This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “The Cherokee corn maiden?” Billy resettled his load, watching a squirrel bound through the lower branches. Hitting a running squirrel in the trees was the toughest shot to make. Even tougher with his shot-out rifle, where, as distance increased, so did the amount of plain dumb luck required to hit anything.

  A burning itch had started where his homespun trousers were belted at his waist. Hell, should have used more coal oil on his cuffs. Damn chiggers.

  “Like beautiful Selu, she will stir the passions of men in her time.”

  Billy’s heart leaped. “Ain’t no one gonna be stirring nothing when it comes to my sister. Jus’ ’cause you lost your…” He shook his head. “Ah hell, John. I didn’t mean it.”

  Gritts’s expression didn’t change. “That was long ago.”

  “Never can trust them damn Northern people.”

  “Andrew Jackson was a Southerner. So were the men working with him. We call it the Trail of Tears now.” He paused. “My sisters weren’t the only ones who died.”

  “If I were you, I think I’d hate all white men.”

  “That means I’d hate you.”

  “Reckon so.” Billy slipped Gritts a sidelong look. “You’re my best friend. Maybe my only real friend.”

  “I’ve had things to teach you. The Creator made older men to teach younger men. A man without sisters has no one to teach. You know how it is among Cherokee. A man is responsible for teaching his sisters’ sons to be men. Your father understands these things.”

  “Maw sure as hell don’t.” Billy shook his head. “Paw? He spent time out West. Still talks all the time about the Crow, about trappin’, and that William Drummond Stewart. At least when Paw’s home, that is.”

  “He should buy a house in Little Rock instead of renting that room. This convention on secession the governor called is going to take all summer.”

  “No it ain’t. Not since that man Lincoln called for Arkansas to send troops to fight South Carolina and the secesh states. Even the Union men are mad about that. And that damn Lincoln, he shouldn’t have sent that ship to reinforce Fort Sumter. That was a damn slap in the face to them Carolinians.”

  “So, you gonna go be a soldier?”

  Billy grinned as he shook his head. “Paw told me about soldiering down in Mexico. As much as it didn’t suit him, it’d suit me less. I ain’t taking orders, marching to someone else’s call.” He paused. “And there ain’t no hunting.”

  Gritts started down the winding trail, sniffing the flower-laden air on occasion, as if—like his Wolf Clan ancestors—he could scent the presence of prey and dangers. “Your mother likes to sound enraged, but like a nesting hawk, it is mostly loud noise.” He paused. “You confuse her. She is so proud, at the same time worried. You are her favorite.”

  “Favorite? Then why’s she always yelling at me?”

  “Because you are her favorite. The others, they are walking the path of their futures. Philip is already a trained healer, long gone. Butler now studies in the white man’s school in Pennsylvania, and beautiful Sarah will choose any man she wishes.”

  “She damn well better choose smart, then, ’cause I’ll whip any of these lazy bastards come sniffing around her. They only got one thing on their mind, John, and they ain’t doing that with my sister.”

  “You can’t stop Sarah from becoming a woman any more than you can stop the White River from flowing. Sometimes this preoccupation you have with her worries me. Guarding her honor is one thing, craving her, that becomes dangerous to the soul.”

  “I don’t crave her! You’ve seen how men look at her. How that change comes to their eyes. And, damn it, you know they’s figgering on what it would be like to peel her out of her dress. It just lights my fire. I see red and want to stomp every one of them for being sneaking bastards.”

  “Sarah is good to look at.” John gave him a bland smile in return for Billy’s hot glare. “All the curves are right … even if she’s too pale with the wrong color hair for a man like me.” He lifted a finger. “Even your maw worries that you take things too far.”

  “She’s always yelling at me to let Sarah alone.”

  Gritts shot Billy a hard look. “You know your paw is taking her to Little Rock next fall. She’s old enough to marry. She wants a rich and powerful husband. One who will increase your paw’s standing and power. Your paw and Sarah understand these things.” He smiled tightly. “They could be Cherokee.”

  Billy ground his teeth, looking away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad with Sarah married and living way off in Little Rock. To change the subject, he muttered, “Hell, John. I just want to have fun.”

