by Cameron Judd
There would be no chances, though, not now or not even on the flatboat. He had already heard the sorrowful word: Queen Fine was to be among those who took this pirated flatboat on downriver, with another of the grizzled Cave-in-Rock residents, Lex Dunworth, serving as captain. This in itself was bad news for Horton. Dunworth was another person he disliked, and who disliked him in turn. Even worse, Dunworth held Queen in high esteem and would certainly help her protect Celinda if she asked him. Horton had always trodden gingerly in Dunworth’s presence, knowing the fellow would probably welcome an excuse to put a knife in him and have him out of the way. With Queen and Dunworth looking out for Celinda, he would be effectively cut off from his object of desire—and her right there on the boat with him! He wasn’t sure he could bear it.
He cursed his luck. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Sullenly he raised his bottle for another drink, only to be jolted from behind. The bottle fell from his hands, crashing onto the floor.
“Watch your clumsy self, fool!” he yelled, leaping up and turning. Before him stood a surprised-looking Lumpkin. It was he who had given the jolt, provided by the butt of a rifle taken from one of the flatboat crew members who even now was being disposed of down by the river, his corpse weighted with rocks and tossed into the water. Lumpkin wasn’t accustomed to carrying a rifle and had been moving about without taking account of the fact that the long weapon was bumping everything and everyone about.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Junebug,” Lumpkin said.
Horton, who had always regarded Lumpkin as no more than a worthless occupier of space in the cave, reached out and jerked the weapon away. “Give me that thing. You got no need for such a thing anyhow. Bumping folks with it, breaking good bottles of whiskey—next thing you’ll have shot somebody by mistake.”
Lumpkin frowned. “That’s my rifle, Mr. Junebug! I took it off the boat myself! Hand it back!”
“You don’t merit a rifle, being a fool.”
Lumpkin’s usual simple, open expression vanished. He loomed up tall and threatening as a storm cloud. “I want my rifle! Give it to me, Junebug! Now!”
Had Horton looked at Lumpkin’s face, he would have seen that defying him at the moment was mortally dangerous. As it happened, something else distracted him: a gravelly roar from a tall, muscled man at the mouth of the cave. The man was the sole survivor of the flatboat passengers. He was bruised and bloodied from the fight and clad only in a pair of calf-length woolen trousers, his shirt and coat having been taken by some of the pirates. Horton initially thought the man was roaring because somebody was in the process of killing him—his fate had been the immediate subject of debate among the cave folk, some wanting to kill him as a menace while others advocating mercy because he had put up such a fine fight—but quickly Horton saw that nothing of the kind was going on. The man had somehow managed to rip away the cords tied around his wrists, and now he was shaking his former bonds and snarling at his startled captors like some defiant new incarnation of Samson.
“Give me my rifle, Junebug!” Lumpkin hollered into Horton’s ear.
Horton frowned and jerked his head away from the offending noise, and shoved the rifle at Lumpkin. “Take it, take it! What the devil you yelling in my ear for? Go away!”
Lumpkin grabbed his weapon joyfully and did go away, stroking the long barrel lovingly, like a child with a new toy. Equally childlike was the fact that he instantly seemed to put aside any anger toward Horton. Lumpkin’s mind was far too simple to deal with more than one emotion at a time.
The boatman, who was standing on a rock sill just inside the cave door, roared again and shook his fists. His wrists were ragged and bleeding, torn when he yanked free of his bonds.
“So ye think to murder me, do ye?” the man yelled. He seemed as heedless of his blood-crusted wounds as he was of the rapidly chilling weather. “Well, think ye again, ye hell-bound eaters of dung! If there be a man among ye, and I doubt there be, send him to me and let him fight me! By jingo, I’m a fierce gator from Spanish Floridee, I am, with teeth to outchew the dullest pit saw and a disposition as ugly as the very butt of Beelzebub! If there be a real fighting man here among ye, a man with ary a hair on his rump or a speck of grit in his craw, send him down here and let Ajax McKee show him where Hades gets its fire! I scrap like a mad dog, spit like a roasting cat, claw like a skinned painter, belch like the thunder! I fear no man, run from naught but a spiteful woman, respect no one but my dear mammy, and abide all things but an insult! If ye plan to kill me, then be men enough to let me fight my last with pride! Is there any here with the gravel to face me man-to-man and fist-to-fist? Ajax McKee calls for ye!”
