Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  “It won’t come to that,” Thias replied. “Waller’s life isn’t worth the noose for either of us. You let me deal with him. Whatever is done, it will be by my hand.”

  Waller wasn’t at the tavern, though inquiry revealed he had been some days before. Thias was pleased anew that French was with him, because he was sure he wouldn’t have been given even that information had he come alone. The keeper of the tavern knew French and that he was a frequent partner of Waller’s, and so was more free with his information than he would have been otherwise.

  They left the tavern, Thias expressing the wish he could have bought some liquor while they were there. Riding on, French abruptly stopped, told Thias to wait where he was, and then rode back the way they had come. When he returned, he had a full jug of whiskey. Thias was amazed and wondered how French had managed to obtain it—but once again he opted not to ask. He could not give testimony about that of which he knew nothing. French did suggest that they move on with particular haste, which they did.

  The next two taverns also yielded no Waller and no word that he had been in them anytime in the last six months. The third tavern, however, gave them the encouraging news that Waller had been there only the day before, with a dark-haired woman who appeared to be traveling with him. They had left talking very openly about going to see kin of the woman on the Licking River.

  “That would be Liz McDoogen with him,” French told Thias as they left the inn. “She’s a bad woman, and Jack, he always talked about her. She’s helping him spend that money now, sure as the world.”

  Thias was encouraged. Waller was close, and apparently had not yet run through all the money. He felt great urgency to press this hunt very hard now, all the way to the end. He had been unable to pursue Clardy’s trail while it was fresh, and as a result had lost him, maybe forever. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Waller. Waller’s trail was also the trail of whatever inheritance he and Clardy had left. It was manifestly important that he not lose it.

  They were riding through a thick grove of forest at dusk when French suddenly looked around in apparent fright and urged Thias off the trail. They plunged into thick brush just in time to avoid the hurried passing of a band of about a dozen armed and mounted men. When they were gone, Thias looked at French and saw him trembling.

  “Billy, what’s wrong with you? And who was them men?”

  “Regulators,” French replied. “The whole country is crawling with them, ever since the Harpes did their murders. They’ve been hanging men all over the place. Men who’ve did crimes. I hope they catch the Harpes and hang them for stepping on Daddy. But me and you, we’d best watch out for them.”

  Thias felt a chill. He realized what a dangerous life he was living and what dangerous company he was keeping. And Clardy … what if Clardy had gotten involved in criminal activity, as he had planned, and been caught by the regulators? There was more to fear in these forests than the Harpes and other scofflaws. There was the law itself to be wary of.

  Thias and French traveled very quietly and cautiously for the next hour. When they reached a crossroads and saw there the dead and hanging corpse of a man with a sign around his neck—“See Here the faTe of Horse theefs and Bandits”—neither said a thing. They stared for a minute at the hanging man, then rode away, very sobered and thoughtful.

  Thias lifted the jug to his lips and took another swallow. He knew he was foolish to get drunk at the moment, with Waller and the end of his immediate quest potentially so close by, but depression had descended like a veil upon him again, and he craved the release that liquor delivered.

  It was dusk, and he and French were camped in the woods near a road only a few miles southwest of the Licking River. French was sad, too, talking about how he missed his father. Thias couldn’t tell whether he was referring to his father as a living man or his father as a dried skull that smoked a pipe each evening after supper. In French’s mind the two seemed to be blended into one.

  Thias had never believed much in instinctive knowledge, second sight, intuitions, and such, but tonight he felt sure that soon he would encounter Waller. Whether Waller would have anything but a pittance left of the money he had taken was a burning question. Another question was just what to do with, or to, Waller in punishment. He could have the man arrested, maybe … but that option didn’t seem so good anymore, now that he himself had been involved directly and indirectly with illegal activities. But if Waller couldn’t be punished through legal means, then how? He might have taken a great moral plunge over the last several months, but he hadn’t reached the level of murderer … he didn’t think. Yet he couldn’t deny that Waller deserved to die, and in just the way Waller had sought to make him himself die. There would be a certain satisfaction in lifting an axe above a cringing Jack Waller and—

  What’s wrong with you, Thias? You want to get yourself hung, like that man at the crossroads? Thias lifted the jug again.

