“Save your fire,” the lawyer bade him quickly. “Here, give me that other pistol you took, there’s still a charge in it. No use to burn powder in darkness, but if we’re ready for them they’ll not dare come back into the light.”
Jason groaned, looking at the thicket into which his prisoners had vanished. “I wanted to fetch them back to stand trial,” he said. “I was a fool to take my eyes from them.”
“If so, it’s your first folly tonight.” Colquitt grinned. “You’re shrewd—well learned, too. You know French.”
“A trifle, sir,” said Jason. “I worked in a house where the son had a tutor, and I listened as much as I could to the lessons.”
“Was that all your schooling?”
“I had a few years with a country teacher when I was small. But I’ve always loved to read.” Jason paused, looking at the plump man in the moonlight. “Law books have been my pleasure, sir. Maybe it was because you’re a lawyer I hurried so fast to try to help you.”
“Law books,” echoed Squire Colquitt. “Which have you read ? Blackstone?”
“Blackstone’s Commentaries, sir.”
“Bacon?”
“That, too.”
“Egad, you’re on the way to the bar, maybe even to the bench. What else?”
“Some of Haywood’s Digest, some of Iredell—”
“Then you’re North Carolinian,” put in Colquitt, recognizing the names of the legal authorities.
“No, Georgian. Those books came to my hand before my father and mother died.”
Colquitt peered into the thickets around him.
“Those rascals have flown, like the night birds they are, but we have their arms and their horses. As for this purse you recaptured, I want you to have it.”
He offered the purse, but Jason shook his head and reached for the bridles of the horses.
“I didn’t want money, Squire, I wanted to help you.” He feared that he sounded stuffy and mock-heroic, but he went on. “I reckon we need all the lawyers we can get, here in this new Alabama country.”
“True,” nodded Colquitt. “There must be law on the frontier to preserve order.” Again he stared through the night. “With that pair loose, I dare say we’ll do well to return at once to that tavern where you work. Let’s mount.”
They rode back together, each leading a captured horse. Colquitt asked questions, and Jason answered them.
He told of his boyhood as the only child of a country schoolmaster in central Georgia, of his early interest in reading, and of how, when left an orphan at fifteen, he was apprenticed to a rich farmer, to serve until he was twenty-one. Jason had been allowed to overhear a tutor’s efforts to prepare the farmer’s dull son for college, and had skimped his labors in the fields and the stable to pore over borrowed textbooks. One day his master had found him reading behind the smokehouse when he should have been splitting wood.
“That was a month ago, sir, more or less,” Jason told his new friend. “My master was angry and took a horsewhip to me.” “He flogged you ?”
“Not more than a couple of licks. I knocked him down, and when his son came running I knocked him down, too. I was scared at what I’d done, and ran.”
“Then?”
“I didn’t stop running for several days, until I was past the state line, and here in Alabama. I worked along at various settlers’ farms, for meals and leave to sleep in haymows, until I came last week to the Andrew Jackson House. Captain Micajah Lunsford gave me a job. I’m grateful to him.”
“Hmmm,” murmured Colquitt thoughtfully. “Are you articled to the captain? Apprenticed?”
“No, sir. I don’t care to enter any more apprenticeships.”
“Sorry to hear that, my son. Because I’m going to suggest one to you.”
“Squire!” protested Jason so sharply that the old roan mare danced in the road, but Colquitt smiled again.
“You spoke about the law and your taste for it. Suppose, Jason —your name’s Jason, you said?—suppose you come to work with me, and I let you read for admission to the Alabama bar. Teach you to be a lawyer.”
“But—but—” spluttered Jason, incoherent with wondering delight.
“Why not, son? Your handwriting is good, you can copy papers for me. You can do a lot of other things, at the house and in the office. As you yourself said, lawyers are needed here. I’ll chance it if you will.”
Jason’s head still spun with joyous hope. “Why, do you think I could?”
“You saved my life tonight, by sense and daring and stratagem that any lawyer would be proud to show. You’ve done some important reading for the law, on your own statement. Since you won’t accept money for what you’ve done to help me, accept what advice and teaching I can give you.”
