he glimpsed his own blurred image in a smoke-stained pane of glass that showed a vista of rooming-house roofs.

  “Oh God in heaven—”

  Blackthorn could only get that much out before Jared pressed the seven barrels against his forehead.

  “You recognize me.”

  “Let me get up—”

  “No. Where’s my cousin?”

  Blackthorn’s right hand closed into a fist.

  “You better not do that. Where’s Amanda?”

  “She—she’s not here,” Blackthorn gulped.

  “Goddamn you, I can see that! Answer my question straight or I’ll blow your goddamnned head onto that pillow.”

  “Do that,” Blackthorn breathed, “you won’t ever find out.”

  “You bastard—!” Jared exclaimed, grabbing and twisting Blackthorn’s patched, rancid nightshirt.

  The hand’s constriction shifted Jared’s weight ever so slightly as he knelt. Blackthorn felt the change. His green eyes opened wider.

  Realizing his mistake, Jared started to straighten up.

  In that instant, Blackthorn jammed his right fist upward and out. The fist struck Jared’s gun wrist, knocking his hand aside. His trigger finger jerked. Two charges thundered at once, the balls ripping the pillow where Blackthorn had been lying a moment before.

  Breathing loudly, Blackthorn seized Jared’s head, twisted his own head sideways and sank his teeth into Jared’s throat.

  The pain was hideous and stunning. Blackthorn let go, drove a knee into the boy’s groin. Jared staggered back from the bed, coughing. Blackthorn’s bare foot whipped up, kicked the pistol out of his hand.

  Then Blackthorn pounded him in the belly. Jared crashed against the wall.

  Blackthorn lunged again, teeth and lips bloodied from biting Jared’s throat. Jared saw the blood, choked—

  Blackthorn picked him up bodily and hurled him across the room.

  Jared shot his hands out, smacked his palms against the wall on either side of the windowpane. His head crashed through, his shoulders—

  His hands stayed his forward motion. He pushed off from the wall as he fell. The shards of glass in the frame barely missed his eyes. He knocked his head on the sill and hit the floor. A fragment of glass cut his left cheek.

  He snatched at the sill, hauled himself upright. Without thinking, he rubbed the left side of his face.

  A door closed. Bare feet thumped, receding.

  Jared stared at the bright red smears on his palm and fingertips. The old, overpowering nausea churned his belly.

  He bit down on his lower lip, lurched forward, dizzy. He fell across the bed, fighting the sickness that turned his bones watery.

  Stand up! he screamed at himself. Stand up—Blackthorn’s running—!

  He pushed up from the bed, sourness in his throat as he saw the red handprint on the gray sheet. He wanted to bury his head, hide from that harrowing redness—

  On hands and knees on the bloody bedding, he spoke Amanda’s name aloud. He started to shake; he screamed it. “Amanda—!”

  No physical pain, no mental anguish had ever been worse than the next few seconds. Jared Kent literally drove himself to a standing position again, blundered around the room until he found the pistol, palmed it in a trembling hand—his right. Not bloody, thank God. He couldn’t bear
the sight of his left hand. He kept it by his side as he stumbled down the hall toward the staircase.

  He shoved past a man and a girl, both naked. How much time had passed? Half a minute? More—?

  From the head of the stairs, he saw Blackthorn making for the front entrance. Only Mrs. Cato and her slave boy stood between the man in the nightshirt and escape.

  “Stop him!” Jared shouted.

  The smash of another bottle testified to a situation still out of control in the parlor. Almost faster than Jared could comprehend, men and women appeared at the parlor entrance. One was the man Jared had seen brandishing the rifle.

  The black boy was in Blackthorn’s path. The running man seized the boy’s shoulders, flung him aside—and lost his balance when the boy screeched and hung onto his arm.

  Jared was halfway down the stairs. Blackthorn glanced wildly over his shoulder, regained his balance, shot out both hands and ripped the rifle away from the astonished onlooker.

  Blackthorn whirled and pointed the rifle at Jared on the stairway.

