Colter's Path (9781101604830)

by Judd, Cameron

  Jedd was behind his little hut of a cabin, building himself a boxy outdoor oven from native stone, the day Bellingham arrived. Because of Jedd’s deputy status, he was well known in Scarlett’s Luck, so Bellingham had encountered no difficulties in obtaining directions to where Jedd could be found. It was a Sunday afternoon and Jedd was enjoying a time of solitary work. He wasn’t much of a stonemason, but it was a pleasure to try his best to do a good job at it…. So he was none too happy to hear the muffled thump of someone knocking on his cabin door. Though he wasn’t inside, the sound carried around the cabin. He walked around the cabin to see who was out front, still limping badly on his injured ankle, but now moving about without a crutch or cane.

  “Hello, Crozier,” he said, feeling surprise but not showing it. “Where did you come from?”

  “Jedd, sir. How are you?”

  “I can’t complain. I won’t, anyway. I reckon you heard about Ben Scarlett’s turn of good luck.”

  “I have. That’s part of what brought me here.”

  “Come on around back. I’m building an oven back there. You can tell me all that’s going on with you and the others.”

  Bellingham found a handy stump to sit on. He couldn’t stop grinning. It was honestly good to see Jedd Colter again. Jedd went back to his stone laying. “Got your book wrote yet?” he asked Bellingham.

  “Still involved in the planning,” Bellingham replied. “It’s something I want to do right, when I do it.”

  “I can understand that. Sadlers won’t be involved, right?”

  “The Sadlers won’t know a thing about it until everybody else does. When it’s published.”

  “You’re confident you can find somebody to publish it?”

  “I am. Because I know how good it will be. And because this nation is still full of excitement about gold in California. And stories like Ben Scarlett’s are just what people love to read.”

  “So it’s Ben’s story you’ll tell?”

  “It’s likely to be the frame around which the novel is built. Names changed, some details different, of course. No pants-pissing in it.”

  Jedd grinned. “That’s the best part, though.”

  Bellingham laughed. “I know, I know.”

  Jedd worked awhile longer in silence. “Got a bottle inside, if you’d like a drink.”

  “I’d like one, but I think I’ll pass. Get yourself one, if you want.”

  Jedd did, and when Bellingham saw it, he changed his mind and accepted one as well, served up in a cracked china teacup. Bellingham sipped slowly.

  “Have you gone to see her yet?” Bellingham asked Jedd, knowing it was a potentially delicate question.

  “Who do you mean?” Jedd asked, knowing perfectly well to whom Bellingham was referring.

  “McSwain’s daughter. The one you told me about.”

  Jedd felt some irritation at the personal question, and wondered if talking to Bellingham would result in his most personal life affairs being fictionalized before the entire world in Bellingham’s planned book. “I ain’t been to see nobody,” Jedd replied, a little sullen but trying to hide the fact. “I was named deputy marshal in this mining camp, and I’ve tried to keep close by in case something happens.”

  “Has anything happened?”

  Jedd shrugged. “A few fistfights. Two knife fights. A bit of gold theft. One fellow shot at another and missed, but killed his own dog with the shot. Nothing you’d want to write about, I don’t think.”

  “It’s the little things that bring life to stories. The touches that make them feel real. Verisimilitude, it’s called. Verisimilitude.”

  “Sort of like, very similar to the real thing. Real life.”

  “Bang! Right on the nose!”

  “I’m so smart I scare myself,” Jedd said, and Bellingham laughed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Now it was Jedd’s turn to ask a question. “Speaking of McSwain, how did things go with him the last part of the journey? And where is he now?”

  “It was kind of strange with him. You know how things are between him and Wilberforce, with Wilberforce heading up the college board that took away McSwain’s college and his job. Well, after you were gone, Wilberforce became more and more belligerent with McSwain, calling him a thief and a scoundrel, right in front of the entire camp. Challenged him to return what he’d taken.”

  “Did he explain that any further?”

  “No. That’s all he said. ‘Return what you took, you damned thief.’ And McSwain denied he’d ever taken anything from anyone. Wilberforce laughed at him, but there was nothing funny in how he did it. You know what I mean. One of those kinds of laughs.”

