“Christ!” Knibee exclaimed. “He’s hung like a horse.”
“All niggers have big peckers. Didn’t ya know that?”
“When it swells, it’ll reach to his belly hole and pump seed,” Perry said, and flipped it with the back of his hand. “It’s what Crenshaw wants. Take him to the barn, tie him good, and throw a horse blanket over him. We don’t want him sick.”
Two of the men dragged George out. The third man, James Howell, walked over to a jug, and helped himself to a drink.
“How’d it go?” Hammond asked.
“All right. Knibee’s a bitcher. Bitched all the way down, and bitched all the way back.”
“Anyone see you?”
“I stayed in the boat. They said the old man who works at the mill came storming in while they wrestled the nigger. He’ll not tell anybody. Knibee bashed his head.”
“Kill him?”
“Probably. Tell that woman of yours to get me something to eat, Sickles. I must of rowed that damn boat twenty miles, and my stomach’s rubbing my backbone.”
James Howell was a noted slave stealer and was connected with John Crenshaw in his slave operation at the salt mine. He masterminded the plans but seldom did the actual kidnapping.
“I’ve got another job for you,” Perry said impatiently.
The man’s tone rankled Howell, and he turned his back on him and sat down at the table.
“I’m not beggin’ for jobs, Perry.”
“It’ll pay a hell of a lot more than stealing a nigger.”
“What’ve you got in mind? I suppose you want me to go to Vandalia and kill Farrway Quill for you.”
Hammond ignored the jibe. His hatred of Quill was a well-known fact, and he never made an attempt to conceal it.
“Daniel Phelps runs the mill at Quill’s Station, and—”
“I know that. I just come from there.”
“He’s a nigger lover. And—”
“I know that too.” Howell enjoyed seeing the corners of Perry’s eyes twitch when he was angry. The man hated to be interrupted. He talked as if he were giving orders to a troop under his command.
“Phelps will be coming this way in a few days, maybe a week. He’ll not stay away from the mill very long this time of year. He’ll be with a blond woman. Sickles can give you his description, and those of the horses and the wagon. I want him stopped. Understand?”
“Killed?”
“It will be the only way to stop him.”
“The woman too?”
“Do what you want with her, as long as she never gets back to Quill’s Station.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Five hundred in gold and about a dozen niggers up on Phelps’s farm. Without him there to tell them what to do, it’ll be like picking apples off a tree.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Think about it? Hell! I want to know now, Howell. If you’re not interested, I’ll get someone else.”
“All right.” Howell pursed his lips and looked from Sickle to Perry. “I’ll take care of it. I know just the man for the job.”
“No! I want you to do it yourself.”
“Don’t be telling me how to run my business, Perry.” James Howell looked Hammond straight in the eye. He didn’t like the cocky little son of a bitch, but John Crenshaw did, so he had to put up with him. That didn’t mean he had to knuckle down or do any of his dirty work regardless of the pay. “If I take on this job, I do it my way or not at all.” He helped himself to a hunk of bread and plunged his knife into the crock of butter Sickles set on the table.
“Five hundred is a lot of money,” Hammond said. “A man can do a lot with that much money.”
“Yeah? I could poke that much up my arse and not even know it.” Howell began to eat.
Hammond paced back and forth, the heels of his boots making the only sound other than the slurping Howell made when he drank from his mug. Hammond didn’t like having a third party involved, but if that was the only way he could get the job done, he would go along with it this one time.
“All right,” Hammond agreed reluctantly. “All right. But, by God, the job had better be done.”
“Half now, the rest when the job’s done,” Howell said, knowing Perry would not agree.
“I’ll not pay for a pig in a poke,” Hammond shouted. “I’ll leave the money with Crenshaw. When Phelps is dead, you’ll be paid.”
James Howell shrugged his shoulders. “Then I’ll be at Crenshaw’s house in a couple of weeks to collect.”
* * *
Moonlight came in through the window at the McCourtney house, set back from the Wabash along the road to Vincennes. It was a neat, well-built house with four rooms below, two above, and a porch that fronted the width of the house. In the bedroom at the back of the house, Gavin lay in the oversize bed that was needed for his large frame. Eleanor cuddled close to his side.
