The Wilderness Road

by James Reasoner

  Davis's breathing had gotten faster and faster until he was almost panting. The ache in his head, which had subsided a little, came roaring back as his pulse began to hammer unmercifully.

  Andrew! The name screamed through Davis's brain. The man Shadrach had described could have been Andrew Paxton. Andrew had disappeared from the Shenandoah Valley just like Davis himself had disappeared.

  What better place for any man to vanish than out here on the nearly trackless frontier?

  Andrew was the only man alive other than Davis who knew the truth—the bloody truth—of what had happened in the Hallam cabin on that wintry day. It was possible that knowledge had eaten at him, just as it haunted Davis, and Andrew could have feared that someday, somehow, the truth would come out. If that ever happened, he would want to be far away from the Shenandoah Valley.

  Those convoluted thoughts shot through Davis's head in a split second. He realized that Shadrach was talking to him, and he forced his racing mind and his galloping pulse to slow down. Dragging a deep breath into his lungs, he let it out with a sigh and said, "No, I'm not going to have a fit. I'm all right now."

  Shadrach grinned. "Thinkin' about those Shawnees and what they're goin' to do to you, eh? Don't reckon I can blame you for that. It'd be weighin' heavy on my mind, too, if I was in your place, Davis. Maybe you'll be lucky. Maybe they'll kill you quick."

  Davis doubted that. He knew little about any Indians, let alone the tribe called Shawnee, but he had heard lurid stories about the savages and their love for torture, especially when their victim was white. During the Revolution, Kentucky had also been called the Dark and Bloody Ground because of all the massacres that had taken place here as the British enlisted the Indians in their fight against the rebel colonists. Obviously, even though the British had been defeated, the Indians were still here and still had a thirst for blood.

  Shadrach took hold of Davis's shirt collar and jerked him back toward the tunnel entrance. "Come along," the bandit leader ordered. "We've been out here long enough."

  The three men retraced their steps back to the cavern, Davis sliding awkwardly down the steepest part of the path. Emily looked up as they entered the cave, relief flooding her face when she saw that Davis was all right. She must have been worried, he thought. Anyone in his or her right mind would be, under the circumstances.

  He nodded to her, even managed to smile a little, and then Shadrach prodded him over to the rear wall and made him sit down. Once more, Davis's legs were tied together.

  "Better get some rest," Shadrach advised him.

  The very idea of sleeping seemed impossible to Davis. He didn't see how he could relax enough to doze off.

  But once again, he surprised himself. He closed his eyes, and a few minutes later his head drooped forward onto his chest as he was claimed by slumber.

  * * *

  A scraping sound woke him. At first he wasn't certain of that, but then the noise was repeated. It came from somewhere nearby, but he couldn't locate it.

  The fire had burned down to a pile of embers that gave off only faint light. Davis looked around the cave and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

  After a moment, he could make out quite a few motionless figures wrapped up in their bedrolls. He saw Emily lying near a bulky shape that had to be Shadrach. Despite everything he had expected, the bandits hadn't molested her, and he was grateful she had been spared that horror.

  Obviously, she would fetch a better price from the Spaniard as a virgin, and money meant more to Shadrach than slaking his lusts.

  He controlled this band of highwaymen with a strong enough grip so that Emily was safe from their advances, too. But that wouldn't last. Once she was in the hands of the slave trader, Emily could look forward only to a life of shame and degradation.

  Davis heard the tiny scraping sound again. He stiffened. It was close now, very close.

  A hand wrapped around his arm In the darkness.

  He started up, but the hand's grip was like iron. Another hand clamped itself over his mouth, silencing any involuntary outcry he might make. If there had been more than one man, he would have expected a knife blade to come slicing into his body at any second, but the man beside him had both hands on him, and Davis could sense that he was alone.

  "Don't raise the alarm, you damned fool," a voice hissed, the man's lips so close to Davis's ear that they were practically touching it. "I've come to get you out of here."

  Davis's eyes widened in shock as he recognized the voice. It belonged to a man he had never expected to see again, a man who had been torn and bloodied by rifle fire the last time Davis had seen him.