  Already twisting the multiple barrel to its next position, Jared locked it in place in the seconds Blackthorn’s finger squeezed the trigger. Jared’s pistol exploded first.

  William Blackthorn shrieked and slapped a hand to his stomach. A black hole marked his nightshirt just above his waist.

  He dropped the rifle, tottered forward and slammed on his face, his nightshirt tangled around his buttocks. Mrs. Cato took one look at him and fled for the front door. As Jared stumbled the rest of the way down the stairs, he heard her yelling on the stoop, “Get the soldiers! A man’s been shot—”

  If I’ve killed him—Jared thought. Oh, God, if I’ve killed him—

  vi

  Both hands were bloodied now; how, he didn’t know. He knelt over Blackthorn, rolled him onto his spine. The man’s lips flecked with spittle. He had difficulty focusing his eyes on Jared’s face.

  The noise in the parlor had stopped. Even the Tennessean’s voice was stilled as all the people from the parlor crowded the doorway.

  “What did you do with Amanda?” Jared said to the dying man.

  Blackthorn pressed his hands against his bleeding belly, grimaced.

  “Sold her, you son of a bitch.”

  “Sold her! To who?”

  Blackthorn’s tongue licked at the corner of his mouth. “Trappers heading—up the Missouri. Told them she was—my indentured girl—”

  Hearing that, Jared almost wept.

  “Made—a sweet profit, too—” The green eyes were vicious with hate and pain. “Enough to keep me half a year, until you—”

  Blackthorn arched his back, shutting his eyes. “Oh Jesus, you hurt me. I think you killed me—” The eyes opened again, deranged. “They’ll fuck her bloody till they trade her. The better she’s used, the better the savages will like her. Up in—Sioux country—plenty of young bucks and old chiefs take to—a white girl. She’ll bring plenty of pelts—”

  Jared seized Blackthorn’s cheeks, marking them with blood. “Tell me the name of the men who bought her!”

  Blackthorn’s eyes streamed tears as he arched his back again. When the spasm passed, he worked his lips—

  And spat in Jared’s face.

  The warm, sticky stuff trickled down the boy’s chin. Blackthorn said through clenched teeth, “You find out who—bought her—”

  Like a madman, Jared struck Blackthorn’s jaw, smearing the blood already there.

  “Oh God, it hurts me!” Blackthorn cried, rolling from side to side, lifting one shoulder, then the other in an effort to lessen his pain. The tears coursed down his cheeks, mingling with the blood, a pink wetness. “It hurts me, it hurts me something awful—”

  Yellow hair hanging over his forehead, Jared watched Blackthorn die. A squad of mounted men clattered up in front of the bordello in response to Mrs. Cato’s alarms. The tall Tennessean who had destroyed the parlor belched and draped an arm over one of the wide-eyed whores.

  “Dunno who that boy is,” the man said in a thick voice. “But bless his heart for takin’ the heat off me. Mrs. Cato won’t worry so much about her furniture if there’s a man lyin’ murdered in her hallway—”

  Jared was numb. Numb and beaten. On his knees beside. Blackthorn’s corpse, he pressed his bloody palms against his thighs and stared at the rifles of the soldiers rushing through the front door.

  Chapter VIII

  The Windigo

  i

  GENERAL WILLIAM CLARK PERSONALLY took Jared’s deposition next morning. The boy repeated the story of Amanda’s abduction, and what Blackthorn had told him about selling her to white traders heading for the country of the Sioux tribes. In the afternoon, he was summoned to the governor’s presence again.

  “I can find no witnesses to corroborate the alleged sale of your cousin,” Clark told him.

  Jared simply looked at the general across the latter’s desk.

  Clark seemed disturbed by the young man’s lackluster stare. “See here, Kent! I should think you’d show some interest in this inquiry—”

  “I heard what you said, General,” Jared answered in a dull voice.

  Still ruffled, Clark said, “I’m trying to establish the facts in the case. You did shoot a man dead.”

  “He was going to shoot me. And he deserved it.”

  “That doesn’t condone it. I remind you, the rifle Black or Blackthorn aimed was empty.”

