Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  “I hold no belief in the evil eye! The Harpes are mortal, and brave men can stop them. But if cowards you’re bound to be, then off with you!” Kirkpatrick called, waving his hand. He looked to Clardy like a glowering, offended minor god there on the store porch. “If there’s ary a man here with mettle, let him stay. I’ve no use for the rest of you.”

  Bit by bit the crowd broke up, most of the men not leaving too quickly so as not to appear to be doing the very thing they were doing, which was running away from what every one of them knew they should do. Kirkpatrick watched them disperse, his face looking angry at first, then increasingly sad. Within a minute the crowd was gone. All that remained was Kirkpatrick on the porch …

  And Clardy Tyler in the street.

  Kirkpatrick looked at him and slowly smiled. “One brave man in the lot, eh?”

  “No sir,” Clardy replied. “I ain’t brave. I’m a man who has run from many a fight and many a duty. And in Kentucky, I was among a band of regulators who ran from the Harpes and let them live. There’s been life after life lost since then. That’s a mistake and wickedness I want to atone for, and you’ve offered me the only way I know to do it.”

  Kirkpatrick studied Clardy closely, in a way that made Clardy wonder what he was thinking. “What’s your name?”

  “Tyler. Clardy Tyler.”

  “Mr. Clardy Tyler, I welcome your help. And you are indeed a brave man, whether you know it or not.”

  “You say the Harpes are heading for Kentucky?” Clardy asked.

  “Yes. It appears so. Though with them you can never tell. They double back on themselves, move in circles—there’s no sense to their movements.”

  “You believe they are going to Kentucky for a reason?”

  “Yes, if such as them have reasons. I believe they are going there to do harm to a Colonel Daniel Trabue, whose little boy they killed and who worked hard in their pursuit after that. I believe they intend to kill this Trabue to punish him. To spite him.”

  “I’ve met Colonel Trabue,” Clardy said. “He is a good man. And you are right about the Harpes. I know that spite does move them. It’s in their nature. Does Colonel Trabue know the Harpes are in his region?”

  “By now, yes. Robert Brassel sent two of our party, William Wood and Nathaniel Stockton, ahead to his home to warn him. We had been told by neighbors of this murdered man Tully that Trabue might be a particular target for those two beasts.”

  “There are others in Kentucky who stood hard against the Harpes,” Clardy said. “Good folk, all of them. The Harpes may try to harm them as well, or their kin.” Before his mind’s eye flashed the pretty face of Dulciana Ford, and with that image a new burst of courage. He would join Kirkpatrick, Brassel, and the others. He would see the Harpes brought to justice, or better still, brought to their graves. He had run enough, been coward enough. And even if he wasn’t brave, like Kirkpatrick claimed he was, by heaven, he would act brave!

  “Are you with me, then, Clardy Tyler? If you are, there’s no time to waste. I’m eager to rejoin them I left. God knows I had hoped to do so with more than one man to add to our number.”

  “I’ll be ready to leave within the hour,” Clardy replied. “I own very little, and all I need to do is buy myself what gunpowder I can afford.”

  “Is your rifle in good fix?”

  “Aye. And I hope it proves to be the very weapon that brings death to the Harpes.”

  Clardy bought his powder and gathered what few goods he had. Kirkpatrick, meanwhile, purchased food and other supplies for the trail. They rode out together, so fixed on their purpose and concentrating only on the immediate moment that Clardy barely had time to think how strange it was that he, who had once ridden from Knoxville into Kentucky to avoid the Harpes, was now making nearly the identical journey again for the very purpose of finding them.

  CHAPTER 29

  Red Banks, Kentucky, some weeks later

  General Samuel Hopkins leaned back in his chair, eyes shifting back and forth between the two young men seated in his front room. Clardy felt like he was facing down his old piercing-eyed schoolmaster in the tiny classroom where he had obtained three years’ worth of education and five years’ worth of whippings many years ago, and the natural result was a bad case of the jitters. With great difficulty he supressed a schoolboyish urge to fidget before the dignified general. Totty Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, did not seem fidgety at all. He slumped listlessly in his chair and wearily sipped at his whiskey. Not feeling well again, he had told Clardy in private earlier. Clardy had been worried lately about his companion’s health. The rigors of their life on the road were taking a toll.