  “Jack’s close,” French said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Jack’s close. I can feel it.”

  Thias put down the jug. “Me, too. I’ve felt it all evening. But what if it ain’t him? What if it’s more regulators?”

  French shook his head. “It’s Jack. I know it is. I’ve, well … felt him being near like that before, and I ain’t been wrong yet.” French stood and peered through the darkening forest. “Look yonder.” He pointed.

  Thias stood, and to his surprise found himself drunker than he had thought. He could hardly keep his feet. Leaning against a tree, he looked in the indicated direction.

  A light gleamed out in the woods. It was no more than a half mile away. A campfire.

  “That’ll be Jack,” French said.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “We can go look.”

  Suddenly Thias wasn’t so eager to encounter Jack Waller. “I’m drunk, Billy. I ought to be sober when—”

  “We might never see him no more if we let him go now.” French had a far more snappy and stern tone than Thias had ever heard him use before. He was accustomed to the subservient, pliable Billy French, the odd and maybe slightly half-witted one who toted a skull about and felt compelled to do what stronger personalities told him to. A new side of the man was emerging before his eyes. “I’m going over there. Are you coming?”

  Thias wished he hadn’t taken a drop tonight. But he nodded. “I’ll come.”

  Rifles in hand, they moved through the woods, their eyes on the fire. They moved so cautiously and slowly that it required a full half hour for them to move from their own camp to the other. When they reached it, they found the fire burning brightly, but no one was about. Thias couldn’t figure it out. A camp without a tender? A fire that had built itself?

  A chill of fear overcame him. “Billy, let’s get away from here.”

  French’s face, dimly visible in the firelight, was taut with worry. He nodded curtly.

  They turned and moved back toward their own camp. The forest was very dark. Thias sensed more than saw the figure that appeared suddenly beside him. He heard the voice of Jack Waller: “Think to jump a man in his camp, do you?” Then a rifle cracked, he felt a jolt of pain in the back of his head and went down.

  He did not lose consciousness, only orientation and perception. He was aware of a struggle, mostly involving French but sometimes himself as well. He heard another shot, but no one fell. His own rifle was out of his hands and he couldn’t find it. He felt Waller jar against him, and pushed back. There was a thud, as of a body against a tree. Waller’s breath burst into his face, reeking and foul. He felt his hands grab and hold Waller’s ears, felt himself jamming Waller’s head back and hearing it smack hard against the tree behind him. Then he was on the ground, still fighting, tasting blood that might be his or might be Waller’s.

  He was still trying to fight when liquor, shock, and the exertion of struggle became too much. He swooned, feeling a fist jar against his cheekbone, then against his eye. Lingering for a moment on the e
dge of consciousness, still struggling, he gave up and passed out.

  When he came to again, he was in the camp—not his own, but Waller’s. French, his face cut and bleeding, was seated near the fire, staring at him.

  “Billy …” Thias sat up. The original concussion injury he had suffered at French’s hands back on the Wilderness Road throbbed almost like it was new, and he seemed to hurt at a dozen other points besides. He groaned.

  “You done it, Thias,” French said.

  “Done … what?”

  “Look. You killed him. Her, too.”

  Thias looked. Stretched out beside the fire, hardly an arm’s length from him, was the body of Jack Waller. His throat was cut. Beside him lay a woman, also dead. She appeared to have been stabbed repeatedly.

  “Billy … who is she?”

  “That’s Liz McDoogen. She was hid in the woods. You and Jack, you fought each other hard, all the way back into this clearing. You got hold of his knife and cut his throat. Then Liz, she come running in screaming, running at you, and you stabbed her. You killed them both, Thias. Don’t you recollect it?”

