The Blue Cloak

by Shannon McNear

  The Harpe women at the home of Reverend Rice. Who would believe such a thing?

  And would they be here long enough for Ben to arrange pursuit, or even an ambush?

  They were back, and Sally could not still the trembling in her middle.

  She knew it was only a temporary reprieve at best, Big and Little agreeing to let them visit Daddy and Mama. It was a gift, truly, one she’d never dreamed they’d allow, that she’d gotten to set little Eady in Mama’s arms and share her happy tears.

  And they’d been welcomed with open arms, more’s the wonder. Oh, there were plenty of searching looks and inquiries after her health, as well as anxious glances outdoors, but neither Daddy nor Mama seemed anything but beside themselves with joy to see her and the baby.

  They’d even treated Susan and Betsey like family, and cooed over their little ones as well.

  But of course, it had to come to an end. Big and Little came riding into the stable yard, bold as you please, bawling for them to come out and pack up. And so began the process of bringing the rest of the horses out, packing all their provisions and belongings on them, and the women mounting up as well.

  Sally was more than grateful to be riding, but—still.

  She tried not to look around. It was hours since Mr. Langford had been here, and it wouldn’t do to make either of the men suspicious by appearing that she expected someone else to be there.

  They were nearly ready now. Sally stood by her horse and turned to look for Little so he could help her mount. To her shock, Daddy stood talking to him, almost nose to nose.

  She could only catch bits of the conversation. “—said you were serious about the kingdom way … baptized … profession of faith. What happened, Wiley?”

  A mocking half smile curled Little’s mouth. “Just keep praying for me, Preacher.”

  Daddy didn’t budge. “And you, repent before it’s too late. Or be sure your sin will find you out.”

  Wiley laughed and strolled toward Sally. Avoiding his eyes, she let him hand her up. When she was settled in the saddle, Mama came near and handed little Eady up so Sally could bundle her against her breast.

  “Take care of them, son,” Daddy said, and this time his voice did shake.

  “Oh, I will,” Wiley said, still grinning, and went to his own horse.

  Daddy stepped up beside Sally and reached for her hand. His hazel eyes burned into hers. “You come home at any time, you hear me? Any time.”

  She squeezed his hand, and then her horse was moving. Though tears blurred her eyes, she turned in the saddle and watched them until the trees hid them from sight.

  The clop of horses’ hooves, the creak of the saddles, and birds in the trees were all that filled the silence, until one of the men—she was sure it was Little—burst out in high-pitched mockery, “‘Repent before it’s too late.’”

  And both Big and Little guffawed. Sally closed her eyes and let the tears fall.

  At least Susan and Betsey did not laugh.

  Chapter Fifteen

  July 30

  Robert Brassel was the man’s name, and he’d narrowly escaped being murdered by the Harpes, the day before.

  His brother James had not been so fortunate.

  “They was alone when my brother and I encountered them on the road away from Knoxville,” the man said. “Like any travelers, they stopped and asked what was the news. We told them of the recent killings, and they expressed shock and outrage like any good men might. But then—while we were talking, one said suddenly, ‘Why, you are the Harpes!’ and lifted his rifle to shoot. I jumped off my horse and ran away—yelled at James to do the same—and somehow, ducking through the rhody bushes, I outran Little and got away, though he shot at me. Didn’t stop running till I’d gotten ten miles up the Road and ran into a party traveling south. They’d only one gun between ‘em all for protection, but they agreed to let me ride back with ‘em. And then—we found James—”

  He drew a deep breath, then another.

  Ben let him take all the time he needed. Too well he knew that overwhelming grief, fresh after news of the loss.