  “Among my people, we have a word for your kind.”

  “Udiga udli,” Billy replied. “Thrown Away Boy, the crazy brother.” He’d been working hard to learn as much of the Cherokee language as he could, and John always helped him with the pronunciation. Said it might save his life one day.

  “Gehyahtahi. The Wild One,” Gritts corrected as they emerged from under the forest canopy and onto a high limestone cliff. Billy narrowed his eyes against the hard sunlight and stepped to the precipice. Patches of green moss clung to cracks in the eroded gray limestone. The sky beckoned, pale blue, with puffy white clouds in the distance over the rumpled ridges.

  Perched on the lip, Billy looked out across the rounded tops of trees in the valley below. To the west lines of forested bluffs and ridges seemed to march away into the misty blue. The distant clouds beyond the horizon thickened in the southwest where they floated in from the Indian Nations, hinting of rain in the afternoon.

  The fragrant air was heavy with the scent of blooming flowers and trees, the damp freshness of the soil, and the muggy warmth of the season. The different shades of green in the valley below marked elms, varieties of oaks and hickories, maples, and chestnuts. Redbuds, dogwoods, and vines of honeysuckle that added spots of color. He thought the forest greens to be achingly vivid in comparison to the stark blue of the sky. In the valley below, the White River ran high, its clear waters displaying the pale limestone bed that gave it its name. A thin line of white marked a logging road down in the bottom where it paralleled the river.

  “This is an important place,” John said, stopping beside him. With his left hand he pointed down to the base of the limestone cliff. “You see the trailhead where it comes through the rocks?”

  “Yep.” Billy used a sleeve of his grimy shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

  “I heard the story from a Caddo. He said that this place has seen many battles. That if a handful of warriors crouched up here they could hold the rimrock against hundreds of enemy warriors coming up from the bottom. You see the way the limestone overhangs the trail below? You can shoot right down on the enemy’s head. They have no protection, and the trail is rocky and steep with drop-offs. Bad footing.”

  Billy shifted his load of turkeys and peered over the edge. Sure enough, every bend and twist of the trail below was visible as it zigzagged down to the trees a hundred feet below.

  “All the times we been up and down here, how come you ain’t never mentioned this a’fore?”

  Gritts shrugged. “Akto’uhisdi nula guhdi iyuwakdi.”

  “Yep. Wisdom comes with time.”

  Gritts gave him a yellow-toothed grin. “Now you will never climb up or down this trail again without looking up and wondering who might be on top, ready to drop a rock on your head.”

  “And I thought the footing was scary enough on this son of a bitch.”

  Gritts glanced at the high sun. “If we hurry, we can just about be to your home by suppertime. Then you can face your mother and see what scary is really like.” He gave Billy a deadpan look. “And don’t forget to stop your cussing. She’ll whack you for that.”

  “You just want a hot supper.”

  “And maybe to hear how your white man’s war might change things. Cherokees keep slaves, too.”

  “Don’t reckon much will change, John.” Except Paw would be in the middle of t
he politics. And, as John had reminded him, he’d take Sarah off to Little Rock to “introduce” her to society. Which was just a fancy way to troll her like a lure to snag some rich and influential husband.

  And then what am I going to do?

  3

  May 10, 1861

  With his back propped in the chair, Butler Hancock idly rolled the bottom of his glass on the familiar scarred wood of the family table. His ass ached, as it had since he was a boy sitting on these selfsame chairs. They’d been locally made by a craftsman who’d learned the trade in New England and built a mill-powered lathe to turn spindles, legs, and bedposts. The chairs were every bit as uncomfortable as they were attractive.

  His ass? Not his posterior?

  He was home, all right. The cultured veneer he had worked so hard to learn and cultivate back in Philadelphia seemed to erode with every hour that passed, as if the very Arkansas air scuffed it away like grit ate the polish off a fine pair of shoes.

  Philadelphia with its hustle and bustle had come as a shock after Little Rock. And Butler had paid a terrible price; he’d become the butt of jokes, scorned for his bucolic ways. To survive, he had dedicated himself to the task of learning the social graces, even inventing imaginary friends to practice with. But in the end, he’d survived because everything he read stuck in his head.

