Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  Further testimony came from one David Irby, who had been a traveling companion of Langford’s during most of his journey. Farris said that Irby testified to having left Pittsylvania County in Virginia in Langford’s company, and had traveled five days with him, sharing expenses along the way, all of which had been recorded by Langford in his pocket book, the very pocket book found in the possession of the suspects. Irby and Langford had parted ways temporarily near Cumberland Gap, agreeing to meet in the town of Frankfort. Since then, Irby had learned of Langford’s murder and hurried to the area at once.

  The testimony of the two Farrises dealt mostly with the details of the visit of Langford and the Harpe clan to the Farris inn, and with details of the clothing Langford had worn, the finding and identification of the corpse, and so on.

  The facts against the “Roberts” or Harpe group were sufficiently damning to lead the court to hold them in custody for trial of the murder of Langford in the Danville District Court, the trial to be held in April, and the Harpes, though declaring innocence, had nothing at all to say in their own defense. The prosecutors and witnesses were bound and bonded to appear at the trial, and the Harpes were hustled back to the log jailhouse, shortly after to be transferred to the stronger jail at Danville, some ten miles away.

  “All in all, a good day’s work,” Farris said. “I don’t believe we will have to worry any longer about the Harpes. They will be jailed until their trial, and there is no doubt that they will be convicted.”

  “It’s a relief to me,” Thias said. “I’ve worried about my brother Clardy, having them roaming free. They would surely kill him if he had the misfortune to cross their path.”

  “Their path, I believe, has come to an end—all but the final stretch of it, leading to the gallows, at least for the men. Those women—who knows what will become of them? Two of them were harsh, hard things … the third and youngest, Sally, seemed more pitiable than evil. A trapped woman, if I had to take a guess. Trapped in a hellish life with hellish folk.”

  “Do you think they will be secure where they are?” Thias asked.

  “I was wondering the same. I fear they may make an escape,” interjected William Farris, son of John and husband of Jane.

  “Escape? No fear of that!” John Farris replied confidently as he filled a clay pipe with fine tobacco. “Danville has the finest courthouse and the stoutest jail in all Kentucky. There’ll be no getting out of there.” He paused long enough to light the pipe with a flaming pine twig pulled from the fireplace. Looking at the others through great white puffs of smoke, he smiled and said, “This has been an ugly business, but it’s now as good as done. The Harpes have shed their last blood, and the people of our region have no need to fear them any longer.”

  About two weeks later Thias Tyler said his farewells to the Farris family and set out on a horse John Farris “sold” to him on the vague promise that “someday, whenever it’s possible,” Thias would return and recompense him for it. The same bargain held true of the old but serviceable rifle that William Farris put in his hands, along with powder horn and ammunition. “No man can safely travel without gun and shot in this country,” he said. Then he and his father threw in a handful of money, and Jane Farris supplied an ample stock of food for the road.

  “I don’t merit such kindness as I’ve been shown here,” Thias said, deeply moved.

  “Neither did you merit being robbed and nigh killed,” John Farris replied. “It’s only fit that a man who’s been afflicted with treachery and loss should have it made up for with a bit of kindness. Kindness and goodness, they’re good things to be able to look back on when everything seems dark and wicked. Like a child remembering the bright daylight when he’s afraid at night, you know.”

  “I’ll come back someday,” Thias said, struggling to keep his voice from breaking. “I’ll set all accounts right with you then. And I will remember your kindness, and your goodness, no matter how dark it gets.”

  “All is well, then, young man. Now, the thing for you to do is find that straying brother of yours, fast as you can, and know that you and he are both welcome here anytime you should come.”

  Thias rode out with a variety of feelings mixed together—regret at parting with such fine people as the Farris family, fear at entering the open, dangerous world again after such a mentally and physically trying experience as nearly being murdered, eagerness to get on with finding Clardy, worry that he wouldn’t be able to do so.

  Nothing, however, made him doubt he was doing the right thing. He was alone in the world as it was, and totally impoverished except for what the Farrises had provided.

