Lost Nation: A Novel

by Jeffrey Lent

  She opened the door and held one hand on Luther’s head and called in the boys. As they approached into the dim spread of light the dog snarled and she told him to hush and he did. As the boys entered the dog sniffed at each one and then Sally took her hand from his head and told him to go on and he trotted out into the night to prowl and paint his patrolled ground with urine.

  “Can a one of you milk a cow?”

  She and Fletcher went to the barn with a bucket and basket for eggs and left Cooper to build the fires up and fry the trout in the spider. And, Sally figured, poke around wherever he wanted or could. She still had the key pouch around her neck. She threw hay to the oxen and cow, disturbed the already night-roosted chickens for their eggs and shut them in. Went back to the stable to find Fletcher standing beside the stool with a half-bucket of milk while the cow switched her hindquarters at him, lifting first one foot then the other.

  “I guess my touch idn’t what she’s used to.”

  “It’s all right. You got enough so she won’t burst before tomorrow.”

  They ate the trout with old bread toasted on forks over the coals and drank tea touched with rum. The dog stretched on the hearth, his eyes traveling from one boy to the other and back again. They had the bar on the door but no one came knocking. Sally guessed everyone knew Blood had been taken. It irked her none of the men beyond Peter Chase had come checking on her. Frightened her a little also. As if not only did all know what had befallen Blood but cared not what happened to her. For the first time she doubted Van Landt. But then he was not the sort to come but wait to be sought. He was also, she realized, save the odd trapper, the one man who might know nothing of these past events. Which made her wonder where Gandy was. He should be bothering her, trying to get free drinks for dreamed-up reasons. For the first time she was truly afraid.

  As if he knew her thoughts Cooper said, “It’s awful quiet. You’d think men’d be clamoring to learn what happened.”

  “Seems like maybe they all know.”

  “Some kind of deal was struck?”

  She shook her head. “It seems so. But I wouldn’t know what sort.”

  Cooper nodded. “Think Blood knows?”

  “If he did he didn’t show it.”

  “Maybe he does by now. Where he is, you said it’s a half day’s ride?”

  “I ain’t sure. It’s how it sounded.”

  “A hard tramp.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means we leave the Dutchman and his horses out of it altogether. Just go afoot ourselves and see what we can see.”

  “No,” she said. “Blood idn’t going to like it, I don’t do as he says.”

  “It don’t seem to me he’s in a position to like it or no. We don’t even know what trouble’s upon him. Surely more than he’d guessed at when they come after him this morning.”

  She poured herself more tea. “How do you plan to explain to him just why it’s you two instead of Van Landt?”

  “We just say the Dutchman wouldn’t come. And we come along and found you distressed.”

  “What happens when we get back here, he learns different?”

  Cooper was quiet a moment. Then, his voice level he said, “Well. Horseback or shanks-mare, it’s a fair piece of rough country to travel between there and here.”

  She said, “What is it you got planned for him?”

  “I don’t know. I won’t know until I’m up alongside him.”

  “All these years, you don’t have a plan made?”

  His eyes flicked off her. “I’ve got lots of ideas. But until I’m face to face with him and he knows me I don’t know exactly what I’ll want to do. So, I ain’t going to bother myself with a plan except to see what happens.”

  It was quiet awhile. Then Cooper said, “What we ought to do is bed down. If we got to walk we need to leave well on before first light.”

  “We ain’t going to walk,” Sally said. “I’m going up to Van Landt’s first thing and get whatever horses he’ll have to let.”

  Cooper said, “What makes you think you should come along on this?’

  She gazed hard upon him. “Seems to me you got that question backwards.”

  Cooper was quick. “You got a little soft spot for Blood?”

  “I’ve known worse men. Blood’s hard but mostly he’s done right by me.”

  They were all quiet a moment. Then Fletcher spoke. “She’s got the right to come.”

  Cooper said, “That means you gave it to her.”

  “No. It means she’s got the right to see what happens. So she knows herself and don’t have to make up her mind from whatever she hears.”

