He had never managed to outguess his mother, and his wife was going to be no different. With her usual directness, Judith turned to him as they camped for the night. “I am now your wife, David, and I intend to do what is right; find us a private place, for I am embarrassed to sleep with you, so near to your people.”
Only she could possibly have come out with it in such a straightforward way, without blushing or beating about the bushes. He almost laughed, though he knew that would have been fatal.
Instead, he nodded gravely. “I will go and look for someplace that is private, yet is not so far away that Joseph cannot keep watch for any danger in the night.”
He located a leafy spot, sheltered by the leaning trunk of a huge oak. And there, though there were surprises for them both, he consummated their marriage, feeling with some dismay that Judith’s obvious pain and his own difficulty were somehow his fault.
Yet he comforted her, and when he again made love to her the pain was less, leaving him with hope that things would be better later. Her hard work in the fields must have affected her body more than one would think, he decided.
After that their days were so long, so difficult, and so filled with effort that neither of them had the energy for anything except sleep. They climbed steep, wooded mountains, coming out atop bare slopes of stone from which they could see for miles across river bottoms and endless forest.
As they traveled, David occupied his thoughts with plans for the future. He talked quietly with Judith in the night, sharing with her his discoveries among those who had received word from kin already in Texas.
“There are very few Anglos, as they call us, in the place to which we are headed,” he told her. “The last word the Quentins had was that the local Indians are friendly, and the white community is growing slowly, as others come into the country.
“The Mexican government seems not to object to having this empty country colonized. Not many of their own people want to leave Mexico City to live in such a primitive spot. It may be that we can gain official title to the land we choose, without having to use any of Mama’s gold.”
He knew Judith too well to doubt that the prospect of rich land, free for the working, appealed to her as much as to him. She was the child of generations of farmers, and he had always known she loved even the hard field work she had done all her life. Her eyes brightened in the firelight as he talked, and he could see his own dreams for the future reflected there.
They went on in hope, struggling through swamps, over mountains, along rivers that held no ferry or bridge or even farm for many miles. They were moving along such a stream, bitten by gnats and mosquitoes, their feet thick with mud and their horses snorting and snuffling, when an arrow thunked into a willow beside David’s head.
He dropped instantly into the tangle of button willow, snakeweed, and thick grass, hearing his companions’ movements as they followed suit. Someone, probably Judith, slapped a horse, which dashed away noisily along the game trail they had been following.
David hissed softly. In reply he heard a twitter that was Joseph’s version of a willow wren, another hiss, which was Judith, and a flutter, which was Cassie’s best effort at a whistle. So. All were safe, so far.
He silently loaded his musket, checked his knife in its sling at his side, and slipped on his belly along the ground, concealed by the thick growth along the stream. At that level the small animals made their own roads, and he found runways along which he could slither without making much sound.
It was hot down there, and sweat stung his eyes and trickled around his rib cage as he crawled, but he had noted the angle of the arrow in the willow. Its owner would be somewhere in this direction, and if he could, he was going to locate and kill him. David had no intention of losing his family at this point in his life.
He had not thought Joseph would do anything except wait for him to act, but in a moment he heard, off to his right, a gurgle and a swish, as if some uncontrolled motion disturbed the brush. David paused, listening. Then, directly ahead, he heard another movement. Someone there had also heard the small sounds and was moving to investigate.
David waited, straining his ears to catch almost inaudible frictions of leaf upon leaf or twig under moccasin, until he had located his quarry. Then he rose, musket ready, and charged toward the area just ahead of the last detected sound.
The bronzed shape turned swiftly, bringing up his bow, but David’s musket roared, black smoke filled the air, and the Indian went down. David dropped again at once, but there was no more disturbance in the wood along the little river.
Joseph came stooping along a path. “That’s both on ’em, Sah,” he said. “I got the other ’un over there in the bushes. Looks like Cherokee to me, Sah. They been movin’ west, folks says. Likely we done found hunters for a bigger bunch, you think?”
It was more than likely, David thought. He had known families that had moved onto the lands of the Cherokee, back in the east, taking over their well tended fields, even their big houses, and seizing their slaves.
Though it was plain that God meant the white man to rule this new world, he wondered how he might feel if someone came out of nowhere and took what he had worked hard to produce. But it was a troubling thought, and he shook it away as the two of them returned to the river bank where the women waited.
“Stand!” came the challenge. Judith’s voice. She knew to load her weapon and keep watch until the outcome of the encounter was clear.
“Just us,” he called softly. “We got them, Wife. Now we better go on as fast as we can, because they may have angry relatives coming along almost any minute.”
Before they had gone far, they caught up with the horse that had been used to distract the attackers. He had stopped in a patch of tender grass and was not pleased when they led him forward.
They went fast, and before the sun had moved much across the sky they found a ford that was not too dangerous to try. The early rains had dwindled now, and the water was half down the steep banks. At one spot deer evidently came down to drink, wearing a slot in the sandy-red soil; down this cut they rode to a tiny beach leading into the mud-colored stream.