  And, of course, the fact that he had grown up wrestling, swinging an ax, and splitting rails didn’t hurt anything, either. Wasn’t a one of them he couldn’t flatten in a knock-down brawl. It had only taken one to earn the complete respect of his fellow scholars.

  And now I’m home. And it is as if nothing’s changed.

  Leaning his head back he found the soot-stained plank ceiling only a tad darker than it had been when he’d left two years past. Maw’s pale hair, pinned back in a bun, might have acquired a whiter tint at the temples; but she still hurried back and forth in the kitchen with its counter, stove, and fireplace.

  Paw Hancock’s house had been the first frame structure built on the upper White after the sawmill opened. The original log cabin, ten by twelve, still stood out back. From those humble beginnings, Paw Hancock had built his curious estate.

  Butler sucked on his pipe, enjoying the last of a mellow blend he’d brought with him from Memphis. Paw sat at the head of the table like a king, his own pipe working like the stack on a steam locomotive. His mane of white hair stood up from his high forehead like a wave that rolled over his skull and down to his collar. Now that he was nearing sixty, his once-red hair had surrendered to time. For the moment, Paw’s angular face was clean shaven, the line of his jaw firm despite the missing teeth in his gums. Fierce blue eyes stared across the table at their guest, Isaac Murphy.

  A redheaded Irishman, the normally affable Murphy wore a frock coat despite the late May weather, and his riding breeches were travel stained. He stared into the mug he cradled, attention absently focused on the light brown whiskey that remained mostly untouched.

  How often could that be said of an Irishman? The thought brought an amused twist to Butler’s lips.

  Billy sat at the end of the table, fidgeting and pulling at his fingers. Burly for his age, Butler’s younger brother acted as if a fire had been built beneath his seat. The boy’s gaze kept straying first to John Gritts—the big Cherokee who sat to Billy’s left—and then to the door behind him. Billy couldn’t have been more eloquent were he Cicero addressing the Senate.

  That’s when Butler noticed the spider. A big one, brown and black, it came dropping down from the ceiling. Silk trailed out behind; the eight legs were held wide.

  “Son of a bitch,” Paw muttered, half rising, his hand lifted to swat the thing the moment it landed on the table.

  “Wait!” Butler cried, laying his pipe to one side. He shot his hand out. The spider dropped into his palm, then skittered to the underside as Butler shoved his chair back and made for the door. The entire time he kept turning his hand so the spider couldn’t drop off.

  Hurrying outside, Butler let the spider drop at the edge of the porch. It hit the ground, then skittered into the dark safety under the planks. Billy’s old dog Fly didn’t even wake up where he was sleeping in the dust.

  “Be just like you to get your hand bit, have it swell up, and fall off.” Paw was giving him a scowl as Butler reseated himself.

  “Spiders are good luck,” Butler replied, glancing at John Gritts and winking. A smile spread on the big Cherokee’s lips. Cherokees and spiders had a special relationship going back to the creation of the world. “And it’s not like she was trying to hurt anything. Put yourself in the spider’s position. Once she was in my hand, she just wanted to get away. Hard to fault a little soul for that.”

  “You’ve always worried me, boy,” Paw muttered. “You’d go out of your way to save a rattlesnake when its fangs are stuck in your leg.”

  “I’m not as sensitive and delicate as you think. Believe it or not, scholars who read history and literature are a backstabbing and bloodthirsty bunch.”

  Paw sighed. “When I was young, a man I admired opened a whole new world to me. Taught me the value of education and scholarship. But Butler, when you spout Shakespeare, Plato, and Aquinas, it’s like you are in their heads. I reckon that’s a special gift.” He pointed with his pipe. “Just don’t lose track of this world.”

  Billy was making strangling noises.

  John Gritts was still smiling.

  Paw pointed with his pipe again. “Now, Isaac, finish your story. What happened at the secession convention?”

  “I was the only one,” Isaac stated dully. “The others, Bollinger, Campbell, Gunter, and the rest of the Unionists finally gave in. On the last vote, I was the only one who voted against secession. They cried, ‘Traitor!’ ‘Get a rope!’ ‘Hang him!’ Honestly, James, I thought some damn fool would walk up and shoot me on the spot.”