  Crouched beside him in the darkness was Conn Powell.

  Chapter 14

  The hand pressed against Davis's mouth went away, and he whispered, "Powell! How—" "Shut up, blast it!" Powell breathed in his ear. "You want to get us all killed?"

  Powell was right, Davis knew. At this moment in time, it didn't matter how Powell had survived or how he had gotten into the cave. What was important was that he was here, and he had come to help.

  But the problem still seemed hopeless. They were surrounded by bandits, any of whom might wake up at any time. The odds were still overwhelmingly against them. In all likelihood, the only thing Powell had succeeded in doing by sneaking in here would be to get himself killed a second time.

  Davis didn't want to think about what a crazy idea that was. Maybe Powell really was dead. Maybe he was a ghost, a "haint," as Davis's grandmother would call it. It was even possible that he was imagining the whole thing, Davis told himself.

  But Powell's rough touch hadn't felt like the hands of a ghost. Nor was there anything imaginary about the tugs Davis felt on his wrists and ankles as Powell used a knife to slice through his bonds.

  The ropes fell away, and blood rushed back into Davis's extremities with a painful tingle. He flexed his fingers to get as much feeling into them as quickly as he could.

  Powell pressed something into his hand. Davis recognized it as the hilt of a knife. "Where's the girl?" Powell asked, his voice still just a slender shaving of sound.

  Davis pointed in silence, knowing that Powell's keen eyes could follow the gesture. He thought he saw Powell nod, then a hand on his arm urged him to follow.

  Moving slowly and carefully, making as little noise as possible, Davis crawled behind the foreman. Powell led him along the rear wall of the cave. Davis didn't know where they were going, and every instinct cried out for him to go to Emily instead. But Powell knew what he was doing, Davis told himself.

  He had damned well better.

  Suddenly, a darker patch of shadow loomed up on Davis's right. He put his hand out toward it, expecting to feel the rough, gritty texture of the stone wall, but instead his fingers encountered only cool, empty air. The black patch was the opening of another tunnel, he realized. His heart slugged heavily. This was a way out, it had to be. Powell must have gotten into the cave through this tunnel, since Shadrach had posted guards at the main entrance. Maybe Shadrach didn't even know this tunnel was here.

  Davis certainly hadn't seen it earlier when he was looking around the cave. He felt around, touched a large rock only a foot away. The rock might have been covering the tunnel entrance, he thought. That was the only reasonable explanation.

  "Stay here," Powell hissed at him. "I'll get the girl."

  For a second, Davis almost protested. He was supposed to be the one who rescued Emily. But then reason took over, and he knew that Powell was right. The long hunter would have a much better chance of getting her away from Shadrach than he would. All that mattered was saving Emily's life, not who got the credit for rescuing her.

  He stayed where he was as Powell crawled away into the shadows. Davis used the time to explore the opening of the second tunnel. It was small, perhaps two feet wide and not much more than that tall. A good-sized man would be able to wedge himself through it, but there wouldn't be much room to spare. Davis wondered where it led.

&nb
sp; He looked back over his shoulder to see what Powell was doing. The sleeping bandits were all still motionless except for an occasional twitch of arm or leg. Their snores filled the cave and helped cover up any small sounds Powell might be making. Powell was almost at Emily's side.

  But then he started to circle around her, and Davis's eyes widened in fear. Powell was crawling toward Shadrach instead! He must have mistaken which sleeping figure Davis had indicated.

  Davis wanted to call out, to warn Powell that he was about to wake the wrong person, but then he saw that he was the one who had made the mistake. It wasn't Powell's intention to rouse Shadrach from sleep.

  On the contrary, he was going to make sure that Shadrach never woke up again.

  Powell loomed over the bandit leader, his right hand rising above his head. Davis saw the very faint reflection of the glow from the embers of the campfire on a knife blade. Then Powell's left hand locked over Shadrach's mouth as the right hand fell in a savage thrust. Davis heard only a muffled thump as the blade drove into Shadrach's chest. Powell's other hand kept the bandit from crying out as he died. Shadrach's feet kicked once, convulsively, in the blankets wrapped around him, then they were still.