Jess snorted as she stepped into the water, dancing as if she were afraid, though David knew it to be an act she always performed, no matter who rode her. Behind Joseph and Cassie, riding Blue Roan, David shepherded his group across the stretch of water, watching sharply for floating debris. He’d known more than one person to drown, pushed under by a floating log or other unexpected flotsam on a river or creek.
Water moccasins were lively in the heat of summer, and he saw two swimming in the shallows, their wicked heads just above water, their long bodies flexing gently with the ripples.
“Watch out when you go ashore,” he called to Judith. “There’s a lot of snakes about. And don’t dismount until you can see your footing clear and plain.”
The way Jess picked her way up the farther bank, David knew she hadn’t missed those mottled shapes. The mare went forward to a stretch of grass and only then would she consent to stop and rest. They all took pains to watch their footing as they moved about the small clearing, getting a bit of food and going into the bushes to relieve themselves.
Judith asked, as they got ready to move again, “Do you think crossing the river will keep those angry relatives from following us? We leave a mighty plain trail, whatever we do.”
David had been thinking about that, but he knew the horses had to be rested or his people would all be afoot in this unforgiving country. “I think maybe those folks are out of their own country, just the way we are. Could be, they don’t know their way around any better than we do. They don’t know what enemies they might find this side of the river, and that should work for us.” He chuckled wryly. “Then, of course, we don’t know that either, do we?”
He checked the river from the shelter of the brush behind which they were hidden. No shadowy figure was visible beyond the tawny ripples of the stream, and nothing disturbed the water i
tself. Still, it would be foolish to follow the dim trail that had led them so far. It was time to strike off into the wilderness, using only the stars and the sun and their own native wits for guidance.
He did not mount, and the others followed his example. Moving through the heavy forest did not mean concealment by undergrowth. Here the trees were old, their branches interlocked overhead, shading the thick mulch of the forest floor, where no bushes and few vines seemed to grow.
This meant easy going for both horses and people, but a rider was more visible and more vulnerable than one afoot. A walker was always able to duck behind tree trunks or drop to the ground, but when you rode you were exposed to anyone who might be in hiding.
Only Cassie rode, for she was now growing too heavy and unbalanced to risk on the ground. David felt increasing uneasiness about her, and he knew Joseph shared his concern.
The young woman’s face, usually tawny gold, was grayish, and her eyes seemed sunken and rimmed with bruises. She didn’t look good at all; he’d watched over and doctored enough of the family’s female slaves to understand more than most men about such things as childbearing.
He asked Judith about the situation, that night after they halted to camp. She nodded slowly, her gaze following Cassie as she moved carefully about the fire. “I think the baby’s coming very soon. You can see it has dropped already, and she walks differently now from the way she did a month ago, when we started out.
“I haven’t helped Mama with all those babies without learning things she thinks it’s not proper for an unmarried girl to know. Now that I’m married, I suppose she’d think it was all right.” She laughed, but there was an edge to her voice that told him she resented many things about her mother.
David understood. It had often seemed to him that Judith would have been a more suitable daughter for Elizabeth, while his sister Lucy would have suited the DuBays down to the ground. He said nothing of that, however. If Judith had been his sister, he would have set out for Texas alone.
* * * * * * *
The easy going under the big trees lasted for three days, after which they found themselves facing a complex of creeks that formed a swampy area too dangerous to try, either afoot or on horseback. Even while they moved along its boundaries, looking for a ridge along which they might travel, they saw more than one deer and even a wild pig dash into the lush green morass and sink out of sight. Their struggles and the sounds of anguish they made were all the warning David needed.
They camped beside the swamp at last, knowing they must go north again to pick up the dim track they had been following before crossing the river. That night, after the tiny cookfire was quenched, Joseph came to David and gestured for him to follow him into the darkness.
“What is it, Joseph?” he asked his old friend. “Is something wrong?”
They stood beside a tangle of willows, listening to the night for a moment before proceeding. Then Joseph said, “Marse David, I been feelin’ somethin’ behind us. Can’t see nothin’, can’t hear nothin’, but I know it’s there. You know my Mama she could witch things up, when she was a mind to. I got the gif’, she told me. I been usin’ the juju bones. They tells me we got trouble comin’ after us.”
David would have laughed, if he had not had his own specific warnings from old Seline, all the time he was growing up. She’d told him not to go on the hunt that had resulted in a moccasin bite that took months to heal up. She’d predicted his father’s death to the day and the hour. No, if Seline said Joseph had her gift, David wasn’t one to doubt her.
“They tell you we have someone chasing after us?” he asked, wondering if it might be the Indians beyond the river or maybe Oscar Medlar. Or could it be someone Judith’s people sent to bring her back? Rupert DuBay was a stubborn man, though he had no money with which to pay for such work.
“I see a big man, when I looks at the bones. He got a bushy beard, some white, some black, and he rides a big old horse with a white star on its face. I got a name in my mind, but it’s from what I knows, not from the bones. You ’member that man Bluth that’s the slave catcher?”
