He ambled along and came to a stop beside the dock, where they seemed to have taken root. Sticking out his hand, he said, “Name’s Jonas Bluth. Just come in from Ca’lina. Looks like you fellows pretty well know the place.”
The taller man squinted at him, his pale eyes narrow with suspicion. “Crom Bidwell,” he muttered, without shaking hands. “This here’s Amos Clark. We keep an eye out, sure nuff.”
Jonas gazed out over the muddy river and sighed. “I bet my folks done gone across,” he muttered. “I knowed I was late, but I never thought they’d beat me here. They promised to camp and wait, but I know old David; he’s always in an almighty hurry.”
“Lookin’ for somebody?” Clark asked. “If they’ve crossed here, it’s sure and certain we’ve seen ’em. How many and what’d they look like?”
Bluth didn’t smile, though he felt like it. “Why, if you’ll come into the saloon and let me buy you a glass of rotgut, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Clark nodded, and Bidwell moved at once toward the shanty toward which Bluth pointed. Jonas followed them into the dark interior, which stank of alcohol, piss, and vomit. He clinked coins onto the counter, and the black barman poured three skimpy glasses of dark stuff that came near to smelling worse than the inside of the saloon.
Cramped into a corner at a shackledy table, Jonas put his drink in front of him and stared through the gloom at his companions. “You got to know that my sister’s gone and married against our folks’s wishes. She and her new husband, David McCarran, and two slaves taken off for Texas about a month and a half ago.
“They ought to be here waitin’ for me, but David’s always in a hurry. I’d bet anything they’ve already crossed, leavin’ me to catch up any way I can.”
Bidwell cocked his head. “What’s she look like, this sister of yourn?”
Jonas knew the man didn’t believe a word he’d said, but he’d react if he had seen the group. “She’s tall, for a woman. Slender, lots of kind of red-brown hair and big gray eyes. Not a bit like me, of course. Just my half sister, in fact.
“David’s not much taller’n she is, wiry, with blue eyes and brown hair. His slave’s a bit older than he is, big fellow with a scar on his arm. There’s a woman slave, too. Couple of extra horses. You seen ’em?”
Clark slanted his eyes at Bidwell, who looked noncommittal. “Lots of folks cross here every time the ferry runs. Last run was how long, Amos? Three-four days?”
“Nearer a week,” Clark replied. “Not been so many folks crossing these days, count of the floods back east a ways. Takes a while to wait for a full load.”
Bluth knew he had to play them like bass on a line, not too hard and not too gentle. Now he had to find out what they knew without spending too much of the money Oscar had given him.
He sighed. “I guess it’ll be a while before the ferry crosses again? I’d be willing to pay for a special trip, if they’ve already gone, but I can’t waste the money if they ain’t. Might even spare a bit for anybody that helped me get on my way.
“Haven’t got much, but my sister’s dependin’ on me to come with ’em.” These bastards would kill you for the lint in your pocket, he knew, but he was confident of his own strength and cunning.
Bidwell looked deeply into his glass of river water whiskey. “How much you pay?” he asked. “I think we may’ve seen ’em.”
“Already crossed?”
“Two trips past. Mebbe ten days? Near two weeks, it may be. You must of got stuck in the high water.”
Clark piped up, “Couldn’t miss that high-headed woman. Stepped right along like she felt good as any man and better than some. Will that fellow she married take her down a peg?”
“I doubt it. He’s soft, always was. But they’re married now, so if she puts a ring in his nose, that’s his own lookout,” Bluth said. “I promised her I’d come, and come I will, if you fellows’ll see if we can make up a load for the ferry. I ’spect it would cross if it had a pretty good bunch wanting to go.”
It cost him three dollars to make up the load for the ferry and another half dollar to pay for himself and his horse. If McCarran was almost two weeks ahead of him, the trail would be cold, even on this sparsely traveled route.