Horton grinned admiringly. Ajax McKee’s peroration was a classic example of the lyrical kind of challenge issued by boatmen and other river folk in the humor to fight. At times such orations could achieve an almost poetic level, and Horton had just enough appreciation of words to enjoy them.
Judging from the man’s muscled build and evident grit, Horton had little doubt McKee could back up his claims. Certainly it wouldn’t be Jim Horton answering his challenge.
Out of the farrago of humanity moving about before the cavern and on the flatboat stepped a man who was a veritable mountain of flesh and muscle. This was Lex Dunworth, the unofficial leader of the Cave-in-Rock cabal in Sam Mason’s absence and the man who would be in charge of the flatboat when it was piloted to Natchez. Dunworth was a native Virginian who had come to Cave-in-Rock in the days most still called it Rock Cave, or Mason’s Cave. Scarred from many fights, Dunworth was a man who had never shown fear of anything or anyone, and who held the fear-inspired respect of everyone around him. The grin on his face revealed his pleasure at hearing the challenge of this boatman named Ajax McKee.
“Do you seek a fight, you carrion-chewing rat of the river? If you do, I answer you proud. I’m the orneriest devil ever to come from old Virginee, with the meanest dog, the prettiest sister, the drunkest pap, and the fattest maw to ever wean her babes on aquafortis! I was raised eating roast Injun for breakfast and stewed Presbyterians for supper! I’m strong as the biggest bear, scarred as the oldest oak tree on the barrenmost mountain, wild as the slinkingest mink, and ugly as a squashed hell-bender! I can skin a man alive and wear his hide for a shirt! I can bruise the whitest man so black he’s fit to be sold at auction! After I wash myself, they skim meanness off the river from here to New Orleans! If you seek somebody to send your black soul to say howdy to the devil, you rank piece of river flotsam, you’ve found the very bruiser to do it. Whaaaah!” With that, Dunworth stripped off his coat, literally ripped his filthy hunting shirt from his body, and clawed bloody scratches down his own chest with yellowed fingernails.
Already the people were gathering in a wide circle around the two antagonists. Horton moved to a better position. He was no fighter himself, but he loved a good, bloody row as much as any river denizen. This promised to be a fine one indeed—and with any luck, would mark the end of Lex Dunworth.
CHAPTER 14
Bragadocious challenges done, the fight between Ajax McKee the boatman and Lex Dunworth the river pirate started without fanfare. For several moments there was nothing but cautious, evaluative pacing and staring by both men. Then they leaped, roaring in tandem as if in answer to some silent signal, and went hard at it. Celinda was horrified, but unable to tear her eyes away.
Dunworth strongly prevailed at first, laying in a series of blows selectively and expertly placed on the already battered body of McKee, driving him back until he was up against the rock of the bluff itself, tearing and scuffing his flesh against the stone. It appeared this would be a short and one-sided fight. Again and again Dunworth’s hamlike fists tortured McKee’s frame. Yet the man let out not a cry or whimper, even as it appeared he was sliding toward unconsciousness.
Dunworth coiled back his right arm for the evident death blow—a horrific smash to the face—when McKee began to show mettle until then unrevealed. He jerked his head to the right just in time
to avoid the impact of Dunworth’s descending fist. Dunworth smacked his right fist directly into the stone with a force so great it tore the flesh from his knuckles. Dunworth roared and drew back a ruined fist as McKee brought up his right knee, catching Dunworth right in the groin, striking so hard the nearly three-hundred-pound man was lifted a handsbreath from the ground.
The crowd, who had mostly favored Dunworth, suddenly turned against him as he sank to the ground, eyes bulging, left hand groping toward his injured crotch, right hand limp and clawlike. “Beat his nose flat, McKee!” “Snap his neck, boatman!” “Gouge out his eyes! Gouge ’em out!” Shouts of such ilk went up all around, Celinda noticed that Jim Horton held silence, but had an eager look. She already had detected that he and Dunworth did not get along, and figured Horton was hoping he would be done in but refused to join the shouting in case he wasn’t. She felt contempt for Horton. The man was nothing but a self-protective and amoral coward.