  “Gentlemen, I’m pleased you’ve come to me,” Hopkins said. “Quite an honor, having the increasingly famous Harpe hunters in my home.”

  “Harpe hunters? Is that what they’re calling us?” Kirkpatrick asked around the rim of his glass.

  “Yes. Has a sort of ring to it, doesn’t it? ‘The Harpe hunters.’ I tell you, young man, your fame is spreading all throughout Kentucky. People here are very frightened, and for good reason. It is a great comfort to many to know that there are two such as yourselves who have devoted their full effort to finding and ending these two murderers who are making such a menace of themselves. You two are becoming legend throughout Kentucky. Legend! I doubt you could know the number of mothers who are soothing their Harpe-fearing children at night with the reminder that the Harpe hunters are out there, on the track of the bad ones. I salute you both for the work you are doing.”

  “Our moral duty, sir, that’s all it is,” Kirkpatrick said. He sounded drained and his eyes were half shut. “Our moral duty.”

  Clardy shook his head self-consciously. He had known that he and Kirkpatrick were becoming known for their dogged pursuit, as evidenced by the lodging and food freely given to them by many families along their course, but had not realized the apparent extent. “Harpe hunter, growing famous, giving comfort to the people … who’d have ever thought it? My grandfather would have been proud to know his black sheep has turned to making himself known for chasing ruffians and giving comfort to scared children.”

  “Ruffian is far, far too weak a word to describe the Harpes,” Hopkins said vehemently, eyes burning with the fierce enmity that had made him known as the most strident Harpe foe in Henderson County. Rumor had it that the Harpes held a particular hatred of the outspoken Hopkins and might even have ill plans for him. “Ruffians are men. Human beings. And the Harpes are not men, not fully. I’m convinced they lack the moral sense that marks humanity. No man could do the things they have over these past days and be fully a man. Animals, they are. Animals.”

  “Not animals, sir,” Kirkpatrick countered, though respectfully. “For if they are animals, they cannot be held to account for what they do. We must refuse any idea that would not hold the Harpes accountable for their crimes.”

  Hopkins, obviously not accustomed to being disputed, lifted a brow and drummed the tips of his steepled fingers against one another, but after a few moments of thought pursed his lips and nodded. “Well said, young sir, and I must agree. The Harpes are indeed men, are indeed accountable to the standards of common morality for what they do. But if they are not animals in their essence, they at least are animals in behavior, and for that they must be captured and punished.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Kirkpatrick, lifting his glass and then draining off his final sip. He set the glass on the floor beside his chair and slumped even lower.

  “Are you ill, Mr. Kirkpatrick?” Hopkins asked.

  “I’ve been feeling poorly lately, I’ll be fine, though. Thank you for asking.”

  Clardy thought bleakly about the bloody path the Harpes had been threading through Kentucky, and clenched his hand tightly around his glass, frustrated that they still remained uncaptured. How could such wicked men get away with so much for so long? Since he and Kirkpatrick had left Knoxville, the Harpes had struck fatally several times. Of all their murders, these most re
cent ones were the most loathsome in Clardy’s view, and had filled him with a fierce determination to see the Harpes brought to justice. From its reluctant and half-guilty, halfhearted origin, Clardy’s impulse to hunt those brothers had grown to a fierce desire, an impetus before which all other inner drives bowed in subservience. Indeed, he realized, he had become a Harpe hunter not only in action but at heart.

  Clardy followed his memories through the long, winding, distressing, and often frustrating path that had led him and Kirkpatrick from Knoxville here to the front room of General Hopkins’s Henderson County home. From Tennessee they had entered Kentucky and gone straight to Daniel Trabue’s house. By the time they reached it, the Harpes had struck again. The victims were named Graves, a father and thirteen-year-old son who made the mistake of opening their new Marrowbone Creek home for the night to two ragged strangers and a gaggle of silent women with fussing babies. Their killers used the Graveses’ own axe to dispatch them while they slept. The bodies were found thrown out against a fence, like so much rubbish. The worst part of it was the seeming lack of reason for the killings. Clardy wondered if random murder was an end in itself for the Harpes.