Once across, he might find more of the ilk of Bidwell and Clark to aim him in the right direction, but somehow he didn’t feel confident of that. The hangers-on around the ferry seemed the kind to rob you if they could, kill you if necessary, and forget about you as soon as possible.
* * * * * * *
Vidalia was so small and so sorry that even Bluth found it disgusting. Nobody there admitted seeing anyone, white or black, male or female, cross on the ferry, ever. That told him someone among the hangdog bunch had maybe tried to rob them and failed. It also told him that McCarran, even burdened with two women and a black, might be a more formidable adversary than he had suspected.
Thinking about that, Bluth rode west along the muddy track that wound among heavy pine forest, crossed even muddier creeks and bogs, and showed only animal tracks left since the last heavy rains. If his quarry had passed here, there was no sign of it.
He felt unseen eyes watching him as he passed the cabins built on hardscrabble farms. Knowing too well the ways of bushwhackers, Bluth kept his weapons ready and his eyes peeled for trouble. That was why he noticed the patch of dried brown blood staining the mud of the track.
“Damn!” He swung down from the saddle and examined the trampled spot closely. Even the rain of the past weeks had not entirely washed away the dark stain, and when he sniffed cautiously he smelled the distant taint of death. Somebody or something had died right here, and he didn’t think it was an animal.
Drat the luck! He had to know who it was. If it was McCarran or the slave or Judith, it was best to know right now and be done with it.
Even after so long, the faint reek still guided him as he followed his nose into the tangle of undergrowth edging the track. Beyond that the forest floor was smoothly carpeted with pine needles, but something had been dragged through them. The needles were still disarranged, sticking up haphazardly to form a distinct trail.
He catfooted it along the way, winding among the big trees. The track ended on a creek bank, where it was plain something had been tumbled over the muddy bank. A scrap of cloth still hung onto a bramble growing out of the bank.
Cursing, Bluth slipped and slid down the red mud slope, to find a body piled up against a clump of willows at the bottom. It was half submerged, but the trees had held it in place, though there had obviously been high water not too long before.
A man, it was clear from the clothing. That was good. Bluth had plans for Judith. He poked the thing over with a long stick and stared at what was left of the face. Then he sighed. It was plainly not David McCarran nor yet his man slave.
Though it was impossible to tell what this one had looked like, the hair was the wrong color, long and coal black, and the bared teeth were missing three in front and a couple at the back. This had been an older man than either male in the McCarran party.
Bluth wondered if McCarran had killed him, or if two would-be bushwhacker groups had tangled while trailing common quarry. He’d never know.
He turned and tramped back to the spot where he’d tied Mossback. There he took out the map he’d finagled out of Bidwell, over in Natchez. There were several ways to cross the Sabine River into Texas, and Bidwell and Clark had made a bit of cash by keeping badly drawn maps up-to-date, using the information they gleaned from the few who returned eastward from Texas.
Shreve’s Port was considerably north of the most direct route west, and Bluth knew David McCarran well enough to understand that he wouldn’t waste travel time, so near his goal. No, the last word his informants had marked on the map was that there was a ferry on a direct route from Vidalia, straight along the Camino Real. Gaines was the name scrawled there.
On the east side of the Sabine the mapmakers had carefully printed, NO MAN’S LAND. GOOD PICKINGS. This was, t
hey had told Bluth, the area used as a buffer zone between the Texas Territory of Spain and the United States, after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France. It sounded good to Jonas Bluth, who liked nothing better than a place where no law was in force.
He had no fear of bad’uns who might roost there. He felt himself the equal of any and much harder than most.
After studying the map for several minutes, he decided that, given the lead they had, he would be wiser to head straight for that ferry, as fast as Mossback could travel without doing him major damage. If they had cut off the trail again they would almost certainly be delayed by high water and heavy mud and crossings over flooded creeks. He could catch up some time by going the direct route.
He led Mossback to the bloodstained mud patch, looked down and grinned. He was still in business.