  “I had no way of knowing that. I’m just sorry he died before he told me the names of the men who bought Amanda.”

  “If anyone really did. I’ve had investigators at the fur houses of Manuel Lisa and the Chouteaus all morning. Those gentlemen know virtually everything that happens in the local trade. They’ve heard nothing about a girl, or a transaction, such as you describe. However—”

  “I doubt if Blackthorn would have advertised the transaction, General.”

  “That’s true. You didn’t permit me to finish.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jared said, without feeling.

  “I was about to say I do have evidence that a girl resembling your cousin was in St. Louis.”

  Jared’s head lifted abruptly. “What evidence?”

  “The statement of Mrs. Cato. She said Black had a girl with him for a short time after his arrival. A quite well-developed and handsome young girl. She was poorly dressed, and showed signs of having been injured or abused—bruises, that sort of thing. She seemed to obey the dead man without question. Mrs. Cato got the impression she was mortally afraid of him.”

  “Did you find out whether the girl was wearing a cordage bracelet?”

  “She was. Mrs. Cato noticed it because tarred rope is hardly what any woman would consider fashionable.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Cato wonder about Blackthorn having a young girl with him?”

  “In her—ah—profession, the lady is not greatly concerned about the history or the morals of her guests. She accepted the man’s story that the girl was a relative, and she thought no more about it when the girl disappeared in a few days. So Mrs. Cato’s deposition does give credence to yours—”

  Again Jared said nothing. He stared at his hands. So much had been destroyed so quickly—

  The firm in Boston belonged to the Stovalls—if they’d kept it. Perhaps Kent and Son already had another name, another owner. The objects from the mantel—the tea bottle, the French sword, the Kentucky rifle—had probably been sold for junk. He thanked God his uncle Gilbert was in his grave, and couldn’t see the straits into which the family had fallen—

  Because of me.

  The destruction he’d brought down on the Kents only confirmed the feelings about himself that he’d had for so many years. Aunt Harriet always said he was made of the same flawed clay as his mother and father. He believed it today more than he ever had before.

  He’d come into the west just as his father had, and the land had defeated him—and that, too, held no surprise.

  Now there was the news about Amanda.
It should have cheered him. It didn’t. He suspected she was dead. Either at someone else’s hand, or by her own.

  He could hardly bear to think of her alive in the circumstances Blackthorn had described. He wished she were with him, if only for a moment, so he could tell her how sorry he was for what he had done to her—

  “Kent?”

  He glanced up. “Forgive me, General. My mind wanders. You were saying—?”

  “I was saying that Black is no loss to the community. But if the law takes that posture, there’s no reason to have law. Nor can I permit you to go scot-free, regardless of how much provocation you had in attacking the man you killed.”

  In a tired voice, Jared began, “It was self-defense—”

  “The magistrate who hears your case will certainly take that into account. After you’ve served your sentence for disturbing the peace, I’ll grant you an extra ten days’ grace. In that time, you’re to remove yourself from St. Louis. Don’t come back.”

  “How long will I be in prison?”

  “A minimum of ninety days—you find something amusing, Mr. Kent?”

  Jared’s mouth lost its bitter curl. “No, sir. I was just thinking it might as well be ninety years.”

  Clark was thrown off guard; he moderated his tone. “Come, you act as if your life’s over—”

  “Yes, sir. That’s exactly how it feels.”

  ii

  The stifling summer dragged on. Jared grew to hate the small, gloomy cell in which he was confined. The jailer allowed him the Bible Mrs. Jackson had given him, but he never opened it. His only reading matter was an occasional copy of the Missouri Gazette, which usually contained dismal news from the east.

  A United States naval victory on Lake Champlain and the resulting British retreat into Canada were more than offset by the devastating success of another enemy probe into the Potomac district. In late August, the British marched on Washington virtually unopposed. The president and his cabinet had already fled when the enemy arrived, but the capitol was torched. So were the new White House and all of the departmental buildings save the patent office. Several private homes went up in flames along with the Navy Yard, which was deliberately destroyed to prevent it from falling into British hands.