The Wilderness Road

by James Reasoner

  "Why, I'm just fine. I see that cut on your face is healing up all right."

  "It was just a scratch," Davis said. "But I appreciate your concern."

  "Come over to the wagon and have some tea with us," Emily said. "Have you had supper?"

  "Yes, ma'am, but I thank you anyway, Miss Harding."

  "No need to be so formal," she said with a laugh. "Call me Emily. And I should call you . . . ?"

  "Davis."

  A slight frown appeared on her face. "But I thought that was your last name."

  He took a deep breath. Something inside him was unwilling to lie to this young woman, despite the habit he had developed over the past few months of keeping his real identity a secret. "My name is Davis Hallam," he said, "but the other men don't know me as that."

  There. Maybe that hint of mystery would scare her off. Surely she had enough sense to realize that there was something unsavory in his past, otherwise he wouldn't be using a false name. He had seen the keen intelligence in her eyes and knew she would figure that out.

  But if she did, it didn't seem to matter to her, because she said, "Oh. All right. I'll remember that. Now, come along, and we'll have that tea."

  She was nothing if not persistent, Davis thought. He would humor her for the time being and still make this visit as brief as possible. He was reasonably certain that Captain Harding would welcome him only grudgingly to the family fire.

  Emily led him across the camp to the first wagon. A small fire burned nearby, and Captain Harding sat beside it on an overturned crate. He had a tin cup in his hand, and when he looked up at Davis, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I remember you," he said without any other greeting. "You were part of that brawl the first night."

  "Not through any choice of my own," Davis said. Harding just grunted in acknowledgment of the comment.

  "Don't be unpleasant to our guest, Father," Emily said sternly to him. "I've offered Mr. Davis a cup of tea, and I intend to see that he shall have it."

  "Go ahead," Harding said with a wave of his free hand. "I'll not have anyone say that Linus Harding is an inhospitable man."

  That reminded Davis of what Peter Abernathy had said back in the jail in Elkton. Harding was about as friendly as Abernathy had been, too. But at least the wagon train captain didn't want to string him up from a gallows, Davis thought.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Emily brought another crate from the wagon and placed it on the ground, on the other side of the fire from her father. Not only intelligent, Davis thought, but wise, too. "Please, sit down," Emily said. "I'll get your tea."

  She fetched a tin cup from the wagon and used a piece of leather to protect her hand as she picked up the pot sitting in the edge of the fire. After pouring tea into the cup, she handed it gingerly to Davis, adding, "Careful, it's hot."

  Indeed it was. Hot and good, he discovered as he sipped the brew. Strong, just as he liked it. He took another sip.

  Emily had gone back to the wagon, and when she returned to the fire, she wasn't alone. She brought with her an older woman and three children—two boys and a girl. "Mr. Davis," she said, "I'd like for you to meet my mother and my brothers and sister."

  Davis stood up, nodding politely to the older woman. "I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am." he said, but as he spoke, his mind was racing back to the day he had first met Faith's parents.

  There was no reason for this to remind him of that, he cautioned himself. This was completely different.

  "This is Tom and Joel," Emily went on, touching each of the boys on the head as she spoke his name. "And Sarah Anne," she added, placing her hand on the shoulder of the little girl, who peered up at Davis with awestruck eyes.

  Davis gravely shook hands with Tom and Joel Harding, who appeared to be around twelve and ten, respectively. Sarah Anne was about eight, he judged. The gap between Tom's age and Emily's suggested that the Hardings had had several other children who had likely died young. That was all too common. Life was hard anywhere, and more so the farther one went from civilization.

  "Where are you from, Mr. Davis?" Mrs. Harding asked.

  "Virginia, ma'am," he replied, figuring that was a vague enough answer.

  "We're from Pennsylvania ourselves," the older woman said. "We had a farm near Pittsburgh. But Linus wanted to move on, and he'd heard stories about this land of Kaintuck. Have you ever been there?"

  "No, ma'am, but I hear it's a mighty fine place."

  "Thinking about settling there yourself, are you?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Davis replied honestly. "I've given it some thought."