  News of the Marrowbone Creek murders had spread quickly while Clardy and Kirkpatrick made a futile search for the Harpes’ trail. Settlers across Kentucky huddled in fear at the knowledge of the murderers in their country and swiftly reformed bands of regulators began combing the forests for them. No one found them.

  The next to die was a young slave boy who was hauling a bag of grain toward a mill on the back of a fine horse. The Harpes left both the grain and the horse behind. Soon another child died, a young girl out playing carelessly some distance from her home. Again they left her corpse to be found and the unanswered question to ring in every decent citizen’s mind: Why?

  They struck next in Logan County, a few miles from the Drumgool’s Station settlement, killing several of a party of about a dozen travelers who had camped for the night. Gone was the Micajah Harpe who had once balked at attacking a camp of three men because the risk was too great. No longer did the Harpes exercise much caution at all, killing freely and moving on with hardly any effort to cover their tracks. Yet they were not captured, a fact that frustrated Clardy and Kirkpatrick incessantly. It seemed they and every other pursuer of the Harpes always came onto the scene too late, achieving nothing but the hearing of one more horrible tale and the reception of one more hot wrenching of the gut. Meanwhile, the Harpes moved on, lost somewhere ahead of them in the Kentucky wilds, no doubt looking for another would-be victim.

  Clardy could not explain the Harpes’ uncanny ability to evade capture, but he knew that the more time passed, the greater the difficulties that would be created by their continued freedom. Already, fear of the Harpes was so great and widespread that people saw their shadows behind every tree and attributed every fresh set of tracks to the passing of the murderers. Clardy often feared that he and Kirkpatrick might even be mistaken for the Harpes themselves in such an environment of panic.

  “We must find them, soon.”

  “Eh? What was that, young man?”

  Clardy blinked and looked up at General Hopkins, blushing as he realized that he had become lost in a sleepy, whiskey-induced reverie and had spoken aloud without meaning to. “I was just saying that we must find the Harpes soon. Before they kill others, or some innocent person is mistook for them and killed in error.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” The General, frowned as he spoke, leaving Clardy to wonder if the expression reflected merely the gravity of the subject under discussion or irritation at having been interrupted. Clardy had the idea the general had been in the middle of some discourse when he made his unplanned vocal interpolation.

  The ailing Kirkpatrick weakly shot Clardy a remonstrative look, turned to General Hopkins and said: “You were speaking, sir, of a family that has moved into a cabin on Canoe Creek?”

  Clardy, grateful for Kirkpatrick’s subtle updating, turned his attention to the general, determined not to drowse off and make a fool of himself again.

  “Yes, yes,” Hopkins said. “It seems there are a couple of families, actually—two men, three women, and two very young children—who have moved into a rented cabin south of Red Banks, on a stream called Canoe Creek. John Slover, an old Indian-fighting friend of mine, was shot at by someone in that vicinity not long after these strangers came in, but he didn’t quite see who did it. He suspects the culprits are the men who moved into the Canoe Creek cabin.”

  “It certainly could be the Harpes,” Kirkpatrick said.

  “One thing doesn’t fit,” Clardy contributed. “You say there were only two young children, General?”

  “Yes. Three women, two children.”

  “There should be three children. All three of the women had their birthings while I was yet their guard in the Danville prison.”

  “Perhaps there was a third child that simply wasn’t noticed,” Hopkins said with the slightest trace of irritability.

  “Or maybe it ain’t the Harpes at all,” said Kirkpatrick.

  “Or maybe it is, and something bad has happened to one of the babies.” It took a moment for Clardy’s implication to sink in upon the others.

  Hopkins cleared his throat. “Possibly so. Those devils have already shown their willingness to murder even children.” He paused, lost for a moment in dark thoughts. Shuddering himself out of it, he declared, “God help us, what beasts!”

  “Has anyone questioned the reasonableness of suspecting the Harpes would return to Henderson County?” Kirkpatrick asked. “They have had trouble here before, after all.”

  “The question has been raised. I doubt it holds much validity in the minds of any of us three,” the general replied.