  Cooper said, “Brother, you’re in bad shape.”

  “No,” Fletcher said. “I’m good.”

  Again it was quiet. All three watching the fire, not looking at the others. Sally thinking there was no good way to respond but to leave this mild declaration out in the air, hanging, unanswered.

  After a time Cooper said, “What makes you think that farmer’ll let horses to you and two men he ain’t never seen before?”

  Sally bent and unlaced her boot and took it off, leaning part of the time on Fletcher’s shoulder and he reached up and held her upper arm to help hold her steady. She held the boot in her lap and reached in and brought out the gold piece and handed it to Cooper. She said, “How much is that worth?”

  He held it. Then said, “That’s a hundred dollar gold piece.”

  “Could I buy a horse with that?”

  “I imagine most any one you’d want. Is this his?”

  She reached and took it from him. She did not put it back in her boot but stood and placed it on the mantel. She sat back down and said, “There’s more where that came from. If Van Landt’s got three horses we’ll end up with em. Even if we have to buy em just for the day.”

  Cooper said, “I thought we’d need four.”

  “I can’t ride. I ain’t never been on a horse in my life.”

  Fletcher said, “I thought you wanted to come.”

  She said, “I’m coming all right.” She gazed now into the fire. “I thought I’d double-up. Ride behind one of you.”

  Fletcher said, “That’d be fine.”

  “Well,” said Cooper. “I guess we’ll have to see what those horses look like.”

  After brief discussion, doleful eyes from Fletcher that she ignored, the boys went to sleep in Sally’s bed while she climbed the ladder and bedded herself on Blood’s simple pallet. She lay without sleeping much of the night, the blankets steeped with the scent of Blood, not sour but stained with his agonies and night sweats. Unsure of herself, the boys downstairs, the day ahead, the day just passed, all other days to come. Whatever else, she saw herself severing from Blood, although without a guarantee of outcome or escape. Simply the inevitable turn, was how she saw it. She thought of Cooper speaking of the futility of plans. A swirl of a girl, guts cramped and brain aroused with trying to sort things out. The night passed, faster than possible. She must have slept some.

  Still dark when she pushed the blankets off and went down the ladder into the kitchen and pokered up the fire to boil water for tea and broke eggs into the greased spider and knelt stirring them with just the light from the fire leaping out past her as it gusted toward the fireback and she thought There’s air moving. When the eggs were cooked and the tea steeped she lit a candle and went to wake the brothers who were curled together in the bed, wrapped up one against the other almost like lovers and she stood over the bed a time looking down at them, considering the pair, wondering how they might fit or fall with her. Studying their love. Would she break that, enter into it? She stood long enough so wax fell hot onto her hand. Then tipped the candle just enough so she was burned again. To halt her self-pity. Whatever these boys had with each other was nothing to be envied. Born of and burdened with sadness. She had enough of that, herself.

  She leaned forward and rocked Fletcher’s hip until he turned and she stood watching him swim u
p from sleep. He grinned at her. She cut any greeting. “We got maybe half a hour of full dark left. I been thinking it’s been too quiet and that’s bound to change. Most likely today. We need to get out from here. I got tea hot and eggs cooked.”

  She let the dog out while they ate but he was quiet. She took a sock and went into the tavern and unlocked the storeroom and cashbox and filled the sock with the heaviest of the coins and locked the box and knotted the sock and went out and handed it to Fletcher. She went to the mantel for the goldpiece left there the night before and it was gone. When she turned Cooper was holding it out silent.

  “You keep it,” she said. “I got a couple hid on me. It won’t hurt we spread it around a little.” She went to the door and called the dog in and the three of them took up their rifle muskets and pouches and went out into the dark. The stars were out but smudged in the east. The air was warm and moving from the south. They went up the rough road along Perry Stream. She guessed they could make Van Landt’s by dawn.