  “James, he was beat up bad, and his throat cut. We bundled his body and brought it back so I could help his family bury him, but then—” Brassel caught his breath again, gaze bouncing between the tabletop and the faces of the men sitting around him. “There they come—the Harpes—again. Only this time, they had their women and children and baggage with ‘em.” He grimaced. “One of Dale’s men suggested we just ride on past if they gave no sign of fighting, and of course they all agreed.” Brassel swallowed heavily, looking sick. “So we did. Just rode on past, us on one side of the path, the Harpes on the other. The men, they looked awful at us, rifles across their saddlebows, but nobody said nothin’. And those I was with, they kept on saying nothin’, in case the Harpes would hear and thinkin’ it a threat, turn back on us.”

  A mutter rose from the men sitting there.

  “Dale and his men said later, what could we all do with only one gun? But I swear, I never met such a lily-livered bunch.”

  “Well. We’d all be glad to ride out after them.” William Wood nodded toward Ben. “Langford here, his cousin was the first known victim of the Harpes. So he’s plenty motivated himself.”

  Brassel looked at Ben with new interest, the pain and understanding so clear in his eyes that it fair took Ben’s breath away. He nodded slowly. “Well then, I’d be honored to have you ride with me,” Brassel said quietly.

  July 31

  “Look.” The farmer Tully’s voice rose, almost frantic. “I helped y’all by carrying messages back and forth from your old man to your women, weeks ago. Even though the law and the papers was saying terrible things about you. What more can I do? I got a wife and children—”

  There was a softly snarled word from Big, then the flash of sun on a blade as he raised his arm and it fell.

  Sally, already trying not to look as she fumbled to latch a crying Eady on to nurse while still a-horseback, flinched and squeezed her eyes shut.

  The babe whimpered even as she set to suckling.

  God … oh God, I cry out to You in violence….

  She remembered the farmer, his kind, pitying face as he gave Susan a message and took one in return.

  Big and Little were dragging the man away, out of sight. They returned shortly enough, laughing quietly as they swung up onto their horses. “We sleep at Old Man Roberts’s tonight!” Big sang out as they set off.

  As if that would be aught to boast about. The only thing noteworthy was that they had good horses and could make easily fifty miles a day.

  Ben’s party made good time up the trace from Knoxville—not on the usual road, toward Cumberland Gap, but farther west, through timbered hills that were the wildest Ben had seen yet. They turned almost due west at the lower spur of Cumberland Mountain and pressed on toward the Tennessee-Kentucky state line.

  Attempting to trace their progress on a map was frustrating as always, but by his calculations they had passed over into Kentucky when a commotion on a farm along the way drew their attention. Their party turned aside and found that John Tully, the man of the family in residence there, had disappeared the day before, and the neighbors turned out to help search for him. Missus Tully was in great distress, but trying valiantly to put on a brave face in the presence of their eight young children.

  Ben and the others joined the search, and it wasn’t long before, alerted by the smell, they found the man’s body near the road, hidden under a log.

  As the neighbors stepped up to help with funeral preparations and consoling the grieving now-widow, Ben’s party agreed it was needful for them to assume this murder had also been done by the Harpes, and to press on in pursuit of them.

  One of Tully’s neighbors and one of Ben’s party continued to the northwest, heading for Daniel Trabue’s home and store some forty miles away. If the Harpes were bent on revenge—which seemed likely, once Tully’s dubious connection to the Harpes had been
revealed, from just a few months before—then it followed that Trabue might become a target, for his part in pursuing them after his son’s murder in April.

  “Old Man Roberts’s house is just up the way as well,” the neighbor, Nathaniel Stockton, commented. “Mebbe they’re headed there.”

  “And how many men will Roberts have?” someone asked. “Do we dare even try to corner them there? Better to try to catch them alone, wouldn’t it?”

  Ben gritted his teeth with the frustration of it all. He’d no more wish to throw himself before a rifle ball—or tomahawk blade—than anyone else, but this was ridiculous.

  He could tell by Brassel’s face that the other man was of a similar mind. But it was true—what could the handful of them do if the Harpes’ manpower were doubled or tripled?

  “Perhaps we could watch and wait, catch them as they leave,” Ben suggested.

