Maggie struggled with her patience, and with a vague sense of discomfort that the preacher roused in her, a feeling that something was just not right about the man.
At length she realized what it was, and asked her mother about it that night before retiring. “Mother, should a preacher have the smell of whiskey on his breath? Because the Reverend Abner Bledsoe does. He would leave the room from time to time, saying he was going off to pray, then come back in and his breath would smell stronger of it. Is that a bad thing?”
“I can only hope you were mistaken, dear, because yes, it is a bad thing. A man of God should not be given to much liquor. But preachers, I suppose, are nothing but men, just like other men. And men are often weak and prone to sin.”
“I think Reverend Bledsoe might be like that.”
“Perhaps so.”
Of the three outlaws who had hanged Gilly, Bart Clemons had been the most unsettled and repelled by the process. Yet he was drawn back to the scene days later, wondering whether Gilly might still be hanging there as a bird-pecked corpse. It was the strongest of unwanted compulsions. He simply had to know.
He had no reason to expect the body would not be there. The hanging had taken place in a remote area, away from common trails and roads, hidden by forest and undergrowth. Most likely Gilly was still dangling, weathered and decaying, a sight Clemons dreaded seeing and was sure he would never forget after he did. Still he was driven to go there, because however horrible Gilly’s remains might be up on that rope, they were there because of what Clemons and his partners had done, and he, for one, could not shy away from it. Clemons knew he would never rest as well again until he had faced the full, sickening results of their act.
As he clambered up a timbered hillside and began to recognize that he was indeed at the right spot and growing very near to where Gilly had to be, Clemons began to brace himself for the stench of death. By now Gilly would surely be growing quickly ripe, baked in the sun, infiltrated by maggots, and damaged by the carrion birds of the forest. As bad as the sight promised to be, the smell would probably be worse.
Yet as he neared the place, Clemons smelled nothing. The breeze was quite fresh and clean, though it blew from the direction of the place where Gilly had died. Clemons paused repeatedly, sniffing the air and wondering whether his sense of smell was failing him. Surely there would have to be a stench!
There was none, though, and when at last he reached the location and, after bracing himself, strode boldly into the clearing to face the results of what he and the others had done, there was nothing to be seen. Nothing but an empty noose, moving slightly in the wind. No corpse swinging, no corpse on the ground, and judging from the lack of smell, no corpse dragged into the woods nearby, either.
Gilly was gone. It was as simple as that. They’d left him hanging dead—for surely he’d been dead, with his eyes bulging and unblinking and his tongue thrust out between his swelling lips, an image Clemons could not shake from his mind—and yet he was gone. As if his body had simply turned to smoke and blown away.
Or been carried away by something or someone.
Fear overcame Clemons. If someone had found the hanging body, there might be interest out there in finding the responsible parties. He glanced around as if suddenly the forest around him might belch forth an entire posse of vengeful regulators, coming to get him and punish him for what he, Sikes, and Jones had done to their old partner in crime.
He fully grasped for the first time the fact that it didn’t really matter that Gilly had deserved the hanging they gave him. The hanging party had not been constables or sheriffs or officers of the court, carrying out a prescribed sentence of law. The hangmen had been common criminals themselves, acting on their own.
Clemons pondered this, froze where he was a few moments, then turned and ran into the woods as if hounds were upon him. In his mind was an image not of Gilly, but himself, hanging from a noose with his eyes bulging and tongue protruding.
He ran a long way before exhaustion brought him to the ground. As he had done before when they had hanged Gilly, he retched violently.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I have somewhere I want to go, and I’d like you to go with me,” said Crawford Fain to his son.
“Where is that, Pap?” Titus replied. The pair were walking in the vicinity of the cabin of Christopher Taylor on the outskirts of town. The Taylor house had stood nearly a decade, one of the oldest residences in the backcountry. The late lawyer John Harkin had used it for a partial template in designing his own house and inn.