  Blood woke to the concussion of horses maneuvering formations on the packed earth before the garrison, the blunt monosyllabic commands, the near-wet clash of sabers being presented and then ringing back into scabbards. The darkness within the stockade was no longer absolute but with no clear source had attained only a low murk. He got to his feet and did what he could to brush the dirt from his clothes and wiped his face with his sleeve, one wrist manacle finding a bruise from his handling of the night before. He regretted the vomit in the drinking water but there was nothing to be done but move the bucket over beside the unused slop bucket. He stood with his feet apart and his manacled hands before him and faced the door and waited. Determined to let the night be past and confront only what the day brought.

  Sometime midmorning he heard boots approaching and the rod being lifted and he squinted his eyes against the light before the door opened. It was the same two troopers who’d brought his dinner. They stood in the door a minute studying him and he guessed he looked pretty bad. One nudged a boot against the dirt where his vomit had missed the water bucket and looked back at Blood. Blood met his eye and said nothing. The trooper spat and both moved in and took Blood by the elbows and led him outside. The day was bright, the air soft. As if summer returned. They escorted him along the stable and turned at the road that ran back into the village when he spied a well and he stopped, short enough so the men either side jolted against him.

  Looking straight ahead he said, “You’re taking me to the magistrate.” It was not a question.

  They gripped him hard and the one on his right said, “We ain’t supposed to talk to you. Step up now.” And they moved against his upper arms as a man will a horse frozen in a balk.

  Blood said, “Unless you’re taking me off into the woods to hang me without a judge I’d like the chance to wash myself. My hands and face is all. It’ll do me no good to offend the magistrate further than I already have.”

  “Shut up,” said the other trooper. “Get along.”

  “Wait,” said the first. “He’s awful ripe. They might not be pleased, we brought him in like this.”

  Blood waited, silent. After a moment the second trooper said, “I don’t know they care one way or another.”

  Blood thought That’s not good.

  The first trooper said, “I’m for letting him wash. I’d like to think, it was me, someone might do the same.”

  The second said, “If he makes a problem, it idn’t going to be on me.”

  The first said, “He idn’t going to make any problem. Are you now?” And reached up and clouted the knot behind Blood’s ear.

  They cranked up a bucket of water and balanced it on the stone well-ring. Blood scooped water with cupped palms and drank. Then scooped again onto his face and was savage with his fists against his skin. He washed his hands and finally lifted them still wet to run them through his hair so it was as flat and even as could be hoped. Sometime the day before he’d lost the leather string he tied it back with. He pushed it behind his ears. He turned to the first trooper and said, “I thank you.”

  The man said, “Come along. We wasted too much time already.”

  The village was smaller than it appeared the evening before and daylight revealed it to be more coarse and mean than the lit beckoning windows had caused him to think. The painted houses were peeling and blistering where the clapboards had not been allowed to season and the yards were irregular trodden dirt with meager flowerbeds already blackened by frost. Heaps of split firewood were piled in mounds by backdoors and chickens worried amidst the weed patches. A sow and litter were lying in the sun-warmed road and as the three of them went around her she lifted her head to cast a red ominous eye upon them. Laundry was spread on bushes with ends and edges and arms or legs lifted by the passing air. A man with an ox hauling a stone boat came up the road toward them, the boat loaded with dried stalks of Canada corn stripped already of their ears, the stalks to be stored to make a poor winter fodder. The man didn’t even look at Blood or the troopers guarding him. Blood wondered if this was because he was of so little concern or if it betrayed some unknown attitude the citizenry held toward the royal troops.

  They turned past a stone-post fence and entered the lane of a house no greater or different than the others but for the sweated horse tied to a rail before an ell-shed. Blood looked at the roan horse. He’d seen that horse before.

  The officer Quigley came from the house into the yard to meet them. The troopers halted Blood. Quigley regarded him carefully, as if assessing the condition of his charge.

  He said, “You look well rested.”

  Blood was silent.

  The lieutenant said, “Or perhaps not. It makes little difference, I suspect, to a man of your stripe.”

  Blood remained silent.

  “But enough of pleasantry,” the lieutenant said. “Step up and enter the house.”