McKee found himself a victim of his own tactics when Dunworth rolled onto his back and lifted his knee just as McKee was throwing his full weight down upon him. The knee, obviously aimed for McKee’s own groin, missed that but did catch him very hard in the belly, driving the wind out of him and making McKee give his first pained scream of the fight. He landed atop Dunworth, who used his good hand to push him up and off. McKee rolled onto his back, and Dunworth sprang to his feet with remarkable agility.
He went down again almost as quickly, dropping his full weight, with knees bent, onto McKee’s stomach again. Celinda winced as she saw McKee’s middle flattened so severely it looked like his backbone would break against the rocky ground beneath him. Dunworth’s left hand went to McKee’s throat and began to squeeze.
Despite the weather, cold enough now that a few flakes of snow were spitting down from the graying sky, Dunworth was sweating profusely, perspiration falling from his grimacing face onto the bulge-eyed, reddening visage of McKee. Celinda felt sad; clearly McKee was going to pass out, and his brave fight, and then his life, would be lost. Though this fight wasn’t hers, she felt a situational kinship with McKee, who like her was here against his will, fighting for his existence against the evil that had engulfed him.
Suddenly McKee’s hands came up and pounded Dunworth on both ears at the same time. Celinda let out a quiet little cry, then remembered she was still posing as mute and hoped nobody had heard it. Dunworth grunted and squeezed his eyes shut, but still did not let go of McKee’s neck.
McKee’s next move made Celinda look away. He reached up and put a thumb in each of Dunworth’s eyes and pushed in, hard. Celinda had heard of gouge-fighting, how sometimes it blinded men, left their eyeballs literally hanging smashed and bloody outside their sockets. She didn’t want to see anything like that and averted her eyes, but found herself compelled to look again.
Dunworth screamed and trembled, jerking his head about, trying to get the pushing thumbs out of his eyes. With his injured arm he tried to knock away McKee’s arms, to no avail. Still, he would not let go of McKee’s neck. McKee dug deeper, and a great shudder passed through Dunworth’s body, and at last he let go of McKee and jerked back.
That freed him from having McKee’s thumbs in his eyes, which were now bleeding—one orb appeared to be about to bulge right out of its socket—but McKee made an upward move himself and got a grip on both of Dunworth’s ears. He pulled Dunworth’s face down to his and bit him on the nose. His teeth dug in and he jerked his head like a dog tearing meat. Dunworth screamed as the tip of his bulbous nose came off. McKee spit it out.
Celinda expected Dunworth to yield, but he didn’t. Instead he knocked McKee’s hands free and brought his own face down and clamped his mouth on McKee’s nose. Blood from his own wounded nose flooded McKee’s face. Dunworth suddenly jerked up, and McKee became the second man at Cave-in-Rock to lose the end of his nose that day.
Dunworth rolled off McKee and collapsed, gripping his nose. McKee, weak and bleeding as badly as his opponent, stood in wobbling fashion as cheers rose. “Kill him, boatman!” someone yelled. A knife was tossed from the crowd, landing at McKee’s feet. He stooped and picked it up. He looked at it a couple of moments, then lifted it like a trophy, waving it above his head. More cheers sounded, and McKee moved over toward the supine Dunworth.
Celinda closed her eyes. She would not watch one man murder another. She tensely awaited the animal yells from the crowd that would herald the end of Lex Dunworth. But suddenly the sound of brawling resumed. She looked just in time to see Dunworth, on his feet again, wresting the knife from McKee’s grasp.
Once again the tide of opinion turned, and the shouts were now for Dunworth to kill McKee. He didn’t. Instead he tossed the knife aside and put out his hand toward his opponent.
“By Christmas, you’re a worthy fighter, you are, too fine a bruiser for me to kill. Ajax McKee, if you’ll put aside differences, I’d be prime pleased to name you as friend.”
The crowd moaned in disappointment, deprived of the fatal ending to this fight that had been desired.
McKee grasped Dunworth’s big paw in a bloody handshake. “You’re the pearl of Sheba, you are, Dunworth! I’ll accept your hand, and your friendship.”