  All there was out there for him was Clardy … wherever he might be.

  Thias went on through Crab Orchard, asking all he met if they had seen another young man, probably traveling alone, who looked much like him. Some seemed to have a vague memory of such a fellow, but no one could steer him in any particular direction. Most remembered no one like that at all.

  On he rode, until he reached Stanford. There he searched all the harder, but with no better results. He began to believe that Clardy had probably passed through but not lingered, and maybe hadn’t paused to meet anyone. It would be just like Clardy to do that. It made Thias angry. Even in absence, Clardy could get to him.

  If Clardy wasn’t here, then he must have continued on north—assuming he had meant it when he told Farris he planned to go on toward Harrodsburg. There was no way to be sure.

  A secret worry plagued Thias and wouldn’t let him go no matter how hard he resisted it. What if the corpse of Stephen Langford wasn’t the only one hidden in these vast Kentucky forests? What if the Harpes had encountered Clardy either before or after they killed Langford? For that matter, what if Jack Waller and Billy French had met up with him? It was possible Clardy was dead and no one knew.

  No one might ever know. Thias might search for weeks, months, years, and never find what became of Clardy. A more dismal prospect couldn’t be imagined.

  He wished Clardy had never left home. It was all the fault of the Harpes, really. If Clardy had never become entangled with them, he wouldn’t have had to flee home. He would have been there to say his final good-bye to his grandfather. He would have been there to claim his half of the inheritance, an inheritance now lost, probably forevermore. Together the Tyler brothers could have sold the farm and went out into the world, side by side, protecting each other and finding that new and better place Hiram Tyler had talked about in his final words.

  It had all come so close to working out as it should. A mere difference of a few days and Clardy wouldn’t have become lost out in the world, separated from his own flesh and, blood. A few days difference, and circumstances would have been so very different for Thias right now.

  He was lost in such thoughts, riding on some miles past Stanford, when he heard the distant crack of a rifle in the woods, high up on a ridge. He looked up and made out the tiny form of a hunter a long way off, visible only because he was limned against the gray-white sky at the very peak of the ridge, a lone human silhouette among the dark outlines of the leafless winter trees. It seemed to Thias that the man waved, though distance made it impossible to be sure. He waved back nonetheless, then returned his attention to the empty road ahead.

  High on the ridgetop, Clardy Tyler watched the rider moving slowly down the narrow road. What was it about the man that caught his eye so? He was too far away for Clardy to tell anything about him, but there was something about him …

  The man went out of sight. Clardy shrugged to himself, paused to reload his rifle, then went to retrieve the squirrel he had just barked right out of the top of an oak. When it was added to the string of squirrels already tied to the sash of his hunting shirt, he set off down the slope on a woodsman’s lope, heading for the cabin of Isaac Ford and a supper table where he was feeling more at home and welcome every passing day.

  An hour later Clardy watched Amy Ford stirring the kettle of stew she had cooked using the squirrel m
eat he had provided. Right there is the kind of woman I hope I’m married to when I’m Isaac Ford’s age.

  He blinked in surprise at that unbidden thought. Clardy Tyler thinking about marriage, even if only abstractly? It ain’t like me to think in a family way. But come to think of it, I ain’t never been amongst a happy family until now.

  Happy indeed the Ford family clearly was. The bonds of affection between each member were so solid and evident that Clardy felt he could reach out and pluck at them like harp strings. It all gave Clardy a bittersweet awareness of how much he and Thias had missed, being raised without benefit of a father or mother. Old Hiram had done the best he could, maybe, but that hadn’t been much. Clardy looked sidewise at Amy Ford and wondered if his own mother would have been like her. He would like to think so, and wished he could know. Hiram had always talked poorly about her, saying she hadn’t been hardworking enough to have been a fit wife for his son—but that was Hiram. He had never said much nice about anyone in his life.