Colquitt waited, but Jason could not speak at once.
“I’ll stay tonight at the Andrew Jackson House,” said Colquitt at last, “and tomorrow morning I’ll return to my home in Moshawnee. Come with me.”
“Oh, sir!” whooped Jason. “Come, let’s tell Captain Micajah!”
3 County Seat
Captain micajah lunsford listened with scowling attention to the story of the attempt to rob and kill Squire Colquitt, and Jason’s rescue feat.
“Well done, boy,” the captain praised Jason at the end. “Too bad it’s night, or we’d get help and go scouring the woods and cane brakes for those low-down sneaks. Tomorrow at dawn I’ll have word to every farmer and hunter to take the trail. Anyway, you got their guns and horses. I think, Squire, that Jason should have the profit from selling them.”
“He should have more than that,” replied Colquitt. “I want him to come to Moshawnee. I want him to live in my house and read law in my office.”
Captain Micajah pursed his lips, scowled again, then grinned.
“By the Eternal! as Andy Jackson likes to say. Well, I’m fond of young Jason. I’ll hate to see him leave here, he’s such a help to me around the tavern. But I’d never stand in the way of his bettering himself.” He looked Jason up and down, as though measuring him with his eye. “Read law, is it? Plead before judges, and ask impudent questions of witnesses? Dog my time, boy, why not? Jackson himself started that way, studying under a good master of the law, and now he’s found his way to the White House.”
“You’ll let me go, Captain?” prompted Jason.
Out came Captain Micajah’s brown hand to grasp Jason’s. “Go, yes; and make a name and fortune. And I’ll see you here at the times when you ride circuit as Squire Jason Morgan, carrying a green bag full of law books, with the eyes of all Alabama on what you’re up to.”
Jason went to his room beside the kitchen, to sleep fitfully and wonder over his new prospects. At dawn he was up, and ate a breakfast of hoecake and smoked pork with Squire Colquitt. Then they rode for Moshawnee, Jason astride one of the captured brown horses and leading the other.
It was a full fourteen miles to the county seat, something like three hours of riding. But, with the sun up, the trail looked cheerful instead of frightening. Birds sang and squirrels chattered in the branches. And Squire Colquitt kept Jason entertained with stories of the courts of Alabama, of trials for murder, theft, and robbery, of great estates in the balance while learned and eloquent lawyers marshaled their tricks of oratory against each other, of great careers built from a modest practice with minor cases up to the most important legal matters.
“You make it sound too much for me to try, Squire,” Jason ventured at last.
“Don’t ever think that, son. You’ve a good mind, you ask smart questions, and your heart’s set on being a lawyer. I’ll warrant the day will come when I’ll be proud to say that I had the teaching of you.”
He went on to describe Alabama’s system of circuit courts. The local circuit, followed each spring and autumn, covered fully half a dozen counties. Moshawnee, the newest county seat, was the town where court would sit last, and Colquitt was concerned in a trial of high importance to Moshawnee.
“We’re but
eighteen months old as a town, and ten months old as a county seat,” elaborated the Squire. “Moshawnee was founded by Major Gilbert Westall—he fought the British in two wars and is our chief citizen. Now we’ve some sixty houses, counting stores and a church and a school. We want to build a fine courthouse, but we must wait.”
“Wait ?” echoed Jason. “Why?”
“That’s the lawsuit. You see, Major Westall bought the town site from Mr. Asper Enderby, who had it as part of his plantation. Mr. Enderby’s rich; he came from somewhere in Virginia with bags of money and gangs of slaves, to plant cotton. The town here will make him richer, for people will move in and give him high prices for what land he doesn’t want. But he’s not satisfied with that.” Colquitt’s good-humored face grew stern. “He says his document of sale won’t let us build the courthouse at the center of town, and he wants to sell a new tract of land, at high price, on the edge of his plantation.” “How can he do that, sir?” asked Jason. “What is this document of sale?”