“I’m glad to be home and in our own bed, Gavin. I love this place.”
“Aye, lass. Me feets been hangin’ over the end of the bed for the past two weeks.”
Eleanor laughed softly and swirled the hair on his chest with her fingertips.
“I wish we had come home sooner. We’d have been here when the two men came from Kentucky to see Mercy. Oh, that poor girl. She must have been shocked. Imagine, Gavin. She hasn’t known who she was for all these years. If not for Daniel—”
A loud pounding on the door cut off Eleanor’s words. Gavin sat up in bed. The pounding came again.
“Someone be at the door.” Gavin was swinging his huge body out of the bed when the sharp raps sounded again.
“Hurry, Gavin,” Eleanor said. “No one would come knocking this time of night if there wasn’t something wrong.
“He be in a snit, whoever he be.” Gavin pulled on his britches. “I be comin’,” he yelled.
A blanket wrapped around her, Eleanor followed her husband out of the bedroom and through the kitchen. She hung back when he went to the door leading to the porch. Gavin lifted the latch and opened the door. A man with a head of white hair, blood streaming down his face, sagged against the doorjamb.
“Turley! Godamighty, mon!” Gavin exclaimed. He grabbed the old man and half dragged, half carried him into the house, then eased him down into a chair. “Eleanor!” Gavin roared, only to find his wife beside him. “Turley’s hurt,” he said in a softer voice.
“Oh, Turley! Oh, your poor head! We must stop the blood. Tennessee!” Eleanor called as she ran to get a cloth.
A dark-haired girl came down out of the room above.
“What happened to Turley?”
“Get whiskey,” Gavin commanded, and Tennessee hurried to obey. “What happened to ye, mon?”
“Took . . . George . . .”
“Took George?” Eleanor gasped. “Who took George?”
“Hush, love. Let the mon speak.”
“One was . . . Knibee . . .” Turley’s voice faded to nothing, his head fell to the side, and he would have slid from the chair except for Gavin’s strong arms.
“Oh, Gavin! Is he dead?”
“I be thinkin’ he almost is. Run fix the bed, love. I be takin’ him to it. He be an ol’ mon to be struck such a blow.”
Gavin placed Turley on the bed and moved away so that Eleanor could wash the gash on his head with the whiskey Tennessee had brought too late for Turley to drink. She snipped the hair away with her scissors so that Tennessee could see to close the wound with a few stitches. He was still unconscious when they finished.
“Is there anything else we can do?” Eleanor asked the girl who was like a daughter to her and Gavin.
Kneeling beside the old man, Tennessee looked more Indian than white with her dark hair parted in the middle and two thick braids hanging over her breasts.
“I don’t know if his skull is cracked. I do know it is good to put ice on a head wound. That was told to me by a doctor in Vincennes.”
“Do we have ice left in the sawdust pit, Gavin
?”
Gavin scratched his shaggy head. “I’m believin’ we do, love. I’ll be fetchin’ it.”
Later they tried to spoon whiskey into Turley’s mouth, but it ran out the side. He lay as still as death.
Eleanor, curled up in her husband’s lap, watched Tennessee change the ice packs and put the hot bricks at the old man’s feet.
“Gavin, Turley said ‘Knibee.’ Do you suppose Glenn Knibee had anything to do with someone taking George?”
“Knibee has not the brains to act on his own. I be seein’ Perry’s hand in this.”
“What can we do to get George back? Oh, poor George. He’s so proud. It’ll kill him to be treated like a slave.”
“There’s nothin’ we can be doin’ tonight. Ye ain’t to be frettin’ ’bout it nohow. It’ll be back to bed for ye, Mrs. McCourtney. Tennessee, with me help, will be lookin’ after Turley.” Gavin stood with his wife in his arms.
“Gavin McCourtney! You’re impossible! Since I told you we were having a baby, you’ve been like a mother hen. You’ve hardly let me wipe my nose.”
“If ye’er nose needs wipin’, I’ll be wipin’ it,” he said with a grin. “We be waitin’ ten years fer this bairn, Nora, me girl. He’ll be rested when he gets here.”
“You stop treating me like an invalid, or . . . or I’ll have a girl just for spite.”
