It was only afterward, standing over his profusely bleeding daughter with her severed tongue in his hand, that he comprehended the flaw in his plan. He might have rendered it hard for Molly to betray him with spoken words, but the girl was able to read and write. A simple scrawled note passed to a constable or dropped in the charity box at a nearby church, and he would be as fully betrayed as if she’d shouted the truth about him from atop a cathedral. Furthermore, the way he had maimed his daughter could not go unnoticed, and would in itself rouse questions and investigation.
So he had failed. He had mutilated his daughter in a beastly act of cruelty, and still he was in danger.
So she had to die after all. He knew it then, and while he still possessed the will do to it, lowered himself beside her to put the knife to her throat. . . .
Then came the miracle, the divine intervention. Or so it was described in Molly’s famous broadside narrative.
From out of the shadows in the room, a figure bolted forth, lean, lithe, and fast, and came upon John Reese with swift violence. Swinging a candlestick that was twin to the one with which Reese had pounded Molly’s skull, the intruder, whoever and whatever he was, dropped John Reese like a sack of dirt and pummeled his head repeatedly.
And Molly, regaining partial consciousness, saw and heard it all, albeit in muddled fashion. The flash of the brass candlestick as it caught a reflected gleam from the simmering coals on the nearby grate, up and down, up and down . . . the thud and crush of metal pounding flesh and skull . . . the terrible hiss of John Reese’s last breath of life . . .
Then it was done. John Reese was dead. Molly was mutilated but alive, filled with horror and pain as she discovered what had been done to her, having seen her severed tongue lying on the floor near her father’s lifeless hand, an ugly thing she could not readily identify in the dim light. The mysterious one who had intervened to save her life knelt beside her, talking softly and gently, telling her he would take her away, and that her father could never follow or hurt her again. He was gone forever, and she was safe.
The young girl did not know the one who had saved her. And as she groped at her painful, bloodied mouth, she did not care. She cared only about what had been done to her. And the fact that her father could do no such terrible things to her again.
According to her famous narrative, Molly Reese’s memory failed her at that point. The next thing she was aware of was being away from her home, the body of her father left behind and never seen by her again. Molly came to herself on a rough cot in a dark and dingy room, an unshaven and watery-eyed man leaning over her and wiping blood from her face. His breath smelled of strong rum. He had something like a cloth sack pulled over his head for some reason, but the front was at the moment rolled up so his face was visible from chin to brow.
“Well, there you are, m’lady,” he said. “The bleeding is stopped now. You’re going to feel a goodly amount of pain for days to come, and much hunger because there’ll be no feeding you until you’ve healed at least a little . . . but you will heal, and you will live. Life will go on and you’ll get past this terrible violence that has been done to you.”
The impulse was to answer the man, but when she tried to talk she could form no words and the effort brought a shuddering burst of pain. All she could do was groan. The man leaning over her shook his head.
“Don’t try to speak, m’lady. ’Twill only frustrate you and bring you fresh hurt and bleeding. Just lie quiet and let yourself begin to heal.”
She nodded, but nodding hurt, too. Her vision shimmered and she felt weak and faint, collapsing back onto her dirty pillow. She closed her eyes and knew nothing more for quite some time.
So declared the famous broadside narrative.
Ott Dixon growled, “You’ve talked your talk and announced your come-to-Jesus meeting, preacher. Now go.”
Abner Bledsoe actually managed a smile at his uncongenial host. Dixon did not smile back.
Bledsoe performed the unexpected friendly gesture of approaching Dixon with his hand extended. Dixon stared down at it as if Bledsoe had just tried to hand him a smelly fish carcass. For a moment, Potts wondered if Dixon might strike the preacher with his fist. No such thing happened.
“I’ll not shake your hand, knowing you think of me as less than fit as a man, but I’ll offer you a drink of good rum,” Dixon said. “That’s as Christian an offer as I’m able to make the likes of you, hypocrite.”