  Butler noted that Billy was finally paying attention. The mere idle mention of shooting something always brought Billy fully alert. John Gritts simply sat with his elbows on the table, fingers laced, and his thumbs touching. His head was down, as if in prayer. But from long association with him, Butler knew the Cherokee was listening, thinking, keeping his own counsel.

  “After Lincoln’s blunder over Fort Sumter, from the moment he called for Arkansas to provide troops to put down the rebellion, the result was a foregone conclusion,” Paw told him. “And it’s just what our idiot governor down in Little Rock has been waiting for. Ever since seizing the federal arsenal, he’s been on pins and needles to command an army.”

  “Oh, Governor Rector’s already issuing orders. It’s a swirling confusion, James. The convention is issuing its own orders. And there’s a call to convene the legislature so yet more people can issue orders. There’s a Confederate army being enlisted, an Arkansas state army being sworn in, and then there’s the local militias. Three armies … and no one knows who’s what!”

  “What’s the word on the abolitionist jayhawkers up in Kansas?” Butler asked.

  “As of the moment I left Fayetteville”—Murphy gave him a clear-eyed look—“no one had heard anything. That firebrand Senator Jim Lane and his Kansas raiders, and that bastard Colonel Montgomery, could be marching on us at this very moment.” He grunted. “Maybe we should wish he would. Settle this whole mess before it gets started.”

  “You don’t want that kind of trouble,” Paw said evenly. “And if Lane or Montgomery march their raiders anywhere, it will be into Missouri. If Missouri votes for secession, that’s where the real fight will be. Arkansas is only famous for being an obstacle dropped smack in the way of anyone with ambition who’s trying to get west to Texas.”

  “And our dysfunctional politics.” Butler gestured with his pipe. “Even in Pennsylvania people have heard how corrupt Arkansas politics are.”

  “Careful about the politics, boy,” Maw called from the kitchen. “Them’s Paw’s good friends, all them Johnsons and Conways and Boudinots and Danleys.” She turned toward the table an
d raised her wooden spoon, aiming it like a scepter. “You can dress a jackass in silk breeches, but he’s still a jackass.”

  At that moment Sarah stepped in from the springhouse, two pails of water hanging from a shoulder yoke. She shot Butler a flushed smile as she artfully maneuvered the buckets past the seated men. With locks of her pale blond hair loose, her cheeks flushed with exertion, and her blue eyes alight in her triangular face, to Butler she looked ethereal.

  Isaac Murphy stopped in mid-thought, a look of wonderment on his face as he watched her pass behind the table.

  After lowering her buckets, Sarah arched her back, resettling her gray cotton dress. The way her perfectly proportioned breasts rounded the fabric and how it clung to her full hips would have tantalized a dead man. She was going to be a sensation when Paw took her to Little Rock in the fall. Butler fought down a smile. His little sister apparently had no idea how her tall, ripening body affected Murphy.

  Billy, however, had narrowed one eye to a slit, his jaw hardening as he fixed a lethal blue stare on the Irishman. Paw, having missed nothing, pulled on his pipe, eyes twinkling as he asked, “How soon are they figuring to fight this war?”

  Murphy manfully forced himself back to the subject at hand, glancing wistfully down at his whiskey. “If Arkansas were Virginia or the Carolinas, I’d say they’d have a sort of army by the fall. But Arkansas is Arkansas. Given our own divisions over slavery we’ll be lucky if the northern counties aren’t skirmishing with the southern by July fourth.”

  Paw chuckled. “I’m sure most of the slave owners in the counties south of the river are already enlisting men. The east, too. I’ll bet my young friend Tom Hindman is already planning a regiment.”

  Murphy looked at Butler. “What about you, young man? Are you ready to charge off and fill your life with dash and glory? Or, as a Union man, will you go the other way?”

  “Or be smart and avoid the whole blooming mess,” Maw called from the kitchen. “There’s no sense in my boys running off to get shot wholesale for someone else’s lunacy.”