“Ye’ll have what I planted, is what ye’ll have.”
“Tennessee, tell him women have been having babies since the beginning of time. Tell him—”
“Hush yer yappin’, wench.” Gavin shut her mouth with a quick kiss.
Gavin loved his wife with every fiber of his being. Even after ten years of marriage his greatest pleasure was to look at her. It still astounded him that a beautiful living doll, such as she was, could love a big, ignorant riverman. She was his world; his life revolved around his beloved Eleanor.
Tennessee, kneeling on the floor beside Turley Blaine, saw the love on Gavin’s face when he looked at his wife. She hoped, she prayed, that someday the man she loved would love her half as much.
“Put the kettle on, lass,” Gavin said to Tennessee. “I’ll take this sassy wench to bed and make her a toddy. Her hands are like ice.”
“She’ll not stay in there, Gavin.” Tennessee got to her feet. “Sit down with her and let me make the toddy. That way you’ll be sure that she drinks it.”
The three of them stayed by Turley’s bedside throughout the long night. Eleanor went to sleep in her husband’s arms. He continued to hold her. Tennessee added more fuel to the fire, changed the ice pack, wrapped blankets around Turley Blaine’s thin body, and kept the warm bricks at his feet.
“It’s unthinkable that anyone would do this to Turley. He’s such a good and gentle man,” Tennessee said after a long silence, and tucked covers closely around his thin shoulders.
“Aye, lass. It’s greed what makes a mon strike down what stands in his way.”
“Turley wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’s old and not very strong. A man would have to be awfully mean to hit him.”
Gavin gazed fondly at the French and Indian girl who sat so patiently beside the old man. She had formed an attachment for his Eleanor many years ago, and when Eleanor and Amy Devereau were taken from the village of Davidsonville while Gavin and Rain Tallman were away, the girl had run five miles alongside a rocky creek to see where Hammond Perry’s henchmen were taking them. Without the help of this lass he might never have known the bliss of having Eleanor as his wife. Aye, he loved the girl as if she were his own.
“Ye’ve seen the ways of a mon, lass. They be good ones and they be the bad ones. ’Tis Perry’s hand in this. God! But if I could get me hands on the mon, I would be throttlin’ him.”
“Will you go looking for George, Gavin?”
“I be thinkin’ on it, Tenny. I be wishin’ Daniel was back. With Turley laid low, I cannot be leavin’ the mill. I’d not be knowin’ where to look for George if I did.”
“Mike doesn’t expect Daniel and Mercy back for several weeks. Mike is worried about the talk. He said the whole town knows about the men coming to get Mercy, about Daniel staying at the house with her, and about them leaving together. He said Mr. Knibee is behind most of it.”
“A fiddle on the talk,” Gavin said with a snort. “Busy bodies is what they be. Daniel be an honorable mon.”
“What can we do?” Tennessee asked.
“I’ll be callin’ on Knibee come mornin’, If’n the mon had a hand in the takin’ of George, ’n’ strikin’ down Turley, I’ll know.”
Tennessee lifted the cloth from Turley’s head to turn it over. She paused, looked into his face, then sat back on her heels.
“Oh, Gavin! Turley’s not breathing!”
“Air ya sure, lass?”
Tennessee nodded tearfully.
Gavin got to his feet and carried his wife into the other room, put her into the bed, then hurried back. He knelt down beside the bed and placed his fingers on the old man’s neck.
“He be gone, Tenny,” Gavin said sorrowfully. He lifted Turley’s sagging lower jaw to close his mouth.
Tennessee bowed her head and made the sign of the cross on her breast.
“God rest his soul,” Gavin murmured, and pulled the blanket up over Turley Blaine’s face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There had been a flurry of activity at the Baxter homestead since the first light of dawn, and now the sun was slanting through the tall cottonwood trees. Mercy stood in the yard with the other family members, saying good-bye to Cousin Farley, who was going on south to visit relatives at Mud Creek.
“Yore maw was second cousin to Aunt Fanny, Hod. Or maybe it were Cousin Bessie Mae. If I recollect, a Varney married up with a Cartwright gal and they had Fanny, Oscar, Maynard, Eldon, Percy, Fletta Mae . . .” Cousin Farley counted on his fingers, repeating the same names. Finally he said, “Yup, I was right. Yore maw, Mary Len, was second cousin to Aunt Fanny.”