“Well, it just came to me yesterday that it’s been a long time since I’ve been this far to the east, and there’s a reasonable good chance I’ll never be this far over again. And I’ve got an old friend I ain’t seen for the longest time, living in the Doe River country. You ever heard me mention McCoy Atley? Old trader amongst the Cherokee, and one of the best dang hunters I’ve ever shared powder with?”
“I have heard you talk of him, yes.”
“I got to take my chance to go see him. If he’s still there to be seen.”
“What do you mean?”
“McCoy is an older man than me. Good ten or twelve years older. I’ve heard a rumor he had died. I don’t know that it’s true, but I need to know. I’m going to take myself a little hunt-and-hike trip down to the Doe and look him up. If he’s there we’ll have us a good visit. If he’s gone I’ll give my respects to his widow. Half-Cherokee white woman name of Polly. Good gal.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“I do. It’ll give me some good time with my son with nobody else about, and I can tell you more of that family history I got started telling you before we got to town here. Without other ears around to hear it and other heads and hearts to pass judgment on it all.”
“Pass judgment . . . What the deuce are you going to tell me, Pap?”
“You got to wait to find out. And you got to agree to go on this hunt with me.”
“No Langdon Potts or Micah Tate to go with us this time?”
“Not this time. Just me and you.”
Titus scratched his temple. “Sounds good to me, Pap. Right good at that. I never been to the Doe River country.”
Fain slapped his son on the shoulder, grinning widely. “It’ll be a good journey, son.”
“What about Eben Bledsoe’s daughter? We were sent out to find her, and so far we ain’t. Story we heard was she’d been seen here around Jonesborough, yet here we are getting ready to traipse off somewhere else.”
“Well, I ain’t found her in Jonesborough since we got here. Have you? And I’ve been asking around just about everybody I meet. Nobody’s seen a yellow-haired woman with a marked eye. Maybe we’ll find her along the Doe somewhere. Meantime, Potts and Micah can keep on prodding around here for her and maybe they’ll turn her up, if she’s really hereabouts.”
“Sounds like you’re determined to do this, Pap.”
“A man’s got to do certain things sometimes. And what I’ve got to do is call on my old friend McCoy Atley.”
Jeremiah Littleton had never been much of a tobacco smoker, but with him seated comfortably in the common room of Jonesborough’s Harkin Inn, his false leg propped on a stool that was just the right height to maximize his comfort, the clay pipe he puffed on was providing a good deal of pleasure. Adding to that was conversation with a man who had dropped in to have a gander at his wooden leg. Since becoming a “hopper,” as he sometimes called himself since his leg loss, he’d been surprised at the level of unabashed interest people took in the novelty of a wooden limb. It had actually worried him some before he shaved off his beard. Now that he was whiskerless, and starting to lose some of his corpulence, he did not believe it probable that any casual interaction with strangers would be likely to prompt recognition. He was actually beginning to think of himself as Lyle Kirk every now and then.
The man with whom Littleton was chatting had come over from Limestone Creek on some matter of personal business, and h
ad seen Littleton thumping down the street on his peg leg. He’d followed him a short distance, unnoticed, then watched Littleton enter the Harkin Inn. Needing a bed for the night himself, he’d rented a room from the Harkins and buttonholed Littleton into conversation by the cold hearth.
“You do good on that leg, Mr. Kirk,” the man said to Littleton. “I saw your skill at it while you was tromping down the street earlier. I knowed a fellow who lost his leg at the King’s Mountain fight, and he never did learn to use a false leg. And all he’d lost was his foot and ankle on the right leg. So he had more left to work with than you did, seems to me. But he never did learn that peg leg and wound up on crutches. That’s how he gets by today, just crutching along, swinging that leg with the missing foot.”
“I reckon I was lucky, getting a peg that fit me well,” Littleton said. “That carpenter knew what he was doing, and he got the inside part, where the end of my leg slips in, so smooth that it fit like a glove. I had some trouble for a while, with it pinching and my leg hurting and all, but now it seems the best it’s been. I can walk at a right smart pace, as you saw.”