  "Perhaps you can claim some land near ours," Emily said. "It would be nice to have good neighbors."

  Davis swallowed hard. Evidently Emily didn't notice, or didn't care, that she was being rather bold. "I'm sure you and your neighbors will get along just fine, ma'am," he managed to say.

  The children were allowed to go back to the wagon, and Mrs. Harding settled down next to her husband, perching on a corner of the crate. Davis hoped fervently that Emily wouldn't try to follow her mother's example. There would be room on the crate for her, but just barely, and her hip and thigh would have to be pressed up against his . . .

  With a force like a striking hammer, the realization that he wanted Emily Harding went through Davis. He had not thought about a woman like that in months . . . or perhaps he had just denied it to himself. He had figured that in the future, if his needs became too overwhelming, he could satisfy them with a trollop from some tavern. The subject really hadn't occupied much of his thoughts.

  But this was different. Emily was no trollop, and he had no right to think lustful thoughts about her. She was a respectable young woman, and the only way he could even entertain such fancies concerning her would be to start thinking about marriage as well—

  Abruptly, he lifted the cup to his lips and drank down the rest of the tea, ignoring the fact that it was still hot enough to burn his mouth slightly.

  "I have to be going," he said as he came to his feet. He couldn't afford to worry any longer about being polite. He had to get out of here—now.

  "What—" Emily began, but Davis stopped her by pressing the empty cup into her hands.

  "Much obliged for the tea, ma'am. It was good." He nodded across the fire to Harding and his wife. "Good night, Captain. Good night, ma'am. Thank you for your hospitality."

  Then he turned and walked quickly away from the wagon, not daring to look back. He was afraid that if he did, he would see the confusion and hurt on Emily's face. He knew that expression had to be there after the way he had acted, and he regretted it more than he could say.

  But he'd had no choice. He had strayed far too easily onto forbidden ground. He had his pain and loneliness to live with.

  And as he walked into the night, he embraced them both.

  Chapter 12

  For several days after that, Davis brooded as he worked, wishing he had never allowed Conn Powell to browbeat him into visiting the immigrant camp in the first place. If he had only stayed away, as he had intended to do all along, he never would have gotten to know Emily better. And if he had not known her better, he would not have allowed such thoughts about her to enter his head.

  It would have been easier, though, to make all the trees that had been felled by the work crew spring back to life than to ignore the feelings that had taken hold of him. No matter what his intentions had been, the image of Emily Harding haunted him practically every waking moment.

  He decided that even though he couldn't banish her from his mind, he could stay away from her. No matter what Powell or anybody else said, he wasn't going near that immigrant camp again, and nothing could force him to visit it. As usual, he was wrong

  They were passing through a stretch of rugged terrain where the Wilderness Road snaked its way between high bluffs, almost as high as the slopes of the Cumberland Gap had been. It was a cloudy day to start with, spring thunder rumbling in the distance, and the steep, tree-covered bluffs closing in on the sid
es of the trail made the atmosphere seem even more oppressive.

  Davis's face was covered with sweat as he wielded a shovel. He and several other men were digging around the base of a large stump, exposing the roots so that they could be cut and the stump pulled loose by a team of mules. He tried to blink away some of the sweat that dripped in his eyes; when this failed, he paused to wipe away the moisture with his sleeve. As he started to bend to his task once again, several loud explosions sounded somewhere behind them on the trail.

  Davis looked up sharply at the sounds, alarm jolting through him. One of the other men exclaimed, "Those were gunshots!", but Davis had already figured that out.

  And they had come from the direction of the wagon train.

  "Could be they saw a bear," one of the crew suggested.

  "Or savages," another man said.

  More shots rattled through the still, muggy air. Too many to have been caused by the sighting of a bear, Davis thought as he dropped his shovel. An attack by Indians or bandits was more likely. The wagon where the weapons of the crew were stored was nearby, since its team of mules was going to be used to uproot the stump, so Davis whirled around and lunged toward it, intending to fetch his rifle.

  The wagon driver blocked his way. "Here now!" the man said. "What are you doin', Davis? Nobody touches them guns without the say-so of the colonel or Mr. Powell!"