  Thias felt sick with horror. “No. I don’t recollect anything like that.”

  “It’s the liquor, and getting hit on your head. That’s why you don’t remember. But I seen it all. You killed them, Thias. It was you.”

  “No, no … I’d remember a thing like that.”

  “You done it, Thias. I seen it myself.” He paused. “I could tell what I seen, too. Tell it to a judge!”

  Thias’s head was spinning, but he was beginning to understand. He had thought of French as half-witted, or something close to it, but now he saw that the man had a cunning all his own. “You’re lying, Billy. It was you who did it, wasn’t it? I passed out, and I was still in the dark woods at the time, not in the firelight. You killed them, not me!”

  French firmly shook his head. “No, Thias. I remember. I seen it all, and I can tell!”

  Thias held his head and groaned again. “What do you want from me, Billy?”

  “Want you to leave. Just get up and go. I don’t want the regulators to find me keeping company with a murderer.”

  “Damn you …”

  “Talk nice to me, Thias. Don’t talk mean. I never did like it when folks talked mean to me, even when I was a boy. You remember how folks talked mean to me in them days, Thias?”

  Thias had a new realization. “The money … my money … did you find it on him?”

  French tossed a cloth sack to Thias. Thias picked it up. It contained a single shilling.

  “That’s all there was.”

  Thias tossed down the coin. “You’re lying! What did you do with the rest of it, Billy? Did you hide it?”

  “Talk nice, Thias. Talk nice.”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  “You’ve done killed two, Thias. Ain’t that enough killing for you? Or are you like they say them Harpes are, just killing and killing and killing, all for pleasure?”

  Thias sank down again, his head spinning. He lay there, suffering, dizzy, hardly heeding the grim fact he was lying beside two fresh corpses.

  “You’re telling me that I’m to go … and the money is to be yours.”

  “There wasn’t no money but that shilling,” French replied.

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It ain’t a lie. Talk nice, Thias. Talk nice.” French stood. “I’m taking these rifles and such with me. I’ll find somebody, tell them I found dead folk in this camp. By then you can be gone, Thias, and they’ll not catch you, most likely. You see? I’m sparing your life again. Three times now, it is! Once when we was boys, and I pulled you and Clardy out of the water, and once when Jack told me to kill you, and I didn’t, and now, here I am, doing it again just ’cause—”

  “Shut up, you rank devil!”

  “Talk nice, Thias.” And then he was gone, taking his rifle, Thias’s, and Waller’s.

  Thias rose and tried to follow, but he was still too dizzy. He managed to reach the woods. Penetrating it deeply, he finally sat down and waited until dawn. By then his head was clearer and he felt drawn back to the camp. He resisted the draw. There might be men there by now, looking, searching.…

  Dogs. They might have dogs. They could track him.

  Thias rose and began moving in the opposite direction from the camp. He remembered those fearsome regulators, sweeping down the road, and imagined they were upon him. Sometimes he fancied he heard dogs in the distance, then realized it was only his imagination.

  He hated Billy French. He realized how little he had known the man—and decided maybe French was one of those men who are truly unknowable. He was an inexplicable mix of simplemindedness, obedience, devotion, and utter, selfish treachery. Thias could not understand him, couldn’t make sense of him. All he could do was hate him.

  He came out at last on a road. By now he was weary, ready to drop. He staggered off and found a mossy, shaded place, and there nestled down and fell asleep.

  Hoofbeats on the road awakened him. He sat up only a little and peered out through the brush. Regulators, from the look of them, and among them was Billy French, His face wore a look of blank horror. His hands were tied behind his back. At the end of the line of regulators was a horse with two bodies draped over its back. They were covered up, but Thias knew they had to be Waller and his woman.

