“Yes, General St. Clair listened from his bed. His gout was such he couldn’t lift his shoulders from the mattress without great effort. I told him about the forged manifests, how we believe Starnes and his henchmen have been stealing regularly from the army.”
“Did he believe you?” I asked anxiously.
Ensign Young shivered and shrank deeper into the collar of the greatcoat he had donned upon dismounting. “It’s difficult to say. We had to stand over his bed to hear him speak. He didn’t dispute what we were charging. But he refused to order Starnes’s arrest unless we have the original manifests or witnesses to their forgery. He will not act without corroboration. Thus we left the general’s tent disappointed but not defeated.”
I studied the green water of the creek. “Cyrus Paine, the forger, is in the grave, and the original papers are nowhere to be found, and St. Clair won’t act without one or the other. Sounds like maybe we’re trying to ride a dead horse.”
“No, not necessarily,” the ensign countered.
I stared at him now. “And how’s that?”
“Your father reminded me that our cause isn’t lost so long as Dyson Barch is alive,” Ensign Young answered. “He’s convinced Barch murdered Paine to protect Starnes, and if that’s true, Barch had to be aware of the forgeries or the killing makes no sense whatsoever.”
Captain Starkweather mounted his sorrel, and I rose to my feet, sliding the carrying strap of my canteen over my shoulder. “I’m not certain even Paw, strong as he be, can force Dyson Barch into betraying Court Starnes. Barch knows Starnes will cut his throat in the wink of an eye if he speaks against him.”
The ensign’s face grew serious. “Your father warned me Starnes has no compunction about killing his fellows at the slightest provocation. He instructed me quite pointedly not to discuss our visit to General St. Clair’s tent with anyone but you.”
I stepped into the near stirrup and swung astride Blue. I waited till Andy Young was aboard his mane-tossing gray mare. “It’d be wise to heed his counsel. Paw believes the good of heart will always win out, no matter what. We best pray he’s right, or maybe we’ll all come to grief at the hands of our own rather than those of the enemy.”
The detail continued northwest on the Injun pathway, our order still columns of two. An hour later, the captain motioned Ensign Young to the head of the line with Bear and fell back beside me and Blue. “I want to thank you for returning Erin Green to her mother once more. She may be seriously ill, but she’s aware of everything that happens to her daughter. Again, Molly Green thanks you, and I thank you.”
“It was the least Tap and I could do.”
Starkweather’s brow lifted. “If I’m not prying unduly, just how difficult was it to convince those four deserters to free Erin?”
I took my time responding. It was obvious that neither Tap nor Erin had told the captain much, if anything, upon reaching the Green cart. “I’ll let Tap tell you the whole story over the evening fire. I wouldn’t want to cheat him of his chance to brag.”
The captain smiled wryly. “My, but we can be as closemouthed as our father, can’t we? I won’t pursue the matter further. I bear no sympathy for those who desert their comrades, none whatsoever.”
We then rode a full mile without exchanging a solitary word. The small flight of snow vanished quickly as it had appeared, but the wind and cold continued without relief. I had now been awake some twenty hours, and the tiredness was telling on me. My leg muscles ached and twitched from hip to ankles, and my arse was as Tap often complained during a prolonged stretch in the saddle, numb as dead meat. Only Miles Starkweather’s renewed chatter kept my head from drooping.
“Right attractive country,” he observed. “Hogs would fat of themselves in these woods. Once the redsticks are gone from here, boundless opportunities await those bold of nerve. Has your father considered moving north of the Ohio?”
I straightened and squared my shoulders, warding off the drowsiness. “No, sir, he’s struggling to obtain undisputed title to our Kentucky plantation. He admires the bluegrass prairie above all else. Says it’s home to him, and he won’t be forced out or swindled of what belongs to him.”
The bill of the captain’s leather helmet pointed my direction. “What about you? Ready to seek your own plantation in this fair country and settle with the woman of your dreams?”
It was a mighty leap from Paw and Ohio land to Ethan Downer and the woman of his dreams, and I came to full attention, my nose scenting like a hound on the point. Was Starkweather just being friendly, or was he playing sly with me, ferreting out what leanings I might possibly harbor of seeking acreage of my own, acreage that I might try to occupy with Erin Green, the beauty he perhaps wanted for himself?