“Surely so,” the man said. Just as he spoke, the door opened and Langdon Potts walked in. Potts nodded a friendly greeting at Littleton. He didn’t recognize Littleton, despite having seen him in Fort Edohi, because of Littleton’s missing beard.
But when Potts looked over at the man who had been conversing with Littleton, he stared in surprise. The man gave a similar look back to him.
“John? John Crockett? Am I remembering right?”
“Hello, Potts! Fancy seeing you here! I thought you was going on over to Fort Edohi.”
“Been there and a few other places since I saw you last, John,” Potts said.
“You two know each other?” Littleton asked.
“We met back in August,” Potts said.
“Eighteenth of August,” Crockett said. “I remember because it was the day after my latest child was born.”
“How is little David?” asked Potts.
“Growing like a weed, sir. Like a weed.”
“Congratulations to you, sir, on the child,” said Littleton to Crockett. He stuck a hand out toward Potts. “Name’s Lyle Kirk.”
“Langdon Potts. Just call me Potts. Good to meet you, Lyle.”
“Small world we live in, I reckon,” Littleton observed.
“I reckon so,” Crockett said. “Seems it happens quite often you’ll run into a stranger and find he’s not really a stranger at all.”
“I’ve been traveling with Crawford Fain,” Potts said. “And it seems there ain’t no strangers with him. He knows most everybody, and everybody surely does know him.”
“Famous man,” Littleton said. He was eager for the subject to change. He feared the talk about Fain might cause Potts’s mind to drift back to that night of the camp meeting at Fort Edohi and the one-legged, bearded man who had slept on a pallet in the corner. Recognition would not be welcome, especially considering that Littleton had stolen a horse when he fled Fort Edohi that night, and it could have been Potts’s horse, for all he knew.
For Littleton, the world grew even smaller with Crockett’s next question to Potts. “Did you stop by Dixon’s and get yourself a drink as I told you to that evening?”
“I stopped. Didn’t drink, though. He nigh threw me out because of it.”
Crockett laughed, nodding. “That’s Dixon for you!”
Littleton asked, “Are you talking of the Dixon who moves from here to there setting up taverns? Ugly fellow, no hair?”
“That’s the one. You know him?”
“Drank at his place recently. He ain’t in Greene no more. Farther west now.”
“He moves a lot,” John Crockett said. “Made me mad as spitfire when he left Greene County, though. I turned up many a cup at Dixon’s, and I miss that place.”
“It truly is a small world,” observed Potts. “I heard in town, Mr. Kirk, that you are now a partner with the famous preacher Bledsoe, and will be presenting, at his camp meetings, the story of a rescue by an angel that you experienced?”
“That’s true. The reverend is a fellow lodger in this very inn and is paying my own lodging because I’m working for him now.”
“I saw Abner Bledsoe the night I visited Dixon’s near Greeneville. He came in to announce his camp meeting soon to be held at Fort Edohi.”
“That was the very meeting that was taking place when I lost my leg, but was given angelic rescue.”
“As we’ve been saying, small world it is.”
“Destiny is at work, gentlemen, bringing us all together in one place,” said John Crockett, a far more philosophical comment than he was typically prone to give.
“I’m not sure I believe in destiny,” Littleton noted. “It’s not truly so strange that folks would meet up more than once, considering how new this country is and how few still the towns and settlements are. Men move about, their paths will cross.”
At that moment, Michael Harkin walked into the common room, tossing and catching a coin. As he’d been taught to do, he smiled politely at the visitors and nodded his head. “Always be cordial to our patrons,” his mother had directed him.
“You’ve come into some money, son!” Crockett said.
“Yes, sir,” replied Michael, holding the coin between thumb and forefinger and showing it to the men. “It’s pay I earned from Mr. Stuart for carrying supper to old ‘Jingo’ down in the log jail. Mr. Stuart didn’t want to do it himself this time, and had had no one else handy for the task, so he hired me. Paid me good, too.”