“I never knowed how it was ya was kin. Maw always called ya Cousin Farley. We’re obliged to ya fer comin’ so quick,” Hod yelled with his hand cupped around his mouth.
“Huh? Oh, yes, they be glad to see me at Mud Crick. They be graves to preach over, and a weddin’ or two. I reckon that horny bunch’s got a heap a younguns on the way. I ain’t done a weddin’ in a while”—he paused and scratched his head thoughtfully—“or have I? Seems like I done one some time back, ’n’ it were a hurry-up too.”
“Here’s yore horse, Cousin Farley,” Lenny shouted. “He’s all saddled ’n’ ready ta go.”
“What ya say, Lenny? Of course that’s my horse. I rid him here, didn’t I? Where’s Bernie? That damn muddlehead ort to stop foolin’ with them snakes.”
“Here’s a packet a grub Martha fixed up fer ya, Cousin Farley,” Hod said. “Stop ’n’ stay with us when ya come back this way.”
“Yep, it sure is. It’s goin’ to be a dandy day. May the good Lord look kindly on ya ’n’ keep your feet on the straight and narrow,” the old man shouted above the clatter of hoofbeats as the horse took off on the run.
Lenny breathed a sigh of relief as he watched him leave. With Farley’s black coat flying out behind him, he reminded Lenny of a black crow. If the old fool didn’t break his neck before he got to Mud Creek, he’d be surprised. Lenny glanced at Mercy, then away. He had been sure Cousin Farley was going to tell Hod and Wyatt that he and Bernie had forced their Sister to wed. He was not sure how his brothers would have reacted to the news. They had taken to Daniel like a duck to water, but then they didn’t know the man as he and Bernie did.
Mercy tied the strings of her bonnet beneath her chin and waited on the porch for Daniel to bring the wagon up to the front of the house. Gideon, following Daniel, led his buckskin. He looked the animal over appreciatively, stroked his neck, and tied him to the end of the wagon. Martha had filled their food box with slices of leftover ham, bread, and gooseberry jam. Gideon moved Daniel’s saddle and made room for the box.
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Hod came out of the house with the small, square box containing the death crown. He held it reverently in his big hands before he handed it over to Mercy.
“I don’t feel like this belongs to me, Hod. I wish Mamma hadn’t said for me to take it. It should stay here with you and the others.”
“Maw was right in sayin’ fer ya to take it. She wanted ya ta be feelin’ ya was a Baxter. Hand it down to yore younguns, Hester. Mayhap some will come settle in the hills. Hills is in Baxter blood.”
“I’ll take care of it always,” Mercy whispered. When Daniel brought her carpetbag, she opened it, put the box inside, and packed her clothes carefully around it.
“When ya get a hankerin’ fer real whuskey, Dan’l, try some of this.” Wyatt set two jugs in the back of the wagon. “That be pure Baxter whuskey. The best in these hills.”
“Thank you, Wyatt. A man never knows when he’s going to get snakebit.” Daniel cast a glance in Bernie’s direction as he set the carpetbag back in the wagon.
Daniel shook hands with Wyatt and Hod, then stood back while Mercy said good-bye to her family.
“’Bye, Martha. Thank you for making me welcome.” She hugged the big, plain woman.
“We was glad to have ya. Ya was a comfort to Maw in her last days.” Martha patted her shoulder.
“’Bye, Dora. Take care of yourself and that baby you’re carrying.”
“’Bye. I wish ya wasn’t going, Hester.”
“Maybe you and Wyatt can come see us sometime.” She held out her hand to her brother.
“Ya come back, hear?” Wyatt said gruffly, and squeezed her hand.
“’Bye, Hod. I was scared of you at first, but not now.”
“This be yore home, Hester,” the big gruff man said sincerely, and held her hand in both of his. “If’n ever yore in need or want to come back, yore welcome.”
“Thank you, Hod.” Mercy sniffed back a tear. “’Bye, Gideon.” She held out her hand to her younger brother. He clasped it, shuffled his feet, and grinned nervously.
Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] Page 25