“I imbibe very seldom of the kill devil,” Abner Bledsoe replied pompously. “If a man must wade into Satan’s pool, let him dip his toe only into the shallows.”
“Bosh and bilge water!” Dixon blustered. “Off with you, babbler! Don’t you come around here again, neither!”
“I’ll return the day the hound of heaven finally nips your heels and drags you to the Father who calls you,” Bledsoe replied in his English-accented voice. “It will be my pleasure indeed to be the one who points the way to you.”
Dixon pointed at the door. “There’s the way, yonder, that I’m pointing to you!” he said. “Be gone, preacher!”
Bledsoe departed, and Potts took advantage of the moment to slip out of the door himself. He still had no place to sleep for the night, and the house of ill fame that Dixon had recommended to him certainly held no appeal. His horse had traveled far and was tired, and Potts was tired himself.
It was time to give up the quest for lodging. As John Crockett had said, a man could always sleep on the good earth. He’d find a grassy meadow where his horse could graze, and he would spread his bedroll and say farewell to what had been a long day.
About five-score miles farther west than Potts, Crawford Fain had harbored no intention of remaining all night at White’s Fort, but the conversation with Eben Bledsoe had dragged on far longer than anticipated. The day had passed and evening had fallen, and still Fain and Bledsoe conversed by the light of a nearby cook fire where an aging Cherokee woman tended the contents of a steaming kettle.
“Where were you born, Mr. Fain?” Bledsoe asked. “Virginia, I think?”
“Raised in Virginia, sir, but actually born in London, and raised English through my youthful years. Yes, sir, like you, I am a born Englishman, though now I’m American to the core. My father followed his brother across the sea and brought us to America. My mother took sick after they arrived here—an ague of some kind—and died, leaving me and my father alone.”
“Sorrowful story, sir. I’m regretful to hear it.”
“I was raised well despite it all. My father remarried, a Virginia woman, and she raised me as if I were her own. Most assumed she was my mother. And it was generally not worth the effort to correct that notion.”
“What led your family to America?”
“A big part of it was that uncle of mine, who had come over to the Colonies earlier. It was his belief in the future of the new country that inspired my parents to leave London and follow after him. Of course they had no notion of how it was actually going to turn out for them. Neither did my uncle. But when they were gone he rose to the need of the moment and was a great friend to me the rest of his days, though I’m sure I seemed a burden to him.”
“Thank God for faithful family relations.”
Fain said, “Speaking of families, I’ve met your brother. I’m sure you must be proud of his work, both of you being men of the cloth.”
Eben’s eyes rolled toward the night-grayed heavens. “Bah!”
Fain frowned. “Have I misspoken, sir?”
Bledsoe stood on gangly, sharp-kneed legs. He presented an image of ill humor, much at variance with his previous friendly manner. His knees popped audibly as he unfolded himself. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “The subject of my brother is distressing to me.”
“I fail to understand, Reverend.”
Bledsoe drew in a slow breath. “I simply must do a better job of restraining my reactions when the subject of my fraud of a brother comes up.”
“ ‘Fraud’?”
Bledso
e breathed deep again and calmed some. “Mr. Fain, not all who claim the service of the Lord God are truly his servants. Some are pretenders, manipulators of the passions, casting the masses onto a tide of false fervor whose only power is emotional. Such, I regret to say, is my own brother.”
“But he’s had such success in his preaching! Why, there is a camp meeting soon to happen near my own station that I expect will attract a town’s quantity of people to hear him. And some of them will surely join the faithful through his preaching—won’t they?”
“I would not pretend an ability to judge the veracity of any individual’s conversion.”
“Except your own brother’s, it sounds like.”
Bledsoe frowned. “I have made you see me as judgmental. Perhaps I am, and perhaps I am wrong in being so. It’s merely that I know my brother well, not only who he is but what he is. And what he is not.”
“Ain’t he just spreading the same message as you in a different way?”