  Clardy thought it remarkable how much coming to the Ford household had changed him. His perceptions and attitudes were going through all kinds of novel mutations. These people had a way of bringing out new things in him and making him think in uncommon ways. It was really very unnerving.

  But Clardy had to admit he enjoyed being here, enjoyed the family’s company and mix of personalities, even if he wasn’t fully comfortable with them. That was his fault, he well knew, having to do with the mode of his first encounter with Isaac Ford. Ford hadn’t told his family about that incident, as far as Clardy knew. Clardy wondered if Amy Ford and her two children would be so kind to him if they knew he had met their father in a robbery attempt.

  Most unnerving of all to Clardy was the mystery of why Isaac Ford himself was being so hospitable, considering what he had tried to do to him. Clardy had done his best to rob the man, but Ford had returned only kindness, even opening his home, and not only for the brief duration of the snowstorm that had brought Clardy here in the first place. The snow was long melted, but still Clardy remained, encouraged to stay as long as he wished, on the sole conditions that he not make himself a nuisance and that he contribute something in return for the hospitality.

  Lacking money, all Clardy could contribute was work with Isaac and his son, and meat he brought in from the forests. He had provided plenty of both. The aversion to labor that had characterized him through all his life so far was inexplicably lessened here, and the bad luck at hunting that had plagued him since he left Beaver Creek was entirely gone. In his brief residency here, Clardy had brought in deer, squirrel, and rabbit meat in abundance, bringing praise from the sober-faced Amy Ford, who declared him “the mightiest hunter before the Lord since Nimrod of old.” Like her proverb-spouting husband, Amy Ford was a habitual quoter of the Bible.

  Clardy was learning more about his hosts every day. The Fords were unusually open people, talking freely about their lives. He had learned from young John, who seemed to idolize him, that the family was small because his mother had lost no less than five babies within days of their births. “Me and Dulciana are the only two to make it through,” John had said. “Pa says that must mean we’re truly special folks, me and Dulciana.”

  Dulciana. Clardy had never heard a girl’s name he liked more. It was like music on the tongue. Dulciana. A beautiful name, a name to linger in the mind … just like Dulciana herself lingered in his.

  Of all the good things he had discovered here in the cabin of Isaac Ford, Dulciana was the best. She was only fifteen years old, but already she had the face and frame of a lovely grown woman, and Clardy had to struggle to keep from staring at her all the time. It distressed him that she displayed no evident interest in staring back. Her manner was graceful, her voice delicate and as musical as her name, her hair a rich brown, like her eyes, and her hands tapered and supple, strong without being fleshy or masculine, like the hands of so many hardworking frontier girls he had seen.

  “The stew is done,” Amy Ford declared loudly. “John, go call in your father.”

  John ran to the door, threw it open and yelled to his father, who was out in the stable. Isaac Ford made his living by farming, hunting, and horse trading, and already he had taught Clardy more about horses than he had ever known before. The Tylers had never done much trade in horses, keeping only what horse stock they needed to work the farm and provide transportation, and Clardy had always been pretty much indifferent to anything equine. Now he was developing a true interest in the animals—just one more of the fast-coming changes sweeping over him.

  Isaac Ford never allowed a meal to be eaten at his table without a long, expansive prayer being said first. Clardy’s stomach rumbled with hunger as he sat with head bowed and listened to Ford give his supplication, full of references to the “Almighty Father of all who walk and breathe” and thanks for “the glorious bounty of the world, which you have lavished upon us for our nourishment, due to the kind labors of our guest, Clardy Tyler.” Clardy sneaked a secret glance or two at Dulciana while Ford finished his prayer, then at the final “Amen,” raised his head and suffered through another long wait while the bowl of stew made the rounds of the table before reaching him.

  They ate without words for several minutes, then Ford leaned back, belched without shame, and folded his hands across his chest.

  “I seen Thomas Pitt today,” he said. “He was herding some swine down the road. Told me some interesting news. Says there’s been a murder on the road back in December. A Virginia fellow, name of … what was it? Langford, I believe. Killed and his body hid behind a log, all mutilaterized and mayhemed. Some cattle drovers found it when the blood smell sent their herd running into the woods. Cattle will do that when they smell blood—did you know that, John?”