  “Yep.”

  “And Witherspoon scolded him for making such a display of it all, told him to leave McSwain alone. Wilberforce called Withers a ‘fat fool.’ Witherspoon just glared back at him, trying to look bold and strong, and you could tell it.”

  “Was Rachel McCall nearby at the time?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes. Witherspoon couldn’t stop himself from glancing over at her, over and over. He was showing off for her, standing up to his brother like that.”

  “I can’t help liking Witherspoon,” Jedd said. “Wilberforce I can do without. He’s the one who broke the deal we had, after my ankle got hurt.”

  “I know. I don’t like him, either. Nobody does, I don’t think, except maybe his wife. And I can’t swear that she does.”

  Mention of Wilberforce’s wife reminded Jedd about the painter of portraits, Dupont Gale, who had joined the Sadler wagon train along the way. He asked about him.

  “He got shot. Santa Fe. I don’t know the details, but I think he’d tried to talk a senorita into letting him paint her, and her man misunderstood what he was asking. Pulled out an old flintlock pistol, of all things, and shot him right through the head.”

  “Gale is dead?”

  “Believe it or not, no. That pistol ball punched right through his brain, but it didn’t kill him. Put him down, but he was still breathing, eyes still looking around, he was even speaking some. Saying he was going to paint again. Damnedest thing I ever saw, I have to admit. I don’t see how he survived it, but he did. Last I saw of him, he was still living, anyway. He was left with a doctor in Albuquerque who took an interest in him because it was so unusual, him surviving such a thing.”

  “I hope he makes it.”

  “So do I. Hey, one more thing about McSwain. A strange thing that happened one night, right at the time Wilberforce cut you off from working for the enterprise…right after your ankle was ruined.”

  “It was hurt, not ruined. It’s healing well now. But go on with your story.”

  “McSwain was out in the camp, just talking to some folks, seeming more cheerful and less distracted than he usually did. Well, from out in the dark there came the sound of someone singing. A man’s voice, off a far distance away but still carrying in on the breeze, faint and strange. It raised chills on my flesh. The song sounded…well, I suppose you’d have to say it sounded foreign. The singer had a brogue, an accent. I don’t know accents well enough to tell you what kind it was. Maybe Scottish. Maybe English…but no. No. I’ve heard Nigel Straw speak, and this accent didn’t sound like his. I think it was maybe Irish.”

  “Did everyone hear it?”

  “A lot did. I heard it clear, and McSwain heard it. When he did, it changed him, right away. Sent him pulling back inside himself like a turtle going inside its shell…. I don’t know how else to put it. He heard that singing voice coming in from out in the dark, and he quit talking, quit looking anyone in the eye…. Then he stood up and went back to his wagon and crawled inside. Nobody saw him the rest of the evening. But that voice out there just kept on singing. Sounding so strange and foreign and…well, fearful.”

  “I know,” Jedd said. “I heard it, too, just like you did. There in my tent with Treemont. It raised bumps on my flesh.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “I don’t. Do you?�
�

  Bellingham’s gaze drifted and settled on a lizard making its skittish way across a rock. “Not exactly…but I may have an idea of why he was out there, and why McSwain reacted to the sound of him like he did. Something Ferkus Varney told me that night. He heard the voice, too, and it rattled him. I could see that it did, and later I asked him about it.

  “He was in a humor to talk, I suppose, because he told me that he recognized the voice as belonging to an Irishman who had visited with Wilberforce Sadler behind closed doors. Varney hadn’t been privy to the meeting, but he was so curious about this man that he slipped into a closet nearby that had one thin wall, the other side of which was part of the wall of Wilberforce’s office. In there he was able to hear enough conversation between Wilberforce and the Irishman to let him know that something very bad was being worked up between them. Something involving McSwain.”

  Jedd frowned in thought. “It had to relate to the troubles of Bledsoe College. Right?”

  “Indeed. Varney told me that Wilberforce was talking to the Irishman about the theft of something from the coffers of Bledsoe College. Wilberforce wanted whatever it was to be retrieved from the thief—McSwain, it would seem—and returned. Varney took that to mean returned to Bledsoe College, no doubt then to be absorbed, along with the other assets of Bledsoe, into East Tennessee University.”