I confess, though, more than just the potential rivalry of Miles Starkweather had my nose up and sniffing. Amid my all-fired, frenzied rush to win the love of Erin Green, I had never stopped to ponder what would happen after I gained her hand. Where would we settle? Closer to the wick, not only where, but with what monies would we put down roots? Seeing how the mistress likely wouldn’t be welcome at the Downer plantation, a burdensome situation compounded enormously by my empty purse, it was a question that couldn’t go begging.
The bill of Starkweather’s helmet was still pointing at me, and I swallowed my pride and trusted to what I hoped was a budding friendship. “To be honest, Captain, Ohio always seemed as far upcountry as Canada, and I’ve never thought much of claiming land anywhere lest it be near Paw,” I admitted with surprising candor and no reddening of neck or ears. “If I may ask, what are you planning after the campaign?”
“Since I do not wish to maintain the family estate across the eastern mountains, I intend to acquire considerable Ohio land. Judge Symmes at Cincinnati has title to thousands of acres he is surveying for sale. If it doesn’t sound overly boastful, I may found a town in my family name.”
It was a stunningly ambitious dream for so young an officer, a dream that exceeded my imagination. “What is there for those with empty purses?”
“The Congress may well issue land warrants in lieu of pay to the federal officers and enlistees serving with General St. Clair. They did for General Washington’s troops. Bounty lands are not to be scoffed at. They’ve been tantamount to salvation for countless veterans with nothing else on their table.”
Not expecting to inherit great wealth or become a regular soldier anytime soon, I took a different fork in the road. “I’ve been told surveyors can obtain title to goodly acres as their pay, it being such a dangerous undertaking.”
Starkweather nodded. “Judge Symmes is in dire need of chain bearers at this very time. He refuses to allow our campaign to interfere with his line running and is insisting St. Clair guard his crews with soldiers. I believe he’s desperate enough to exchange parcels for services rendered.”
The captain rearranged his grip on the sorrel’s reins. “Course, there’s a simpler means by which a desiring man might accumulate his stash for the future.”
I tilted sideways in the saddle and spat, not wanting to appear too eager, too much the fish swimming straight for the hook. “And what would that be, Captain?” I inquired, my voice level and easy.
“Mr. Downer, I speak solely for your ears. I’m not at all pleased with the progress of this campaign. We are proceeding ever deeper into the Indian’s hunting grounds in deteriorating weather while depending in the main on dismounted, untrustworthy forces. I’m tiring of an army in which barrow men, drunkards, and felons swept from the gaols, the taverns, and the alleyways masquerade as soldiers. No matter the uniform, they’ve proven themselves bad of leg and heart and lack even a smidgen of courage. In a crisis they will undoubtedly fail the army and themselves. To avert that miserable prospect, I chose my dragoon company with great care, being determined to prove that mounted infantry properly trained and disciplined can best defeat the red savages. I will not allow my fine men to fall prey either to shallow strategy or surprise. The former I will
treat with personally. For protection against the latter, I need trackers and scouts, borderers like you, Bear Watkins, and Tap Jacobs, men who understand and don’t fear the forest. And I will pay damnably well, Mr. Downer, three oblongs and a full ration for each day spent in camp or afield. What say you?”
In my rising excitement I clung tightly to Blue’s mane. The captain’s offer was generous to the extreme, thrice what Ensign Young proposed at the Dodd fire. In a month or two I could amass enough oblongs to acquire sufficient acreage via Judge Symmes’s land sales to start a plantation of my own. Maybe my dream of Erin in front of the evening hearth, her attentions devoted completely to me, was more likely to occur than rain at high noon with a full sun shining, after all. I savored that possibility with the joy of the condemned man suddenly freed with the hanging rope tightening about his neck.
But alas, in the next rap of hooves my joy soured and ebbed, for nothing devastates the male offspring who worships his father as rapidly and thoroughly as the guilt of betrayal. What about my obligations to Paw, the sire who had fed, clothed, and sheltered me since birth? How could I entertain the notion I would—or could—abandon him in the days of his greatest need so as to indulge my infatuation for a female yet to give the slightest indication beyond a passionate and unexpected kiss she might ever return my love? Lord, if the woods skunk was deemed the lowliest and most useless of woods animals, Ethan Downer was crawling beneath its belly, down where the dirt stank of your own piss.