  They all looked at one another, no one saying a word. The weariness of the chase lay heavy on them already, and it felt like they’d hardly begun.

  August

  Murder should not happen on such a beautiful morning.

  Little Eady strapped to her chest, Sally strolled the old buffalo trace as if there were no screams or wicked laughter filtering through the forest behind her. It was before dawn and mosquitoes swarmed thick around her face, but she merely brushed them away and kept walking.

  Better them than to have to watch the bloodshed behind her.

  It was a whole family this time—Big said for the sake of horses and provisions, although the women were already well mounted and they’d lacked for naught of late. There was no justification for what they were doing, or had done, these past weeks.

  Sally had nearly lost count. A father and son who graciously shared their camp on an unexpected stop on the way up to see Old Man Roberts—who ironically enough, sent them on their way far sooner than Sally would have expected.

  Maybe he too had lost patience with Big and Little’s shenanigans.

  From there, they’d ridden farther west and a little south. Running across a young Negro boy on the way to the mill with a sack of grain balanced across the withers of his horse, Big and Little indulged their hellish sense of fun on the lad, but then spooked by sounds of pursuit on the trace behind them, left the lad’s broken body behind without taking the horse or grain.

  And this—this was almost worse than anything else.

  I will never leave thee or forsake thee.

  Could it be true? Was the Lord with her, even in this?

  Lord, show me. Help me. Save me, Lord, if I’m truly still Yours.

  I cannot bear much more of this.

  It was a typical August late afternoon where a haze thickened the air, and the sun shone blood red as it sank toward the west. Lanterns hung in the trees all about, and women fanned themselves as everyone gathered in the open, lighted area.

  This was no ordinary Bible meeting, however, comprised of church members from Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian persuasion. Reverends Ramsay and Carrick of the Presbyterians had joined together with Reverend Rice and called for all, far and wide, to gather for prayer.

  It had started with Reverend Rice calling for his own congregation to pray—for the Harpes to be stopped and Sally and the other women to be rescued. Rachel could see the desperation in his face, but the church members were of a good will to intercede for such a cause, and Rachel as well.

  It was, in fact, the only thing that felt even remotely useful these days.

  Ben tied Ivy, nearly as sweaty and lathered as the half-dozen others he rode with, and stepped inside the dim closeness of the tavern. Like the others, he asked for ale, grateful of something stronger than water to quench his thirst.

  The tavernkeep handed him an earthenware tankard, brimming to the top with foamy amber, and Ben pushed a coin across the rough countertop. “My thanks. Does the post travel through this part of the country?”

  The man shook his head and frowned. “Tryin’ ta get it, but haven’t yet. Mebbe next year.”

  Ben nodded absently and drank deeply, savoring the cool bitterness. He nearly could not remember a time he was not riding some trace, on the pursuit of men who even with their women and babies in tow could seemingly vanish like the mist. Some of the men he rode with had begun to speculate that the Harpes must have otherworldly help in escaping the search parties, because even when half the countryside had turned out to chase after them, the trail always went cold, either blurring with that of other travelers, or disappearing altogether in some watercourse.

  He’d gotten somewhat skilled, himself, at reading sign—not just hoofprints of their mounts but other signs of a traveler’s passing, such as broken twigs or other vegetation, or spiders’ webs swept aside. They needed more, however, if they hoped to actually catch the Harpes. And Ben was past weary of riding to and fro on the same trails and traces, sometimes in circles, and all still for naught.

  By the same token, this was a wondrously beautiful land. He could see why so many folk flocked to it. The tales he’d heard of wild animals and men alike were nearly too fantastic to be believed, and while even the Cherokee were more sparse than they once were, Ben and whatever party he rode with for the time frequently encountered Indians and stopped to ask if they’d any news about the Harpes. Their bronzed, stoic faces often went even more rigid, betraying their disdain for either the outlaws or those pursuing them—or, Ben thought, perhaps both.