  "Get out of my way, damn it," Davis said. His hands balled into fists as more gunshots floated to his ears.

  The man must have seen something in Davis's eyes that he didn't like, because he swallowed hard and moved aside. Davis reached inside the back of the wagon, found his flintlock, powderhorn, and shot pouch, and took them with him as he broke into a dead run back along the trail to the east. Behind him, several other men from the crew followed suit, arming themselves and then running after him.

  As he pounded along the road, Davis managed to sling the powderhorn and shot pouch over his shoulder, then began loading the rifle. That wasn't easy to do at a hard run, but he knew he couldn't burst in unarmed on whatever was happening back along the trail. The shooting continued, and now he was close enough to hear screams and shouts as well. A cold ball of fear exploded in his belly at the sound.

  Emily was back there somewhere.

  Hoofbeats thundered up behind Davis, and Conn Powell swept past him on horseback. Davis let out a shout of frustration. Powell would reach the wagon train before he did. Davis didn't care about that so much—what bothered him more was his fear that Emily might be in danger and it was taking him so damned long to get there.

  He rounded a couple of bends in the road and saw the scene he had feared spread out before him. The wagon train was stalled in a long straightaway between two bluffs that crowded in closely on both sides. A deadly rain of gunfire was pouring down from the bluffs. The oxen pulling the first few wagons had dropped in their harnesses, felled by the rifle fire, and that had effectively blocked the road. Even after the work done by the colonel's crew, the Wilderness Road still was not wide enough for more than one wagon to pass.

  Not only had some of the oxen been killed, but the bodies of several men were sprawled on the ground alongside the wagons. Davis slowed in his run, stunned by the horror of what he was seeing. Men were working their way down through the trees on the slopes, firing as they came, and more bandits were attacking from the rear of the wagon train, these on horseback.

  Davis had no doubt that they were bandits. He got a good look at several of the ambushers and recognized them as white men. As one of the raiders paused to draw a bead on a target, Davis came to a stop as well and flung his flintlock to his shoulder. He cocked the rifle, settled the weapon's sight on the chest of the bandit, and pulled the trigger at the same time as the man fired. Both rifles belched smoke and flame.

  Davis had no idea if the bandit had hit what he was aiming at, but through the haze of powdersmoke, he saw his own shot strike home.

  The bandit was flung backward by the heavy lead ball slamming into his chest. He fell in a twisted heap and didn't move.

  Acting on instinct, Davis was already reloading. He dropped to one knee as he did so. The other men from the work crew dashed up to join him, and as he rammed home another ball and charge of powder, he called to them, "Bandits on the bluffs!" More rifles boomed around him as the men took a hand in the fight.

  Davis saw Conn Powell racing along the wagon train, the reins of his horse in his mouth, a pistol in each hand. The foreman veered his mount toward a pair of bandits who had just reached the bottom of the slope on that side of the wagons. Powell fired the brace of pistols, the shots coming so close together that they sounded like one. Both bandits were blown backward.

  A grim smile touched Davis's lips for an instant. Conn Powell might be a dyed-in-the-wool bastard, but he was a fighting man. You had to give him that.

  Then Davis had the butt of the flintlock socketed firmly against his shoulder again, and he fired at another bandit he had glimpsed through the trees. The man stumbled, fell, and rolled down the slope, crashing through the underbrush.

  Davis loaded the flintlock again, then surged to his feet and broke into a run once more. He knew that the Harding wagon was the first one in the train, and he wanted to reach Emily's side. No matter how many bandits swarmed the wagons, he would protect her, keep her from harm.

  Just like he had kept Faith from harm . . .

  The thought slithered through his brain like a snake. He gritted his teeth and forced the image of his dying wife out of his mind. That was the past. There was plenty of danger in the here and now.

  He saw Linus Harding crouched beside the lead wagon, firing an old blunderbuss of some sort toward the raiders. The weapon lacked the accuracy of the newer flintlocks, but it packed plenty of power in its shots. Harding began reloading, then suddenly slumped backward against a wagon wheel, dropping his gun and clutching his shoulder. His wife cried out, "Linus!", and reached down toward him from just behind the seat of the wagon.