As soon as he spoke the name, David knew he was right. He had instincts of his own, and they all chimed in to agree with his slave’s warning. He’d been taking pains to hide what he could of their trail long before they had met the two Cherokee hunters. Cousin Martin’s warnings had not gone unheeded.
“I’ve been having a feeling, myself,” he told Joseph. “But all we can do is go on and try our best not to get careless. If it’s Bluth back there, he’s smart and he’s mean.
“He knows how people act when they’re running away, so the best thing I can see is to go the most direct way, as if we hadn’t a care in the world. Then if he catches us, we’ll be ready for him, and he won’t expect that.”
The dim form before him nodded, a shadow of motion in the darkness. “I reckon you’re right, Sah,” Joseph said. “But I been worry ’bout Cassie. She don’t feel a bit good, and the fu’ther we go, the worse she feels. You think the baby gone come soon? That’s goin’ to set us back a bit, if it do.”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” David said. “We’ll just head back north of the swamp till we find that wagon track, and then we’ll go for Natchez and the Miss’sipp as fast as we can. If we stop, we stop, but we’ll go on when it’s possible.
“You just keep your knife to hand and I’ll keep the rifle loaded, except for flint. Judith’s got Pa’s flintlock pistol, and she keeps it ready. Give Cassie the skinning knife. If one of us doesn’t get that bastard, maybe another one will.”
Even as he spoke, he felt a sense of unreality. Surely this was just superstition. There was no way to know about anything that was behind you, he argued with himself. Yet his spine had chilled and his neck prickled as they traveled, as if some distant ill-wisher were stalking him. Joseph’s juju only confirmed his own suspicions.
No, from here on they would move as an army moved in enemy territory, weapons ready, wits alert. If someone, Bluth or another or even some totally unexpected adversary, moved against them, he might be completely surprised at their reaction.
CHAPTER FIVE
Judith McCarran
If she had been lifted by a whirlwind and carried away into unknown territory, Judith could not have felt more disoriented. Though she had known for years that Pa intended to trade her for the land along the Medlar property line, somehow the reality of that marriage had never sunk in until the day of the wedding.
Even now she shuddered when she thought how close she had come to belonging to that cruel and arrogant man. She had felt hopeless, without any chance of reprieve. Then Susan brought the word that David waited at the spring, and suddenly she knew what to do.
Now she wondered why she had declined David’s offer two years ago. Compared to Oscar Medlar, even the overworked field hands looked preferable, whatever their race. David was a real prize.
David was no saint, but he was now her husband and she had no regrets. She had gone into this marriage without any illusions. A farm girl knew all about life as soon as she was big enough to watch the cats and the cows and the horses at their birthing and begetting.
She had felt no need for such herself, but she knew she owed to her husband the thing men seemed to value above almost anything else. It had never occurred to her that it would hurt so badly or be so messy, but somehow David had soothed and eased her, without making her feel guilty. Perhaps, in time, she would come to value the exercise for itself.
The journey, however, was the main thing. When David told her about Joseph’s juju bones and his own intuition that someone followed their trail, she was at first a bit skeptical. Then, thinking it over as they rode, she began to consider what might have been done by those they left behind them.
The next time they walked to rest the horses, she moved up close behind her husband. “David, what if Oscar Medlar sent somebody after us, the way your cousin thought he might? We’ve lived neighbors to him for years, a
nd every time somebody out traded him or insulted him or just got on the wrong side of him, he managed someway to get even.
“Pa thought for years he had Old Man Scullers drowned because of that famous horse trade people still snicker about. Think about it. What could anybody do that would hurt his pride worse than what I’ve done?” She saw David nod, as he thought it over.
“Oscar’s a mean devil; even my Pa always said that,” he admitted, “not to mention Cousin Martin. He’d send somebody to catch us, if he could, and I wouldn’t trust him not to give him orders to kill us all. So we better be almighty cautious, all the way.”
He turned to look at her slantways. “I think you’re right. I’ve been wondering how your Pa could manage to pay anybody to chase us, and I know he couldn’t. Oscar could do it without turning a hair.”
After that they kept closer watch at night, and though David had intended to take as direct a route as possible, now they took the main trail heading west. They found even that to be less than a good, clear track through the forest.
Besides that worry, there was Cassie, growing more and more uncomfortable as the days passed, until at last she began to moan as she rode, not loudly but as if the groans were forced out of her. When they stopped, early because of the clouds building in the southeast, the girl’s tawny gold skin was ashy pale, and her labor had obviously begun.
To make it worse, the wind began to gust, promising a storm to come. Judith helped David and Joseph haul a tarpaulin into place, tying it down to saplings in a tiny clearing. They put Cassie under its shelter and turned to the horses, getting the packs under cover and tethering the mounts to convenient trees.
Lightning began lancing down the sky, with cracks of thunder getting nearer and nearer until one bolt struck a tall pine beyond the clearing. Judith heard a shrill whinny and the pound of hooves.
“One of the horses broke loose,” she yelled above the snapping of the tarp and the whine of wind.
Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels Page 3