When he rode westward, he could almost hear sighs of relief from the concealing thickets beyond the track. Those bastards better take care how they watched him. He was meaner than any of ’em and smarter, too. Nobody bushwhacked Jonas Bluth.
CHAPTER NINE
Judith McCarran
Judith had never dreamed, when she flung her hat over the windmill and ran away with David, that her life could ever become harder than it had been at home. Now she knew. Not only was the road west incredibly difficult, the mud bottomless, the creeks raging with brown foam and angry cottonmouth moccasins, but she had learned about morning sickness in the hardest way possible.
She walked too far every day, dropping onto her blankets at night with a groan, muscles cramping. Earlier in the journey they had ridden for miles at a stretch. Now, in this wet and sticky country, even the horses had a hard time getting themselves through the miry spots and boggy creeks that seemed to appear at the bottom of every ridge. Their riders had to make it on their own.
She had left a trail of vomit, she felt sure, that even a blind man could follow by the smell. Though she knew Joseph came behind, trying to clear their trail, it didn’t comfort her to know that he still felt someone was following persistently. The thought made her feel even more clammy and sick than she would have if they had simply been traveling through this awful country.
At last she became so ill that even David, driven as he was to reach his goal, knew they must stop to let her rest. Cassie, too, was exhausted, drained by nursing and tending the baby, and Joseph was looking very thin and stringy.
After the warnings they had heard about the lawless zone east of the Sabine, they hesitated to go forward and make a camp there. David consulted with Joseph, and they stopped in heavy pine timber along a ridge overlooking the Arroyo Hondo. One of the great trees had fallen to some recent windstorm, its roots heaving up and leaving a deep hole sheltered on the west by the root ball.
It was raining again, a dismal drizzle that pattered on the tarpaulin they strung over the depression. Joseph piled pine needles deeply in the cup, covering the mud and cushioning their bones, while David built a tiny fire on the raw earth just beyond their shelter.
“We’ll all get sick if we stay wet,” he said, and Judith agreed. Already she was coughing and sneezing, even in the sticky heat of summer. They put on dry clothing from their packs and strung the damp bits and pieces beside the fire.
Then David went silently into the pines, and Judith knew he would be watching until relieved by Joseph. The one thing, she realized, that made women unequal to men was childbearing. The sickness and stress of pregnancy and the infinite care to be taken with an infant bore heavily upon her and Cassie.
She turned on her side and stared out from beneath the tarpaulin. The thin smoke from the little fire drifted away downwind through the trees, and she hoped it would attract no attention from undesirables. If it did, she would rise and fight, but the thought made her quease.
She had been able, before she became pregnant, to outwork any man in the cotton fields, so it was not being female that was the problem. No, men had a surefire way of destroying one’s strength and stamina, although she knew they were unaware that was the result of their enthusiastic activities.
Many times she had heard her father curse her mother for fainting in the fields. Now she understood her mother’s wretched state, for every time that happened she had been carrying a child. Too late, Judith grieved for the woman who had given birth to her; she resented the heavy-handed father who had intended to sentence her to the same kind of miserable life.
She was lucky David was considerate, where Pa had been harsh and unbending, expecting the same amount of work from a pregnant wife as he got from a strong young daughter or himself. If you had to be female, she decided, it was better to be hooked up with a caring man.
Oscar Medlar—she shuddered at the thought—would have worked her to death, pregnant or not. Or she might have killed him, if he drove her too far, and she would have been hanged. Men might kill women with impunity, but the law didn’t allow for the opposite to happen without punishment.
Then she was asleep, and only when Cassie shook her shoulder to offer her food did she wake again. She was not hungry, her rebellious stomach heaving at the thought of swallowing anything. Yet she knew, for the sake of the child she carried, she must force something down.
Cornbread was terrible to throw up, as rough and gritty coming up as it was going down. Meat was just as bad. But Cassie had managed to boil a bit of squirrel in their pot to make broth. That went down more easily, and it seemed willing to stay in her stomach, this time.