“What I seek to ‘spread’ is the true knowledge of the Lord,” Eben Bledsoe said. “What my brother spreads has more to do with mere feeling than knowledge, I fear. Have you ever attended one of his camp meetings?”
“I watched part of one from a distance one time. Never took part myself. I hear the voice of God clearer out in the wilderness alone than in the midst of a bunch of worshipers thrashing around like they’re dancing on embers.”
“Thrashing about. So you witnessed the so-called exercises that are one of the marks of Abner’s meetings?”
“I saw folks having the jerks, as they call it. Looked like they was being cracked like whips. Never saw the like before or since.”
“Such things, in my view, have little, if anything, to do with a God of dignity who tells us to do things decently and in order, Mr. Fain. I do not believe in a chaotic divinity.”
“So it sounds like your objection to your brother boils down to not liking his kind of religion.”
“There is more to it than that. There are things I know about him that indict and discredit him. There could never be cooperation between us, and he knows it as well as I.”
“I’ve heard his voice while he was preaching. Why does he sound like a Britisher while you don’t?”
Bledsoe chuckled. “Interesting, that little oddity! Both of us are English-born, and spent our young days in London. Once in America, though, I set it as my course and cause to adapt myself fully to my new land, including in my mannerisms and speech. I’m sure some of my native British tones and ways come through yet, but for the most part I have changed my patterns, I believe.”
“So you have. So have I. Living as I have so many years this side of the water, though, and taking the side of the Colonies in the revolt, my British tones have faded away, as yours have. But why not your brother’s?”
Bledsoe chuckled and spoke more softly. “Very simply, because he wishes to sound to American ears like the famed English evangelist Whitefield, whom he resembles physically and whose preaching achieved such fame and influence. Whitefield was successful, and my brother worships success.” Bledsoe paused, glanced about as if watched, then said in even quieter tones, “I’m ashamed to say it, but I think his fascination with Whitefield began when he learned the man suffered from crossing of the eyes. Abner has the same condition, and even though his condition is slight, I’m told he sometimes deliberately crosses his eyes more extremely while preaching, to make himself look all the more like Whitefield.”
“Maybe it’s working. Abner Bledsoe has gained fame and influence of his own.”
Eben Bledsoe shook his head sadly. “The truth is, Mr. Fain, that success as a preacher can be had without the slightest trace of true religion. The masses are easily stirred by that which touches their passions, their emotions, particularly in new country where education is lacking. Stirring the emotions is the operating method of the camp meeting preacher. And such is why education and wisdom of the sort I seek to bring to this border country is so vital: so that the rational mind will prevail over the irrational heart. It is with the mind that truth is apprehended and understood, Mr. Fain—the mind. Not the heart, not the passions. Man is called to know God, not merely feel him.”
Bledsoe filled his pipe again and lighted it with a flaming splinter from the nearby cook fire, then continued. “Here, tersely told, is the difference between me and my brother: He values success and adulation; he values religion as a show, a spectacle. I value it as the conduit whereby the elect are connected to God through his sovereign power. Abner values the individual, self-chosen spiritual experience; I value the covenant life as established by God and given to those whom he elects.”
Fain wasn’t sure he fully grasped the distinctions Bledsoe was making, and besides, his empty stomach was drawing his attention increasingly away from spiritual matters to a physical one: the bubbling kettle of venison stew being stirred by the Cherokee woman. Surely Bledsoe would invite him to eat. He was, after all, his guest.
Ultimately it was not Bledsoe, but James White, who issued the invitation. White, a pleasant-looking man in his late thirties, had been away from his fort through the day, and he was hungry upon returning. Fain, who knew White already as a neighbor, was pleased to accept the invitation. He waited with straining patience while Bledsoe led a long and windy prayer of thanks, then ate eagerly and sumptuously, praised the excellent seasoning of the venison, and its tenderness, to the delight of the Indian woman who had cooked it.