  Powell pulled the knife free and wiped it on Shadrach's bedroll.

  Davis realized he was holding his breath. He let it out softly. Powell's knife must have penetrated Shadrach's heart on the first try, otherwise the bandit would not have died so quickly and quietly. Obviously, Powell knew quite a bit about killing. Davis was glad he had never made an out-and-out enemy of the man.

  Shadrach had died so quietly that Emily was still sleeping undisturbed beside him. Powell sheathed his knife and woke her as he had Davis, one hand on her arm, the other clamped over her mouth to prevent any outcry. Davis could tell that much from the movements he glimpsed in the shadows of the cave, but he couldn't hear anything Powell might have whispered in Emily's ear.

  A moment later, however, she pushed her blankets aside and came up on hands and knees to crawl toward Davis, and he felt a surge of relief. She had understood who Powell was and what he was trying to do. Now it was just a matter of crawling through the narrow tunnel before any of the bandits woke up and realized what was going on.

  Davis reached out to Emily as she came up to him, pulling her unashamedly into his arms and embracing her. "Are you all right?" he whispered to her. He felt her nod, her soft brown hair brushing against his cheek.

  Powell moved up beside them and tapped Davis on the shoulder. He gestured toward the tunnel. Davis nodded, understanding that Powell wanted him to go first. That was probably for the best. He would lead the way, then Emily could follow, and Powell would bring up the rear. The fact that Powell trusted him to take the lead told Davis that the tunnel most likely ran straight to the surface without diverging anywhere along the way, otherwise Powell would have had to go first to make sure they took the correct turns.

  Stretching his body out on the floor of the cave, Davis slithered into the roughly circular patch of darkness marking the tunnel entrance. With his elbows and toes, he pushed himself through the opening into the stygian blackness. For a moment, panic gibbered wildly inside his head as the dark enveloped him completely. But he was able to force himself to keep crawling, his shoulders and back scraping against the sides of the tunnel, and after a couple of minutes his nerves calmed down slightly. His own breathing was loud in his ears, but he could hear Emily behind him, too, making her way through the tunnel.

  The rough floor of the tunnel tore the elbows of his shirt and the knees of his trousers and abraded his skin. He ignored the pain and continued crawling. From time to time he heard Emily gasp and knew the rocks were probably hurting her, but there was nothing that could be done about that. Better a few scrapes and bruises than the fate that had awaited her at the hands of Shadrach and the rest of the bandits.

  The tunnel seemed endless to Davis, and the horrible thought flashed through his mind that he would spend eternity here, crawling through darkness and never reaching the end of it. But then he realized that somewhere far ahead of him was a tiny patch of gray instead of black, and he began to move faster. The blob of lighter shadows grew steadily larger, and finally he could make it out for what it was: the other end of the tunnel, illuminated by the moon and stars. He pulled and pushed himself along, desperate to reach it.

  His head emerged into open air, the oppressive walls of the tunnel falling away around him. His hands felt dirt and grass and his fingers dug into the earth and pulled hard. He slid out of the tunnel and tumbled down a steep slope, rolling over a couple of times before he caught himself and stared up in joy at the star-dotted sky overhead. A wild laugh bubbled out of his mouth.

  He heard a soft cry and turned to see Emily emerging from the tunnel. After that utter blackness, the night seemed almost as bright as day. Emily began to slide down the side of the mountain, just as Davis had done, but he was there to catch her and keep her from going head over heels. She was panting for breath, and as he held her he could feel the wild beating of her heart. The long crawl through the tunnel had been as hard on her as it had been on him.

  But they were free now. They had come through the darkness and into the light.

  A moment later their deliverer slithered out of the black hole in the side of the mountain. Powell motioned them toward a clump of brush nearby.

  Once they were crouched there, Powell whispered, "Didn't want to talk too much there by the openin' of the tunnel. That hole would've funneled any sounds right back down to the cave."

  "I thought you were dead!" Davis exclaimed in a low voice. "I thought the bandits killed you in that ambush!"