It nonetheless took all the will and gumption I could gather to forgo my cravings for the mistress and utter what next came from my mouth. “I can’t speak for Bear and Tap, Captain, but I can’t scout for you. I thank you for the offer, but with Paw short of packhorsemen, I can’t shirk my duty to him.”
The captain’s head slowly nodded. “If your affairs assume the opposite tack, the offer still stands. Too many men today are faithful only to their own greed, and I prize loyalty above all else in my dragoons.”
Proud as I was of myself for sticking by Paw, I was miserable as a sinner burning at the devil’s post the whole of our return trip to General St. Clair’s encampment. Fatigue and saddle soreness set my legs and thighs afire, and I suffered equally hard from a heart heavy and dispirited. I rode glum and morose beside the ensign through the fading light of waning afternoon into the darkness of early evening, rudely spurning his attempts at conversation. Try as I might, I could discern no course by which I could do right by Paw and serve the captain simultaneously. The unfairness of that galled my feelings raw as an open wound dashed with salt water, and my mood blackened every mile. By the time Bear and I approached the Dodd fire, I was a bomb waiting to explode, and who was there to light my fuse but Walking Stick himself, brash and boastful Gabe Hookfin.
The beanpole, every skinny inch of him, was seated beside Val Dodd on the horse master’s customary camp log. Upon sighting us, Hookfin stood and lifted the iron brewing noggin from the tripod suspending it above the fire. Bread browned and meat boiled in separate vessels beneath the tripod. “Don’t be shy, buckos. We’ve bread an’ fresh tea, courtesy of Court Starnes,” the beanpole sang out shrilly, pouring tea into his tin cup.
When Bear and I merely nodded without speaking, Hookfin’s thin slit of a mouth twisted into his excuse for a grin. “Yesiree, won’t never be no poor pickin’s on our plates from here out, not with Court the boss. He sent me ahead with two weeks’ rations an’ a new jug of whiskey. Said we ain’t goin’ without ever again, he did,” the beanpole rattled on, “not even if’n the by God army starves.”
I placed my saddle next to Bear’s, and both of us took the cups Val Dodd offered. Our continuing silence didn’t deter the beanpole. “Yep, Court’s ridin’ the lead horse now and says we ain’t suckin’ the hind teat for nobody. Says he’ll bury that fat General St. Clair in flour an’ whiskey if’n he has to kill every horse in Ohio doin’ it.”
Was Starnes en route with the incoming pack train? And where was Paw? I desperately wanted to ask after Paw’s whereabouts but hated to show the slightest interest in Hookfin’s shrill gloating. He was so full of himself he spared me the bother.
“Yep, your paw wanted to travel less miles each day an’ rest the horses more, but nosiree, Court wasn’t havin’ none of that. He said St. Clair finally showed a lick of smarts, an’ now that we gots the army’s horses at our beck an’ call, we can line our pockets with federal gold easy as wipin’ snot off’n a baby’s nose. Said we’ll all be by God rich, Court did, rich as kings and princes.”
I glanced at Bear, who was studying Hookfin with the intentness of a diving hawk. “Court sent you on ahead, did he?” Bear asked, his tone smooth and unruffled as always while I grappled with a surge of dislike for the beanpole that threatened to gag me.
Hookfin helped himself to more tea and hung the noggin back on its tripod, leaving Bear and me standing with empty cups. His lack of manners wrung a grimace from the normally unflappable Bear Watkins that the beanpole either didn’t notice or overlooked. I hastily filled our cups.
“Yep, Court made me his personal emissary to St. Clair, he did,” Hookfin boasted. “Told me to tell that gouty old fart of a general eyeball-to-eyeball there’ll be more’n ten thousand pounds of flour comin’ over yonder ridge on the morrow with him at the fore. Told me to tell the general, he did, that with him in charge now, ain’t no need to worry about short rations if’n the army’s still out here huntin’ Injuns when snow covers the ground.”