  “This Irishman, then, was being hired by Wilberforce, whether as an individual or on behalf of the board of Bledsoe College, to find McSwain, and retrieve whatever McSwain stole.”

  “That was Varney’s understanding.”

  Jedd took a seat on a nearby rock, resting his still-healing ankle. “Crozier, whatever arrangement Wilberforce made with this Irishman surely must have been a lucrative one, if we are to believe it was his voice we heard making music out on the plains that night. Because that would mean he was sufficiently motivated to follow McSwain all the way across the country to complete his assignment.”

  “Yes. So either Wilberforce had promised him a high level of pay indeed, or…”

  Jedd saw where Bellingham was leading. “Or whatever McSwain had was so valuable that it was worth traversing a whole nation to get his hands on. Because once he got it, he could keep it for himself.”

  “Exactly,” Bellingham said. “You and I are thinking along the same lines, Jedd. But the big question becomes, what is it that McSwain took? It had to be highly valuable, portable, and small enough to fit…” Bellingham paused, looking at Jedd.

  Jedd completed the thought. “Small enough to fit inside a dead cat.”

  Bellingham gave a vigorous nod. “Meaning there was far more than just sentiment at work when McSwain kept that stuffed cat of his in hand nearly every minute. He was protecting his treasure.

  “He ended up giving that cat away…. Did you know that, Jedd? Right in there just about the time you and Treemont got shot beside that creek. McSwain gave the cat to an ailing little girl in that emigrant camp that set up right beside ours.”

  “I didn’t know about that, no. But I can tell you this: the way he was clinging to that cat, he must have taken out what he’d hid inside it and stashed it somewhere else. Otherwise he’d never have given it up. Know what I’m thinking?”

  “Gold? Jewels?”

  “You and me think just alike, Crozier. Jewels…almost has to be. Something that can be very small but still very valuable. Something that could be hid inside a stuffed dead critter.”

  “Or a drinking man’s flask.”

  Jedd’s querying look led Bellingham to expound a little. “You remember that flask Ben Scarlett was so proud of, and then it went missing? Well, it went missing right at the same time McSwain gave away Cicero to that little girl. So I think McSwain took that flask, popped his diamonds or whatever they were down the spout, then either kept the flask on him in a pocket from then on or kept it hidden in his wagon.”

  “That’s as good a theory as any, I reckon.”

  “Oh…Jedd, one more thing about that Irishman. Something good to know that might help you identify him if he shows up in these parts. He has a notched ear. Like somebody cut him with a knife or something. Ferkus Varney saw it when the man came to see Wilberforce.”

  Something about that rang an alarm in Jedd’s mind, but it took him a couple of minutes of thought to remember where he’d run across a notch-eared man before.

  It had been that evening at McSwain’s house on Addington Street in Knoxville. The night Ben Scarlett had gotten caught nosing around in the rubbish behind the house, and had surprised an armed man, who had fled. Jedd recalled that Ben had said the fellow spoke no words—a measure to keep his accent from being heard, maybe?—and that he’d possessed a notched ear.

  McSwain indeed had been in danger that night, Jedd could see. He was grateful that old Notchy apparently had not made a second visit to the house after Jedd and Ben were gone from it. If he had, McSwain would probably not be alive today.

  Jedd and Bellingham had another drink, and Jedd moved the conversation to other subjects: California statehood, the speed with which wilderness could become a small town, then a town not so small, and the steadily improving mechanics of placer mining and the inevitable development of new mining technologies.

  “You think McSwain has gone to see his daughter, Jedd?” Bellingham asked as conversation finally began to wane.

  “No idea, Crozier. It wouldn’t surprise me. I know he’s fretted over her a good deal. Didn’t like her husband.”

  “I’m trying to remember the name of the town they live in here….”

  “Bowater.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Never been there, but heard of it.”

  “I’ve not been there, either. I expect that may not hold true much longer.”

  “You’re going to go see her, Jedd?”