  “Indeed not,” Clardy said as Kirkpatrick nodded. “The Harpes have never feared returning to places where the law is after them.”

  “Precisely,” said the general.

  Clardy went on. “If anything, they’re drawn to places they’ve had trouble, because generally there’s scores to settle there—and the Harpes do settle scores. Wiley Harpe as much as told me himself that he went back to Knoxville to kill a man named Cale Johnson even though they were known to have stole a passel of horses there and had already run off once from capture.” Clardy paused momentarily, conjuring up his memories of those fated days that had ended what he now recalled as a nearly carefree youth. “I knew Cale Johnson. He had his eye on Wiley’s wife. Wiley got his revenge. And his spite. It may be those things here that have drawed them to Henderson County.” He paused. “But that missing baby bothers me. It may not be the Harpes in that cabin.”

  “There are several reasons to believe these new folk are the Harpe gang, whatever the facts are about this baby,” Hopkins said. “In addition to Slover nearly being shot, a man here has disappeared. His name is Trowbridge, and we’ve searched high and low for him, without result. I believe he is dead. Probably murdered. A group generally matching the Harpe description shows up, one man is accosted and another goes missing … it all adds up to the Harpes in my tally book.”

  “Then why has nothing been done?”

  Hopkins bristled visibly at Clardy’s blunt question. Clardy gave a sad inner sigh. Obviously he had a way of rubbing the general wrong even without trying. “Young sir, something has been done,” Hopkins replied icily. “As soon as Trowbridge went missing, I sent scouts to examine this supposed Harpe cabin, but they saw nothing to settle the question. They are continuing to watch and are to report to me as soon as they have anything worth reporting. The fact is, the cabin seems to have been vacated for the moment. Perhaps the people in it realized trouble was upon them.”

  “I hope not. I’d like to get a look at them,” Clardy said. “I know the Harpes firsthand. I could tell you straight out if it is them.”

  “Which is precisely why your coming is providential,” Hopkins replied. “You will have your opportunity to see this pair, in the company of my scouts.” He stood abruptly.
“Well, enough talk is enough talk. The only way to find out the truth about our Canoe Creek residents is by observation, and we can’t do that from armchairs. Let’s get you young gentlemen fed—both of you, thin as rails! Does no one bother to feed Harpe hunters on the prowl?—and then we’ll have you off.”

  Clardy rode away from the Hopkins house about an hour later, alone. Kirkpatrick hadn’t made it halfway through the sumptuous meal Hopkins set before them before growing violently sick and collapsing out of his chair. He was far sicker than Clardy had realized. Hopkins was greatly alarmed and had Kirkpatrick put to bed at once, leaving Clardy to ponder with some disquiet that just as the Harpe trail seemed to be growing hot, he was to lose the aid of his trusted cohort.

  Trailing the Harpes as a pair had been daunting enough; now Clardy was forced to adjust to the intimidating responsibility of tracking them alone. But not really alone, he reminded himself. All he was doing at the moment was riding toward Canoe Creek, there to meet the scouts Hopkins had watching the cabin where the Harpes were suspected to be.

  But what if he encountered the Harpes themselves before he found the scouts? Dreadful imaginings of the miserable death the Harpes would inflict upon the man who had once betrayed them and then kept guard upon them in Danville filled his mind. He reined his horse to a stop, dismounted, and sat down by the road for a pipe of tobacco and a time of serious thought about just turning south and heading back toward Tennessee. Had he not done his share of Harpe hunting already?

  It required a tremendous struggle and three pipefuls of tobacco for conscience to win the debate. Tempting as it was to cast off this fearful task, Clardy could not do it.

  What settled the issue for him was in part the awareness that he had nothing worthwhile to go back to in Tennessee. The truly deciding factor, however, was the question of the seemingly missing Harpe baby. Perhaps Hopkins’s scouts had merely miscounted. Perhaps not. Clardy felt no love for the Harpes or the women who had obviously gone back to them when they had a chance to leave, but he had been present at the births of those children. He had grieved for them, being born into such a terrible situation. He had to know if harm had come to one of them … and if it had, by heaven, he would see that the price for that harm was paid in full.