Hookfin paused to gulp tea. His cup lowered, and that poor excuse of a grin returned. “I swear there ain’t no one can hold a candle to Court Starnes when it comes to bold,” he claimed bluntly, striding within arm’s length of me. “Know what he went an’ said ’bout that snooty Green girl, Downer?”
I trusted myself to only a shake of the head. Hookfin edged closer. “Court said anytime the notion strikes him, he’ll have hisself a peek at what’s under that white shirt of her’n, an’ dare any man to stop him, includin’ Sergeant Tor Devlin. What say you to that?”
Hookfin had to be counting on the backing and authority of his new mentor, the absent Court Starnes, to hold me at bay. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been confronting me at close range, relaxed and loose-kneed, with both hands wrapping his tin cup. Maybe he believed I wouldn’t fight him like before. Either way, it was a grievous error in judgment on the part of the beanpole. I slid my left foot forward, rolled my shoulders, and without spilling a drop of the tea in my left fist, drove my right straight for the middle of his nettlesome, sorry-arse smile before he could so much as blink. My weight settled on my left foot and flying knuckles met flesh and bone, every ounce of disappointment and frustration I’d experienced the entire day adding force to my punch. Teeth flew in accompaniment with Hookfin’s cup. His jaw snapped upward, his arms dropped to his sides, and he staggered toward Dodd’s log. His heels encountered the log, and he toppled backward, fortunately for him away from the flames of the fire. So great was my anger at that instant, I was never to decide whether I would have bothered trying to catch him if he had fallen in the opposite direction.
The loudest noise in the hush that followed was the hiss of the fire and my sudden gasp, for unbeknownst to myself, I’d been holding my breath all the while. The next noise reaching our ears was Hookfin’s bubbling moan. Bear walked past me and stepped over Dodd’s log. Dodd remained where he was, and I did the same, rubbing my bruised knuckles. Sucker punch or not, it had been one fine blow, delivered dead on target at maximum strength. And there would be no apology, now or ever. The beanpole had begged for it, and I’d been most happy to oblige him.
Bear held Hookfin upright till his legs steadied. Blood poured from his mangled mouth, and his eyes were dull. The beanpole swiped at his dripping chin and shook free of Bear’s grasp. He stumbled around the end of the log and laid hold of his ratty saddle and lone gun. He stared at me with a look of pure hate. Mashed lips and broken teeth garbled his words, but I understood him well enough to make out what
he said. “Wait till you answer to Starnes for this,” he spat, wincing with pain.
The beanpole departed, saddle stirrups and rifle butt dragging the ground. I’d no sympathy for him whatsoever. I sipped tea from my cup. “Well, leastwise we won’t have to share the bread with the son of a bitch.”
Val Dodd chuckled, and the usually solemn Bear smiled. After that brief spate of humor, a quiet meal ensued. Not a soul said so aloud, but we each knew there would indeed be a reckoning with the arrival of Paw and Court Starnes, both about my defying Paw’s orders to retrieve Erin Green and my sucker-punching Starnes’s personal, hand-picked messenger. Bear and Dodd didn’t share their thinking with me during the evening meal. But squaring things with Paw scared me the most.
Later, I lay in my blankets, unable to sleep.
Damn it to hell, how could the loving of a beautiful woman thrill a man so grandly yet complicate the whole of his being?
Chapter 22
22 October
I finally slept fully in the hours prior to dawn. During those hours, another body settled next to mine, probably Tap Jacobs, with whom I was to share the tent. But I couldn’t force my eyes open to greet him for the tiredness consuming me, and much later I awoke alone in scanty daylight under the canvas sheeting. I rolled from my blankets stiff and heavy of limb and, being immediately alarmed that an outraged Paw might catch me abed with the day under way, I ignored the protest of sore muscle and sinew and bolted to my feet.
I relaxed somewhat when I could spy no one about our campfire except the ever-present Val Dodd. Rifle in hand, I stepped from the tent, gladdened that despite the soreness besetting me everywhere, my actual wounds were minor and tolerable. The powder bums on my chest ached but little, and with deep female kisses again scarce as perfectly square rocks, the split in my lip was knitting together nicely. As for my knuckles, while they were black and blue from the punching of Hookfin, I detected no swelling, and my fingers moved freely.
Blood at Dawn Page 23