  "They shot me up pretty good," Powell admitted. Now that they were out of the cavern, Davis could hear how weak the man's voice was. In the light of the lowering moon, he could see as well the large dark bloodstains on Powell's buckskins. "It'll take more'n a few rifle balls to put me under, though," the long hunter went on. "I woke up while those bastards were lootin' the bodies and just played possum until they were finished. It was damned lucky none of 'em decided to slit my throat to make sure I was dead."

  "How did you find us in there?" Emily asked.

  "Shoot, I've known about that cave for years," Powell replied. "When I heard that big fella with the beard talkin' about it, I knew where he meant to take the two of you. Reckon they didn't know about the back door. There was rocks coverin' both ends of that little tunnel, and if you didn't know it was there, you'd never find it. I knew."

  "You saved our lives," Davis said. "We can't ever thank you—"

  "Don't waste your breath on that now. We got to get out of here. Soon enough, those boys'll find out you're gone, and then they'll be all over this mountain." Powell reached into the brush beside him and brought out a flintlock rifle. The stock was shattered and broken off. He handed the weapon to Davis, along with a powderhorn and shot pouch. "This is all I was able to salvage except for a couple of knives. They took everything else. The lock's all right on that rifle, so it'll fire, but it'll be hard to handle without a stock."

  "I can manage," Davis said grimly.

  "Figured you could. Hang on to it, 'cause you're liable to need it 'fore we get back to the Wilderness Road."

  Powell came to his feet, then abruptly swayed and almost fell. He would have if Davis had not leaped up and grabbed his arm. "You're too weak to travel far," he said.

  "Don't have any . . . choice. We got to get movin'—"

  At that moment, Davis heard a shout. The sound was faint and hollow, and after a second he realized it had come from the nearby mouth of the tunnel.

  "Damn it!" Powell grated. "Somebody must've stumbled over the body of that big fella." He grunted. "Well, now they know you two are gone. Won't take 'em long to notice that second tunnel, and then some of 'em are likely to come boilin' out of it as quick as they can. The others'll go around the long way. Come on."

  He started off in a stumbling run down the slope. Davis took hold of Em
ily's arm with his free hand, and they followed Powell. They were on the far side of the mountain from the spot where the bandits had ambushed the rescue party, Davis realized as he glanced up at the dark bulk of the peak rising above them. It wouldn't have taken long for him to become hopelessly lost if he had been alone. Luckily, Powell evidently knew this country like the back of his hand.

  When they reached a ridge that ran along the side of the mountain, Powell led Davis and Emily to the left. The ridge petered out after several hundred yards, ending in a deep, narrow gully. Powell followed the gash in the earth, always heading down slope. Every so often, Davis thought he heard a shout in the distance, but he couldn't be sure about that. It could have been his imagination, he supposed.

  After half an hour, they were on relatively flat land again. "I think we got down before they could . . . circle around us," Powell said. He leaned over, put his hands on his knees, and drew in several deep, ragged breaths.

  "You need some rest," Davis began.

  Powell straightened. "Not as bad as we need to put more distance between us and those bandits," he said. His voice sounded a little stronger, but Davis didn't put much stock in that. He knew that Powell had to be utterly exhausted and weak from loss of blood.

  They pushed on, Powell stumbling now. Davis had to reach out and grasp his arm to steady him several times. Another quarter of an hour passed, and the three of them reached a narrow creek that was flowing fast from the recent rain.

  Gasping for breath, Powell signaled a halt. "Figured we'd . . . get here pretty soon," he managed to say. "This crick'll take you back . . . almost all the way to the road. Just stay with it . . . until you get to a hill with . . . two trees on top of it. Wait there 'til . . . morning . . . then head due south. That'll put you back on the road . . . pretty quick."

  "Wait a minute," Davis said with a frown. "Why are you telling us all this? Can't you just lead the way?"

  Powell looked at him. The moon had set a little while earlier, and Davis couldn't make out the man's face in the faint starlight. Not that it would have helped much if he had been able to see Powell, Davis thought. He had never been able to tell what the long hunter was thinking.