“Who is this ‘Jingo’?” asked Littleton.
“Oh, that ain’t his real name,” said Michael. “It’s just what I called him because he says it all the time. ‘By jingo’ this and ‘by jingo’ that.”
Littleton scooted quickly to the edge of his seat. “What’s this fellow’s real name? For I used to know a man who turned that phrase every few minutes when he spoke.”
“This fellow’s name is Clark, I think,” said the boy.
“Is this the fellow who was seemingly hanged, yet lived?” asked Crockett.
“That’s the one, sir. The mark on his neck is clear to see.”
“I heard talk of him on the street today,” Crockett said.
“Hanged?” Littleton queried. “What story is this?”
Michael waited to see if Crockett would answer, but he did not. All eyes turned to him.
“Well, sir, Clark is a man who was carried into town by night and left on the church doorstep. He’d been injured about the neck, the marks showing that he’d been hanged alive, but taken down before he had time to die. The one who took him down, not the same as who had hanged him to begin with, carried him into town on his shoulders and left him. Mr. Stuart, who owns the finest house in town, took him in to let him recover. Clark is being kept down in the log jail building, and Mr. Stuart is keeping him fed from his own larder.”
“What’s this fellow Clark look like?”
“Very thin, small-framed fellow. That’s how he was able to live for a time while hanging, Mr. Stuart thinks. If he’d been heavier he’d have choked faster.”
Littleton nodded. “And this Clark says ‘by jingo’ frequently?”
“He said it three times just during the time I was bringing in his supper tonight,” said Michael.
“Why is he locked in the jail?”
“He ain’t locked in, sir. He’s just there because there ain’t no prisoners there just now, and it’s a safe place for him to heal up. He could leave anytime he wanted, if he wasn’t lame.”
“Lame?”
“Broken ankle. It seems likely that it happened when he was took out of the noose. He dropped and broke it. Then the one who’d taken him down heaved him up on his shoulder and marched him all the way here into Jonesborough, dead of night.”
“Sounds like another ‘angel rescue,’ ” Crockett observed, his eye on Littleton.
Littleton spoke: “So this hurt fellow
now is laid up in an unlocked cell room in the big log jail building. And if he was able to walk, he could get up and leave whenever he wanted.”
“That’s right, sir. He’s free to come and go as soon as he’s able, and other folks can just as easy get to him.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. I may have to pay a visit to Mr. Jingo before long.”
“I can take you there if you want me to,” the boy offered.
Littleton shook his head. “I can find him. I’d rather go see him alone.”
Shortly after one o’clock the next morning, Gilly Cobble woke up to find a stranger standing by his cot and looking down at him by the light of a candle in his hand. Gilly looked up at the face in the flickering light and noted the smile, but also a familiarity in the looks that he couldn’t quite pin down.
“Confusing, ain’t it, Gilly, seeing me without my whiskers?”
Gilly sucked in a hard breath. Oh God. Oh no. Not him! But he knew the voice. And now that the whiskers had been mentioned, he recognized the face. Particularly the eyes. He’d always be able to know Jeremiah Littleton by his eyes if nothing else.
“Jeremiah . . .”
“Yep, it’s me. And you thought I was dead, didn’t you!”
“I—I’d heard you got out alive. I’m glad you did, Jeremiah. I never wanted no harm to come to you!”
“That right? Is that why you shoved me over the edge of a bluff and just ran off and left me there in that hole?’Cause you didn’t want no harm to come to me? You figured I’d be safe and sound down there?”
“I’m mighty sorry, Jeremiah. Mighty sorry.”
“You ain’t even started being sorry yet, Gilly. But don’t fret. You’ll get your chance. But it won’t last long. You’ll not be feeling anything at all when I’m done with you. Except maybe fire and brimstone in a place you and me are both bound to go.”
Gilly sat up, wincing with pain as his ankle scooted on the cot. “Dear God!” he said tightly.
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