  The troopers released him and Blood passed the officer and one foot at a time went up the three steps as effortlessly as possible, as if the chain between his ankles were merely decorative. His hands clasped before him, he opened the door, the lieutenant close behind him. They were in a small chamber off the kitchen, a pantry of sorts, with crocks of pickle on the shelves of one wall and giant winter squash on the floor and an assortment of leather-bound legal encyclopedia on the opposite shelving. Through the doorway he saw a large fireplace and the corner of a table and there was the residue of voices that fell off as he’d come through the initial door. Without pause he continued into the kitchen.

  It was an odd room. A kitchen in every way but twice the size of any he’d seen in this far north country. The table also was oversized, a massif of dark wood more rectangular than square with fine-turned heavy legs and inlaid scrollwork along the edges. At the far end of the table, next to the fire-corner, there was a small raised platform with a heavy armchair holding a man of slight build and fine features, with the pale wet blue eyes of a redheaded man. His hair was thin on top but a brush on the sides and back. He wore a white shirt and canary waistcoat and before him on the table was a leatherbound ledger opened to a page already half covered with a fine hand. A clay inkwell and soapstone stand held a pair of quills with a small trimming knife in a tray along the front of the stand. There was another clay pot of sand beside the ledger and beside this was a brass round-faced official die and a stick of sealing wax.

  At the side of the table with his back to the fire, seated beside the magistrate, was Mose Hutchinson.

  “Sheriff Hutchinson,” said Blood. “I’m pleased your leg has healed to enable you to ride.” The mystery of this affair had tipped open a bit.

  “My leg throbs considerable and will never be sound again,” the sheriff said. “I’m only here as witness to the proceedings. To ensure there is justice meted equitable to the satisfaction of the laws of both Canada and the United States.”

  “Ah. Well,” said Blood. “I had not expected you to be my advocate.”

  “It’s the magistrate you s
hould petition, Blood. The grievance against you is his jurisdiction.”

  Blood bowed his head toward the sheriff. “I was not aware I was making a petition Sheriff. But your point is taken.” He turned to the red-haired man and said, “My name is Blood. I know not yours nor how to address you. But I assure you that in the matter of the deceased Laberge my own role was passive. He murdered a man and was then set upon by that fellow’s companions and hanged. All this occurred within or nearby the public house I maintain in the territory known as the Indian Stream, which is in dispute between Canada and New Hampshire. I was not in favor of his hanging but could not intervene—the choler of the crowd was too high and the deceased Laberge was rash perhaps but nevertheless guilty of murder. There is no dispute there.”

  The red-haired man studied Blood. After a time he spoke—an unfortunate voice, the shimmering whinny of an adolescent boy. Blood had to wonder who had chosen this man to mete justice. The magistrate said, “My name is Morris. You may address me as Esquire Morris or Your Honor, as you choose. The rope used to murder Monsieur Laberge belonged to you, is that correct?”

  “It was taken from my barn.”

  “You attended the hanging?”

  “It was a tree before my public house they hung him from. I was there.”

  “You did not intercede.”

  “I already addressed that.”

  “You already addressed that.”

  “Your Honor. It was late. He’d killed a man. The men were riled. And there was spirits consumed.”

  “Spirits you provided.”

  “That I do commerce in.”

  “And you could not have stepped forward? As the proprietor. And suggested that perhaps these men wait until the morning. To consider their actions in the light of day?”

  “I did not.”

  “And why not? Mister Blood? That is your name, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “An unfortunate name, under the circumstances.”

  “It’s my name,” Blood said. “No, I did not step forward. There was a man with his throat cut open dead on my floor. And the others, they were a group of men—which can become something more than that. I felt a risk to myself. It was not just the murder Laberge done. Two nights before without farewell and in secret the rest of the Canadians making homestead in the territory had left. It made men uneasy. Why they did that. What did they know, to leave silent, in secret? Now, maybe they just decided it was time to go. There has been some turmoil of late. But to the men it didn’t feel right. And more than a few wondered why Laberge had remained. It didn’t look right. Like there was something more behind it.”