McKee turned to the crowd. “A worthy man, this one!” he declared. “A man worth his salt—and he’ll be with me when we pilot this here flatboat to New Orleans, second only to my command.”
The mood of the crowd grew accommodating now that it was obvious these two weren’t going to fight to the death. “You’ve earned a place among us, McKee!” someone shouted. “We’re a bloody lot, but we welcome you if you’ll be one of us and not shy from our ways!”
“Aye, I’ll join ye, and proudly!” McKee yelled. He wore a broad grin and seemed oblivious to the blood streaming from his nose. There was something potentially comical in the sight of the two rough men standing there, hands gripped and raised and the ends of their noses gone, but Celinda did not feel like laughing.
She had thought that McKee was a man to admire, a fighter unwilling to yield before this murderous band. Now she saw he was really no different than they. He was joining the very group who had slain his earlier companions and commandeered their flatboat.
It seemed there was no goodness or decency to be found at Cave-in-Rock, except perhaps in the person of Queen Fine. Celinda determined right then that she would not leave Queen’s side until she was safely ensconced in Natchez, out of the reach of Jim Horton and the rest of the foul rabble inhabiting this murderers’ cave.
At her first opportunity, Celinda called Queen aside into a nearby grove of trees where no one could hear her speak and thereby realize the truth about “mute” George Ames.
“What will happen now?” she asked. “Did I understand that this flatboat would be taken on to Natchez?”
“No, on to New Orleans, Dunworth is saying now. But you and me, we’ll get off at Natchez. There’ll be a crew put together from amongst the people here to take the boat on to Orleans. There they’ll sell the cargo, and the boat, too, then come back here by land to do it all over again with another boat. There’s been many a flatboat stole that way at this cave. Many a corpse has sunk in these waters. It’s been death for many, but it’s life for us. The only kind a lot here know.”
“Are there many here like Ajax McKee, who’ve come off other boats that have been pirated?”
“Very few. Most who fight get theirselves killed right off. Only the strongest ones make enough showing for theirselves to live for long in the fight, and only them survivors willing to join us and live like we do are spared after the fight’s over. We’re bad folk here. Murderers, thieves. The worst kind of sinners. Only the bad can live here, girl. Only the bad.” She looked deeply at Celinda. “And you ain’t bad. You’d not long survive this place or these folk if you stayed. It’s good that you’re bound away from here.”
“It is good,” Celinda said. “I’ve never seen such a place as this before, nor such people.”
“They’re hel
l’s future population. That’s what Mason used to say. And it’s the truth, girl. It’s the truth.”
Aboard the big flatboat when it set out from the cave site were Dunworth, McKee, and three other crewmen selected from among the outlaws, plus Jim Horton, Queen Fine, and Celinda Ames, still maintaining her charade as a mute male. She wondered how difficult it would be to maintain that fraud in the close quarters of a flatboat. It might not be possible at all, and if so, she would have great cause to fear these violent men. At least there was Queen to protect her—if she really could. That remained to be proven.
She wasn’t sure why Queen was being so helpful and protective of her. Maybe she saw her as sort of a pet or a new and weak little sister or daughter who needed protection and mothering in a rough and dangerous world. Whatever the case, she seemed to have evoked some soft and motherly feelings buried deep in the rough exterior of the hardened river harlot.
On the morning the flatboat left Cave-in-Rock, Celinda felt tremendously relieved even though she knew she was still in a dangerous situation. How could anyone not be relieved to be leaving hell? Such was how it felt to Celinda Ames.
She looked her last on the gaping cavern mouth and the human raff gathered before it. Her eyes fell on Felix Fine, who was waving at Queen and dabbing his eyes, tearful at this parting. He removed the woolen cap he wore and wiped his tears with it, and Celinda felt a shudder.
She had just realized why her eyes had been drawn to that hat. It looked exactly like the hat worn by the boatman who had rowed her and her dying father to shore after they had been evicted from that first flatboat. The hat had been stained and shaped very distinctively and was easy to recognize. How could Felix have come by it, except as booty? It could only mean that the flatboat crew who had evicted her and her father had soon after fallen victim to the pirates of Cave-in-Rock.