Then she slept again, and when she came fully to herself at last, two days had passed. She felt better than she had in weeks, and the smell of rabbit stew bubbling in the pot made her stomach growl with hunger. Perhaps, after all, she was going to live to see Texas.
The rain had stopped while she slept, and the ground below the ridge was steaming with summer heat. She sat with her back to the tree trunk as she ate, staring across the bottomlands that flanked the river they must cross. It was hard to believe that down there in the rich green forest were men who lived like beasts, waiting to kill anyone who came through in order to steal whatever they carried.
She dreaded traveling over that dangerous ground, but once they passed beyond and crossed the river they would be in Texas. Thinking of the land they might buy or claim there made her shiver with delight. Despite her father’s harshness, Judith had always loved farming. Now she and David would be free to do it in their own time and their own way.
They waited until she had recovered a bit and Cassie and the baby seemed fit. Then, very early one morning, when dawn was only a promise in the east, David led their line of horses and walkers away through the huge pine trees. They went a long way before sunrise, and when they camped at last it was beside the river they had sought for so long.
The Sabine, its water muddy yellow-brown, moved lazily between overgrown banks, where willows and oaks and sweetgum trees bent their gnarled backs over the crooked stream. Cattails grew in profusion in the shallow edges of its many loops and bends, and fish plopped loudly, feeding in the twilight.
As Judith watched the darkening waters, she saw a swirl of movement, twin bubbles moving against the current. A moccasin, swimming across the river, was leaving behind a V-shaped wake, but even as she wondered what the bubbles might be there came a snap, and the snake disappeared into the jaws of an alligator. She shuddered and turned toward David, who had also been watching.
“We’ll have to teach the baby to be careful of critters,” he said, but his hand crept out to find hers and gave it a squeeze.
She leaned against him, and the mellow fish, mud, and water smell of the river filled her nostrils. Pine tanged the air as well, and the smoke from their cook fire laced its own aroma through the others.
Again Judith shivered, but this time it was with anticipation. The new life was about to begin. Tomorrow they would move along the river to find the ferry, and then... and then they would step upon the soil of this new country where they would live out their lives and rear their children.
Here, too, it had been raining, as it had farther east. The river was high, its current boiling about snags and logjams, frills of yellow foam collecting along the fringes of water weeds. They moved upstream, for David had calculated their point of arrival as being somewhat below the site of the ferry.
“The letter says a Mr. James Gaines runs the ferry, and he’s a good man. Beyond that, though, it’s still pretty wild country, and some dangerous people may have settled there. We have to go carefully,” he warned his people, and Judith could hear the unease in his voice.
There was a clump of log shelters on the eastern bank of the Sabine, when they arrived at the ferry site. The craft itself was tied to a big post sunk into the shallows beside a rude wharf; its stern was downstream, its bow bobbing violently in the flooded current. As she led her horse behind David into the open space beside the wharf, she realized that a group of silent men stood there, too, staring at the ferry and the river.
David handed her the reins of his own mount and moved up beside a big fellow in a wide hat. “Is it too rough to cross?” he asked.
“Unh!” the man grunted. “Look at it, man! It’d break the cable and carry the ferry away down to the Gulf of Mexico.”
Judith, just behind them, realized he was right. The thick hemp cable might be the size of her own waist, but a loaded ferry might well overload even its capacity. While she stood watching, the swollen body of a cow came down the flood, bumped into the blunt prow of the ferry, and swirled away downstream. She had no desire to join it on its journey.
She tugged at David’s sleeve. “Let’s camp until the water goes down,” she whispered into his ear when he leaned toward her.
He nodded. “We’ll camp until Mr. Gaines decides it’s safe to cross,” he told the man. “I want to talk to him, though. Where might I find him?”
“He’s in his cabin that he uses on this side of the river, when he can’t get back home. That’un there.” The fellow gestured toward the least flimsy of the shelters, and David turned toward it.
Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels Page 6