“We come to trial on that same document, this very week. Mr. Enderby submits that he bought the lands from two Indians who have now emigrated to the West, High Head and Black Rabbit. His agreement included a promise that these Indians could live on the part of the land where Moshawnee now stands; but they went with their tribe, off beyond the Mississippi. And, he says, before they went, he executed an agreement that the grave of High Head’s father—the old chief of the tribe, name of Sun Maker—would remain undisturbed forever and ever. And Sun Maker’s grave, Mr. Enderby insists, is located on the tract where we want to build the courthouse.”
“He’s trying to keep you from digging up the old chief’s grave?” %
“So he says,” nodded Colquitt. “There’s another lawyer in Moshawnee—Squire Milo Kinstrey, and a smart, wide-awake young man he is—who represents him. Well, Major Westall never flinched from the British, at Cowpens or at Lundy’s Lane, and he wants to build the courthouse where he planned, at Moshawnee’s center square. He’s retained me to fight Enderby’s restraining suit.”
Jason thought a moment. They rode past small clearings with settlers’ cabins, evidence of the town near at hand.
“I wonder, sir, if the chief is truly buried where this Mr. Enderby says. What do you think?”
“I think not, Jason, or else I would never have taken the case for the Major. But it’s hard, hard to convince a jury as I must, this very week.”
They rode up a slight slope, and at its top the woods opened and they looked into the town of Moshawnee.
It lay in a pleasant valley, with groves and farms around it. The trail became a main street, its clay hard-tramped, and the two rode over a wooden bridge. Jason gazed with lively interest at the houses. A good many were log dwellings with board roofs, but several had been built of whipsawed planks, and had a civilized look. Toward the center of town, larger structures faced around an open square covered with spring’s fresh green grass. There were stores with wide covered porches, a tavern or two, and a wooden church that bore a square steeple.
“Here we are, Jason,” said Colquitt, reining in. “That’s my office fronting the path, and my house behind. Here, take our horses to the shed there at the back, then present yourself to meet Betsy.”
“Betsy?” repeated Jason, taking the Squire’s bridle.
“My grandniece. I’ve no family, and she’s orphaned, like you. She acts as the lady of my house.”
Jason walked past the sturdy little shed-like office, past the log house beyond and its separate kitchen-shanty at the rear, and took the horses to the stable. Unsaddling them, he let them nose up to a wooden manger. Between kitchen door and stable was a well with a rough stone curb and a bucket on a rope. He drew water for the animals, then searched for corn and served it to them. Finally he walked back to the front of the house to present himself.
“Are you telling me true, Uncle Henry?” he heard an excited voice, a girl’s voice, at the doorstep. “Or is this one of your funny stories?”
“It wasn’t funny, my dear, while it was going on,” Squire Colquitt replied from outside the open door. “But here’s my witness that it happened.” Turning toward Jason, he smiled. “Bear me out, lad, that I was in peril of my life last night.”
And he drew a slender blonde young girl out into the open, her hand clasped in his.
“Miss Betsy,” said Squire Colquitt, with easy consequence, “may I present Mr. Jason Morgan, who will stay here with us and read law in my office. Miss Betsy Colquitt, my kinswoman, Mr. Morgan.”
She turned her sun-bright head and looked at Jason with wide blue eyes in a grave young face that, he decided on the instant, was the prettiest face he had ever seen. His mouth flew open, then forced itself shut, and he made her his best bow.
“Yours to command, ma’am,” he said, hoping he sounded worldly and accustomed to meeting young women of charm and poise; but he was dolefully aware of his rough clothing.
A smile touched Betsy Colquitt’s face. She had a short, straight nose and fair skin.
“Did you really—?” she began, paused, and started again. “Did you chase off two armed robbers who wanted to rob and kill my uncle?”
“I reckon they were nervous and thought me a worse danger than I was, Miss Colquitt,” Jason managed.
“Nonsense!” Squire Colquitt almost exploded. “He frightened them out of their guns and their horses and their senses, and you’ll make him tell you about it at table this very day. What’s our noon dinner, Betsy?”