  They also caught glimpses of herds of bison or elk and sometimes hunted from the same, proving that the wilderness was not yet bereft of such richness. Flocks of parrots fluttered through the trees above, their brightly colored plumage like chirping, moving flower gardens.

  More than once, Ben thought he could be completely enchanted with this place, were it not for the rigors of the chase.

  The men comprising his posse came and went, some riding along for a day or two, some for as long as a week before domestic duty called them back home. The worst happened, however, when word came of another posse encountering the Harpes, only to be overcome and most of them slain. The two who escaped carried yet another variation on what had become a universal narrative of the Harpes’ cruelty and unbearably intimidating presence.

  Even prayer had become a weariness. Lord, forgive me for that, he found himself imploring. There was a ripple of something Ben thought he remembered feeling like peace, then that too was lost to the muddy, rushing river that the course of his own days had become.

  Like such a current, however, swift and deep and utterly irresistible, Ben could not stop. From Thomas to James Brassel to John Tully, and then the ruin they’d found of two families—including women and children and slaves, all slain where they’d camped on their way to the Promised Land—there was a continual reminder of why Ben rode these paths.

  “What ails that child?” Little growled, hunched over a leg of a turkey they’d roasted over the fire.

  The babe had set to wailing even before suppertime, and Sally barely snatched a bite before strolling around the camp, alternately patting Eady’s back and putting her to breast, trying to soothe her. “Nothing. She’s just a little fretful. Be fine in a bit.”

  Both Big and Little had warned them never to let the babies cry—especially during the past week, as they’d circled around and traveled back north, shaking off what felt like a dozen or more search parties after the string of killings the men had done all up the Kentucky Trace. She and Betsey and Susan usually walked away from the camp until the little ones were soothed, often even staying the night a ways out so the men’s sleep would not be disturbed by their fussing. But this evening, Sally was just plain tired herself. The air hung hot and muggy while they all slapped and itched at the mosquito and chigger bites. Who would not be fretful under such circumstances?

  And it certainly couldn’t be good for the babies that all three mamas felt the terrible burden of what their daddies had been doing. Unnatural it was, though all three of them tried to carry on as if it weren’t.r />
  Huffing, Sally sat down on a rock so she could get a better latching on, but poor Eady only whimpered and gurgled, then after suckling a bit, pulled away with another cry.

  Big shoved to his feet, glaring at her. “Shut that thing up!”

  “She’s got a tummy ache,” Sally said, and shifted the babe back to her shoulder while she fumbled to put clothing back in place. Eady’s cries were only muffled at best, and her tiny toes dug in under Sally’s ribs. She gave up on trying to arrange herself and cuddled Eady with both hands again, seeking the particular angle that she knew would help the baby’s pains. “Shh, there, little one.

  All will be—”

  With a roar, Big loomed close and snatched the tiny girl from her grasp. Eady’s wail pitched suddenly, terrifyingly high as in a move nearly too fast for Sally’s eye to follow, Big swung the baby by her feet and dashed her against a nearby tree trunk.

  Sally’s lungs seized. Silence fell. No one moved. The babe’s lifeless body dangled from Big’s hand, and he stared at it as if not realizing what he’d done, before tossing it aside.

  As if it were nothing but a bit of rubbish.

  He looked across at Sally. “I told you I can’t abide no crying babies.”

  Plunking himself back down next to the cook fire, he grabbed another piece of meat and shoved it in his mouth.

  Breath returned, searing. A thin scream rent the air—Sally’s or someone else’s, she could not say—but Betsey and Susan took her arms and dragged her away into the woods.

  God—oh God—oh—God—

  They released her and she collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

  Of the next hours, Sally could recall little, except that Betsey and Susan stayed with her all night, one on either side, sleeping in bits when they weren’t tending their own babies. She herself slept but fitfully, dozing off somewhere halfway to dawn, after Susan covered her with something warm and comforting.

  When she awoke in early daylight, it was the same blue cloak Rachel had given her on her wedding day.