  Harding motioned for her to get back under cover, then awkwardly started pulling himself upright again. Davis spotted one of the bandits drawing a bead on the wagon train captain and fired hastily at the man. The shot missed, but it came close enough to make the bandit duck back behind some bushes, and that gave the wounded Harding time to scramble into the wagon.

  Davis hoped fervently that Emily and the children were staying low inside the wagon. The thick sideboards of the vehicle would stop most of the rifle balls.

  Since the bandits were attacking from three sides, the only places to take cover were inside and underneath the wagons. Davis reached the Harding wagon, threw himself down, and scrambled underneath it. The wheels would offer him some protection, and the body of the vehicle shielded him from the gunmen who were higher on the slopes. He reloaded his rifle and crawled to one side, peering out in search of a fresh target.

  The next few minutes were a nightmare of gunfire, screams, and shouted curses. Clouds of acrid powdersmoke stung Davis's nose and burned his eyes. He was deafened by the continual roar of shots. His brain was numb, his actions all instinctive as he loaded and fired, loaded and fired. Horses thundered past the wagon, their hooves churning up the dirt only inches from Davis's face and making him draw back to blink away the grit that clogged his vision. But even in the midst of the hellish action, he wondered about Emily, wished that he could know if she was all right.

  From what he had seen of the bandits, there were several dozen of them, a big enough group to attack even a large wagon train such as this one. The ambush had been planned almost like a military operation. Davis had known there were well-organized gangs of highwaymen along the Wilderness Road, but he had been convinced they wouldn't strike at such a large, well-armed caravan. Obviously, he had been wrong.

  Finally, the shooting began to die away. When it stopped entirely, the silence that descended on the scene was eerie. All the birds and animals of the surrounding forest had been frightened away by the battle, and fo
r a moment, as his ears adjusted to the quiet, Davis heard absolutely nothing. Then, as more of his hearing returned, he became aware of sobbing. It seemed to come from all along the line of wagons and was punctuated by an occasional heartfelt curse or a desperate calling of a loved one's name. Davis knew even before he crawled out from under the Harding wagon that people had died in this raid, probably quite a few of them.

  On hands and knees, he moved out from under the wagon and stood up. He was unhurt, somehow untouched by all the lead that had been flying through the air. He took a deep breath and looked around. The bandits were gone, just as he had thought.

  Stepping up to the front of the wagon, he looked anxiously inside, beneath the arching canvas cover. He saw Mrs. Harding kneeling beside her husband, apparently unharmed. She was winding a bandage around Harding's shoulder, where he had been struck by one of the bandits' shots. Clustered around Mrs. Harding were the three younger children.

  Davis didn't see Emily anywhere in the wagon.

  "Captain Harding," he said urgently, "are you all right?"

  "I will be," Harding replied in a voice drawn taut by agony. "Damned musket ball smashed my shoulder." His pain-dimmed vision seemed to clear a little, and he went on, "Davis? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

  "All of us from the crew came to help when we heard the shooting," Davis explained. Impatience and worry were growing rapidly inside him, and he hurried on, "Where's Emily? Is she all right?"

  It was Mrs. Harding who answered without looking up from her grim work of bandaging her husband's shoulder. "We don't know. She was back with one of the other families, visiting friends, when we were attacked."

  Davis's hands tightened convulsively on his rifle. "How far back? Which wagon?"

  "She was with the Fletchers," Harding said. "Six wagons back."

  Davis didn't linger any longer. He turned and ran as hard as he could toward the Fletcher wagon.

  Counting off the vehicles as he ran, he found the one he was looking for. The canvas cover had been torn loose on one side, and it was flapping in the gusty wind that had sprung up in the past few minutes. The inside of the wagon was revealed. Davis saw a woman kneeling there over the body of a man. Great shuddering sobs wracked her as she lay against his bloody, unmoving chest. Davis came to a stop and stood there watching helplessly. He didn't see Emily anywhere, but he could tell that the sobbing woman wasn't her, although they seemed to be about the same age. This woman had bright red hair underneath her bonnet.