“Eh?” she said. “Oh, we’ll have stewed squirrel, I think. One of the Indians came by to sell three fine ones. Mr. Morgan, I have it in mind that you’re modest as well as brave—”
“Come, you young posturers,” broke in the Squire, “you’ll be under the same roof, like brother and sister. I suggest you drop the formalities, and speak first names to each other. I’ll introduce you again. Betsy, this is Jason. Jason, Betsy.”
“How do you do, ma’am,” said Jason, bowing as before.
The lawyer snorted and tramped into the house. Betsy stopped looking at Jason and followed, while Jason brought up the rear.
He found himself in a large room, occupying fully half of the floor from front to back. There was a broad stone fireplace, with brass candlesticks on its mantel, and one wall was covered by shelves on which books were ranged—row after row, such a treasury of reading matter as made Jason’s eyes grow round and his mouth pop open again. There were armchairs, a bearskin rug on the plank floor, and, against the board sheathing of other walls, several paintings. One of these was of Squire Colquitt himself, showing him as a younger man with black hair but recognizably round of face, with a twinkling eye. Against the inner wall there was a door to another room, and a stairway mounting to a floor above.
The Squire led the way toward the inner door. Betsy hurried past him, and Jason could hear her raised voice, as though giving directions to someone beyond.
“Our dining room’s in here,” Colquitt told Jason. “We’ll wash our hands, you and I, and then I’ll try to find you a sleeping place. There’s a small cubby off the dining room— Why, lad, what keeps you here?”
Jason had paused on the bearskin rug and was gazing raptly at the shelves of books.
“I never saw so many, sir,” he confessed. “I wish I could find long life enough to read all of them.”
“Good!” applauded Colquitt. “ ‘Reading maketh a full man,’ says Francis Bacon. Well, I make you welcome to those, in your spare time.”
Jason walked dreamily closer to the shelves. “Shakespeare,” he spelled from the back of one.
“I have all of Shakespeare. And on the shelf below him is Walter Scott, and next is our American Scott—Fenimore Cooper, you’ll like his tales, I’ll be bound. There are poets, too—Byron, Dryden, Pope—the essays of Addison and Steele—but come, Betsy is seeing dinner on the table. We’d best wash and eat while it’s hot.”
Jason followed Colquitt into the dining room, where Betsy supervis
ed a pudgy chocolate-brown woman with a turbaned head, who laid a third place at a stout table. Off to one side was a cell-like chamber, with a washstand, bowl, and pitcher. In turn they washed after their journey.
“Next to this is another room, big enough for a chair, table, and cot,” the Squire told him. “I hope you can make it do for your quarters.”
“Anything will suit me, sir,” Jason assured his friend.
“And later we must go buying clothes for you,” continued the Squire, studying Jason’s shabby garments. “A suit, boots, and some shirts. And I’ll pay— No, lad, no arguments. A suit of clothes is easy payment for my life.”
They went back to the dining table.
“Fetch on the food, Purney,” bade Squire Colquitt. “We’ve ridden far, and are hungry.”
True to her great-uncle’s prophecy, Betsy Colquitt plied Jason with questions about the previous night’s adventure until he told the story, with many protestations against the Squire’s praise.
4 Court in Session
Jason was up at sunrise on the following morning, for it was Monday, and the first day of court week in Moshawnee was about to begin.
He swallowed a hasty breakfast served by the cook Purney, then went out in his shirt sleeves to the office shed, swept the floor of whipsawed planks, built a fire on the hearth and fetched a pail of fresh water from the well. As he returned to the office door with the pail, Squire Colquitt met him there.
“Court will be opened at half-past nine/’ said the Squire, and drew his great silver watch from the pocket of his striped vest. “That gives us two hours of time. Sit yonder,” and he nodded toward a small desk under the window, “and copy a document for me. Your hand, from the sample I have seen, is much better than mine.”
Jason seated himself. From a sheaf of goose quills he selected one and with a knife shaped its point into a pen. Colquitt opened a drawer to show a stack of foolscap paper, and opened a book before Jason.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1956 Page 2