  The regulators rode on, and Thias remained where he was, resting. He felt some better already, not so much from rest as from that look on Billy French’s face. French had told his tale, he supposed, and they hadn’t believed him. And why should they have believed him? French was a known thief, a known cohort of the slain Waller. He had come telling conveniently self-serving tales of another man who had actually done the crime, a man who had vanished since then—and they hadn’t believed him.

  “Reckon you ain’t as clever as you thought you were, Billy,” Thias whispered aloud.

  What drove him out at last was thirst. He had a little food in his pocket, just some parched corn and jerky, but nothing to drink. Finally, when there was no sign of further activity along the road, he rose and began walking. He found a spring and drank his fill, then went on. Twice lone riders came down the road, and both times Thias ducked out of sight until they were gone.

  He wondered what to do next. Waller was dead, and his inheritance money was surely gone now. French had taken it, and now French was captured. If he had the money on him, who could say what would become of it? Thias wondered if he should go inquire about it. Maybe he could concoct a story about having been robbed by French and Waller. But that was very risky. Thias himself was a horse thief, two times now. A man could get hanged for that. And he had traveled with French for days now, in public. And what about those times that French had taken items—the liquor, the rifles. He might have killed in the process of those thefts, for all Thias could know.

  Thias forced himself to face the fact: his inheritance and Clardy’s truly was gone now, and irretrievable.

  Unless …

  He wondered if French might have hidden the money somewhere near the camp clearing, planning to come back for it later. There was no reason to think he had done so, but it was possible, it was at least a chance.

  Thias was about to decide to go back and search that area again when he rounded a bend and came across the shocking sight of another hanging man. The regulators had done their work speedily, and this time the victim was Billy French. On his chest was a sign reading: “See here The fatE of Murderers.” That confirmed it. The regulators had blamed him for the deaths of Waller and his woman.

  Thias stood there alone, looking into French’s blackening face and realizing just how serious a matter it was that he had fraternized publicly with this man. His old problem of a weak stomach soon got the best of him and he became sick. That was worse than a mere inconvenience, because now Thias’s belly was empty of what little food he had, and he had no more, nor any money. He hadn’t even remembered to pick up the shilling he had tossed down
in the camp clearing.

  Thias’s plans changed at once. He would not return to the area of the killings. To be found there, probing about in the woods, would be dangerous. All he could do was get away from this area, and out of this state, as fast as possible. Maybe he would return to Tennessee … But what awaited him there? The farm was sold, Hiram Tyler was dead, Clardy was gone.

  Thias was gone, too, in another way. He had changed from the man he was when he left home. He was no longer “good,” as folks had always said. He had stolen horses, guns, liquor. He had run with thieves and rubbed up close against murder. He had started out good and turned out bad, and the idea of returning home now filled him with shame.

  And so he made for the river, traveling by night, hiding by day, scrounging what food he could from the forests and stealing to supplement that. Every hour was a terror to him; he smelled regulators on every breeze, heard the pounding hooves of their horses in every distant sound, saw their faces in the countenance of every stranger he mischanced to meet.

  He reached the river and found a group of men building a big flatboat upon which to ship horses and various other goods to New Orleans. Thias offered to help them if they would provide him passage and keep along the way. He was obviously strong, impressive to see, and they accepted the bargain.

  And so Thias Tyler became a boatman, and left both Kentucky and Tennessee behind, sure he would never again return to either. That was a sorrowful thing to think about, but not nearly so sorrowful as the fact that he was sure he was also leaving behind any reasonable hope of ever seeing his brother again, if Clardy was even alive to be seen.

  He threw himself into the task at hand and tried to keep his eye fixed on the future, because it was useless and painful to look any longer at the past.

  CHAPTER 28

  Knoxville, Tennessee, July

  Clardy Tyler dismounted and tied his horse to the nearest hitching post, his eye on the crowd of men gathered around the front of a store a hundred yards down the dirt street. He could see from that far away that the group was agitated. Something important was going on. He walked quickly on down and joined the crowd.