  “I think I will. I’ve come a mighty long way, after all, and it was her being out here that was a big part of the reason for it.”

  “What will her husband think, you knocking on their door?”

  “I think that when he sees me, he’ll wish he’d treated her better, if what I’ve been hearing about his sorry ways proves to be true. Which I hope it ain’t. As much as I wish she’d never married that coot, and as much as I wish the marriage would just kind of wash away like mud off a slick rock, I don’t want to think it’s because she’s been mistreated by her own husband. I’d rather him just strangle to death on his cup of coffee, or something. Get out of the way convenient-like and easy.”

  “Nothing’s ever easy, Jedd.”

  “I know. Hey, where is Zeb McSwain living now that he’s in California? You got any idea?”

  Bellingham shrugged and shook his head. “Nobody seems to know. He pulled away from everybody else and just vanished off on his own, sort of like he did on the way here when he was hiding out in his wagon most of the time.”

  “Yeah. And I’m not sure how he got away with all that hiding out as well as he did. Not pulling his own weight and all. Just letting himself be hauled along like a piece of baggage. How did he get away with it?”

  Bellingham said, “I think it was because Wilberforce was glad to have him out of sight and out of mind. He didn’t want him along on the journey at all, you know. It was Witherspoon, not Wilberforce, who agreed to let McSwain buy his way into the journey.”

  The conversation made another shift, Bellingham inquiring about just what had happened to Treemont Dalton. Jedd told him the sad story and fell into a quiet reverie. Bellingham could see that his welcome was beginning to wear out and knew it was time to leave and find his way to the nearest semblance of a hotel. But he hated to depart from Jedd’s place with the mood so somber.

  Bellingham helped himself to a little more whiskey; Jedd did the same. To brighten the atmosphere, Bellingham raised his cup. “To California, and Scarlett’s Luck, and Emma, and the memory of Treemont Dalton. A fine man.”

  “Hear, hear!” They drank.

  That night, Jedd Colter sat upright in his bed and s
tared into the corner of his cabin, mind racing.

  He hadn’t dreamed, but something had arisen in his mind. A memory, one that returned with the clarity of a mountain stream the moment it poured into his semiconsciousness. It hit his mind with enough force to waken him.

  “I know him,” Jedd said to the empty cabin. “I know old Notch-ear sure as the world. I fought the son of a bitch, in Missouri. Calahan’s Beer Garden. I remember it well.”

  Clear the memory was, but not pleasant. Few memories were that derived from Jedd’s days as a bare-fisted fighter when he was about twenty years of age. He associated those days mostly with pain, sweat, and blood, with a grating roar in the ears that came partly from the howling, violence-loving crowd around him and partly from the ringing of his skull by his opponent’s fist. He remembered the smell of chalk dust and tobacco smoke, the stink of his own sweat and his opponents’, and the even-worse stink of the sweaty crowd encircling the pugilists. These memories raised little nostalgia in him. He’d been glad to put fighting behind when that time came. He was happy to let most of the memories of those days fade.

  The memory of his bout with notch-eared Declan Finnegan was one of the worst of them. He’d lost that fight. Jedd Colter usually won his matches, but that one had gone badly. He would never forget the power of the jolt of Finnegan’s right fist, jarring his jawbone and knocking a tooth loose inside his head. He’d awakened on the filthy floor of Calahan’s Beer Garden with that liberated tooth swimming around in a mouthful of his own blood. He spat it out as he got up, and a saloon girl had fainted at the sight of blood washing down his chin like a red waterfall.

  Jedd cupped his hands behind his head and leaned back against the wide, pit-sawed, on-its-side plank that served as a headboard on his homemade bunk. He relived the fight with Declan Finnegan and pondered the oddity of having run across the man again after all these years, even if only indirectly.

  Just another verification of his narrowing funnel theory, he supposed.

  At the time he’d been set up to fight Finnegan, he’d known nothing of the man except his reputation as a fighter who would do whatever it took to win. “Watch him close,” Treemont had warned him. “Old Irish there has been known to sneak a metal slug into his fist so he can break jawbones easier. So I’ve heard.”