Fain passed the night in one of the fort’s several cabins, sleeping comfortably on a mat woven from reeds and cane. The next morning he took pains to avoid engaging in any deep conversations with Eben Bledsoe, eager to get on his way back to his own station, where other duties awaited.
But Bledsoe would not be fully put off. He cajoled Fain about the need for frequent communications via messenger regarding his progress in seeking his daughter. With that pledge made, he brought out a small leather purse bag with a substantial jingle. Advance pay for the undertaking. Bledsoe would cover all costs related to hiring messengers, finding lodging, and so on. It was an arrangement with which Fain could find little fault.
So Fain made all necessary promises and managed to maintain a pleasant demeanor, but struggled with the question as to whether he had made a sensible decision in agreeing to all this. To find a lone woman who could be almost anywhere in a broad wilderness, a woman who might have no interest at all in being found . . . could he do it? Should he?
There had been a time when such a big task would not have been daunting. He had gained the nickname of “Edohi” from his eternally traveling ways as a younger man, and particularly from his habit of moving from settlement to settlement all along the advancing borders of American civilization. He had visited or lived in so many different settlements that there was hardly a well-established fort or village that didn’t claim him as its own. The “Edohi” name came from the Cherokee, among whom he had moved freely and safely when times allowed. Edohi designated a traveler or a walker. So associated did the name become with Crawford Fain that when he established his own frontier station a few score miles away from White’s Fort, it quickly came to be called Fort Edohi, or Edohi Station. Several popular bards and storytellers, attracted by the poetry of the Edohi name and the adventurous life of the man to whom it was attached, presented works imaginatively based on his exploits that made him “Edohi” forever, and brought him a significant amount of fame besides.
Once away from White’s Fort and Eben Bledsoe, Fain set his horse on the woodland wagon trail toward Fort Edohi. As he rode, he felt a sharp prod of pain in his left ankle, and winced. It was a rheumatic reminder that he was not the young man he’d once been, a result of too many years spent treading miles of cold and damp wilderness ground on feet clad in moccasins that did little to keep out the chill or to support the ankles. Fain knew several aging long hunters like himself, and almost every one of them now walked with a limp and suffered in damp weather.
“Why did you tell
him yes, you fool?” Fain asked himself aloud. He answered his own question with more self-reproof: “Sentiment, old mammy kind of sentiment! You felt pity for a poor fellow missing his daughter. So you threw away all common sense and agreed to a job you may not be fit to do.”
Maybe Titus would lend a hand. And a pair of strong, young ankles that could still go when his father’s aching and aging ones would not.
Fain pulled himself out of his reverie and turned his attention forward, onto the trail ahead, the path to Fort Edohi.
CHAPTER THREE
Standing a few days later on a wood-fringed crag overlooking a broad valley nearly devoid of trees, a husky, thick-bearded man peered at the lone rider moving toward Fort Edohi on the edge of the big meadow. Though the distance was too far to let him be sure, the watcher was persuaded that the rider was none other than the famed Edohi himself, Crawford Fain. Jeremiah Littleton had seen the man often and could easily recognize the particular slump of his shoulders and tilt of his broad-brimmed slouch hat. Fain had traveled in and out of the fort several times over past few days while Littleton had been camped nearby, watching and awaiting an associate he’d summoned to meet him.
“Damn your eyes, Edohi!” he muttered softly toward the distant rider. “Your time will come, old fool!”
Movement on the side of the meadow where the stockade stood diverted Littleton’s attention. A wagon was rolling around the side of the fort, bearing timbers, atop which sat a few men. The wagon jolted along a little faster than it should, hit a bump, and one of the men perched on the cargo was knocked off and hit the ground hard. The others laughed, but were too far away for Littleton to hear them.
The fallen man got up fast to make sure he avoided the rear wheels of the wagon. One of his companions extended his hand down to help him back onto the wagon, but the man shook his head, opting to walk. The wagon hit another bump, the man with the extended hand almost fell off, and this time it was the walking man’s turn to laugh.
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