  “No.”

  “Isaac, I do hate to hear talk of blood while I’m eating stew,” Amy Ford said.

  John Ford didn’t share his mother’s revulsion, showing a young boy’s normal eager curiosity about crime. “Who done the murder, Pa?”

  “Some folks name of Roberts. Two men and some women. Joe Ballenger and some regulators rounded them in, and they’re locked up in the Danville jail. Seems this business has been the talk of the region since it happened. I’m surprised I’ve just now heard about it.”

  Clardy wasn’t surprised. The Ford family, though residing fairly close to the road, lived an isolated life and seldom had visitors. In the time he had been here, he had not seen another living soul outside the Ford family, except for that distant traveler he spotted from the ridge.

  “Why did they kill the man, Pa?”

  “Robbery.” Isaac Ford glanced subtly at Clardy, who ducked his head in shame. “Some of the dead man’s possessions were found on the killers when they were caught. Strange bunch, Thomas said. They were just sitting there on a log when the captain and his men found them. Didn’t try to run nor fight. Strange thing indeed.”

  “Will they hang them?”

  “John, I do hate to hear you talking so,” Amy Ford said.

  “They’ll have to put them on trial first, and that won’t happen until April,” Ford said. “In the old days they might have hung them right off, John, but these are civilized times. We have government and appointed authorities to deal with such things. Keepers of the law, you know, who contend with them who break it. ‘They that foresake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them.’ The Robertses will face their earthly judgment in the end, though it does seem a long time to wait, all the way till April.”

  “Can we see it when they hang them, Pa?” John asked.

  “That’s enough of that,” Amy Ford said firmly. “Isaac, you shouldn’t talk of wicked things at the table. I don’t think it’s fitting.”

  Isaac Ford winked at his son. “‘It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.’” Amy Ford frowned, but her eyes were bright with the same underlying good humor in which Ford’s teasing proverb had been
spoken.

  The subject dropped at that point, though, and Clardy was glad. Talk of robbers on the road roused a hot shame in him, reminding him anew of his own attempted crime against a man who had turned out to be a kind benefactor. It was downright astonishing when Clardy thought about it. Twice now folks he had intended to rob had been kind to him, first Peyton the peddler, and now Isaac Ford. It appeared that not everyone followed the same eye-for-an-eye philosophy that sour old Hiram Tyler had always advocated and which Clardy had assumed ruled the world.

  Clardy ate listlessly through the rest of the meal, then put on his coat and hat and left the cabin to smoke his pipe. A few minutes later the cabin door opened and Isaac Ford joined him.

  “Pretty evening. Not as cold as I would have thought it would be.”

  Clardy looked Ford directly in the face. “I want you to tell me something, Mr. Ford. Why is it you’ve been kind to me when you know I tried to rob you?”

  Ford grinned. “Kind to you? If you recollect, I marched you before my horse, then sent you packing back the way you’d come.”

  “But that’s the point. You could have locked me up, but you didn’t. And when I showed up at your door, you took me in. Since then you’ve treated me as good as your own family. I don’t understand why.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to answer.” Ford rubbed his chin in silence a couple of moments. “I’ll go at it this way. Do you believe that things just happen, Clardy, or that there’s a cause and purpose for things?”

  “Well … I never thought about it.”

  “I have. Don’t know that I’ve got a firm answer, but I do believe that, quite often at least, there’s a reason for folks crossing paths. And when a pair of strangers like me and you crosses paths not only once, but twice, maybe there’s a particular important reason for it. Maybe they’re supposed to meet, you see. When you showed up at my door, it struck a surprise in me. It seemed to me right then that maybe there was a cause for you being there. That’s why I didn’t throw you out. Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t throw much anybody out in a snowfall like that one. Wouldn’t be decent, you see. But there was more to it than just that in your case. I believed you had come for a reason.”