Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle Blackwood fainted dead away.

  8

  A warm flickering light filled Cig’s eyes when she opened them. A heavy quilt covered her, and her boots had been pulled off. Burning cherry wood filled the room with a warm fragrance.

  “Here.” The pretty woman whom she had surprised in the summer kitchen helped her sit up and handed her hot cider.

  “Thank you.” A few gulps reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in hours. “I’m sorry to trouble you.”

  “Don’t you recognize me?” The green eyes beckoned.

  “No.” Cig closed her eyes for a second. “Your voice sounds familiar.”

  “A hot meal will enliven your wits.” The young woman had a small pot warming in the fireplace. She ladled out some porridge into a smooth wooden bowl and cut off a large slice of moist cornbread, placing a big square of fresh home-churned butter next to it.

  Cig stood up. Her knees shook and buckled under her.

  “Pryor!” The woman quickly put her hands under Cig’s armpits and with surprising strength hauled her to her feet. “Here, let me help you to the table.” Alarm registered on her even features.

  Cig felt like an overlarge toddler as she was assisted to a small, beautifully crafted table. She sank into a graceful, simple chair.

  “Thank you.”

  The woman smiled, buttered the slice of cornbread. With trembling hands Cig managed to get the food into her mouth. She felt better.

  “This is the most delicious cornbread and butter I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Should be. It’s your mother’s recipe.”

  “My mother’s been dead for years.” Cig blinked.

  “See there, you remember your mother. A fine woman she was. You and Tom strongly take after her.”

  Cig ate, needing the sustenance to settle her nerves as much as her body.

  “Hunger is the best spice.” The woman brought her more food.

  Cig wobbled up. “My horse.”

  The woman gently pushed her back into the finely made wooden chair. “He’s in the stable getting acquainted with Helen, Castor, and Pollux. They have much to discuss.”

  “Thank you.” Cig, relieved, reached for the bowl of porridge.

  “Once you’re yourself again you’ll have to tell us where you bought such a handsome animal. That’s the finest horse in Virginia, better than Governor Nicholson’s or Daniel Boothrod’s horses. And you know what popinjays they are.”

  Cig didn’t recognize the governor’s name. She let it pass. “I bred him myself.”

  “Ah—the Deyhle gift with horses. Tom is hoping to breed someday but there’s so much to do, and we’re shorthanded. Times are changing so, Pryor. Your father brought over two indentured servants and their term soon expires. Slaves are exorbitantly expensive and Tom says they’re still heathens.”

  Cig blinked then chose to ignore what seemed like rant. “I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused you. I don’t know what happened to me. I feel fine—honestly. I can sleep in the stable with Full Throttle. Wouldn’t be the first time.” She looked out the windows at the night, her smile revealing her dazzling teeth. “If you point me in the right direction I’ll be off at first light.”

  “Off where?” The young woman asked, her brows knitting together.

  “Home.”

  “This is home.”

  Cig’s lower lip jutted out. “Please, I don’t mean to be rude, but my home is upriver in Nelson County.”

  A flicker of bewilderment crossed the pretty face. “You’re at Buckingham.” As Cig didn’t respond the young woman continued, “The land granted your mother’s father in 1619. You’re home at Buckingham.”

  “Buckingham?” Cig’s mind spun like a kaleidoscope. Nothing held long enough for her to focus. Cig’s mother carried Buckingham blood. “And what is your last name?”

  “The same as yours.” The young woman wanted to laugh. “Deyhle.”

  “What is your first name?”

  The woman impulsively hugged Pryor. “Poor dear.” She patted her on the back then released her. “Things will come back to you. In time. The familiar things will bring you home—really home. My name is Margaret and I married your twin brother June eighth, 1697.”

  The blood drained from Cig’s face. “What year do you think it is?”

  “The year of our Lord sixteen hundred and ninety-nine. November third, and just think, Pryor, it will soon be a new century. The eighteenth century. I can scarcely believe it.”

  Cig could scarcely believe it either. One of them was nutty as a fruitcake.

  “1699—Margaret?” She half-whispered.

  “Indeed.” Margaret shook her head, the glossy curls spilling out from under her mobcap.

  “It’s 1995,” Cig stated firmly.

  Margaret appeared solemn for a moment then squeezed Pryor’s arm. “You always were one for japes. If it were, what, 1995, “I’d be dead and as you can see I am very much alive.”

  “Maybe I’m dead?” A cold claw of fear tore at Cig’s entrails.

  Margaret laughed as she thought Cig was joking. “Dead tired is what you are. The voyage from England alone would be enough to make me forget my name. And your ride fatigued you. You’ll wake up tomorrow and all will be well.”

  “Where’s Tom?”

  “He and Bobby are feeding the stock.”

  “Margaret, I’ll sleep in the stable with my horse.”

  “Nonsense,” Margaret replied.

  Cig wanted to shake Margaret to make her stop this charade. She counted to ten. Her limbs felt like lead. She meekly followed Margaret upstairs and crawled on the bed. “One more question. Are we rich?”

  “Lord, no,” Margaret roared.

  “At least that’s consistent,” Cig wryly replied.

  “You’re home in your own bed now. Sweet dreams.”

  Cig, eyelids heavy, mumbled, “You don’t have a telephone, do you?” She was asleep almost before she finished her sentence.

  Margaret blew out the candle, stared at her sleeping sister-in-law then softly left the room, praying under her breath, “Thank you, Lord, for delivering our Pryor to us in this time of need.”

  9

  A few embers glowed orange in the fireplace when Cig awoke an hour before dawn. She searched for the bathroom. There wasn’t one. A bowl and pitcher of water stood on a three-legged, bird’s-eye maple table in the corner of the room. A slender, polished toothpick was there, too, with a pewter mug.

  She splashed water on her face, rinsed her mouth out with water, picked her teeth and remembered she had a folding toothbrush in her jacket’s left pocket. She looked out the window, noticing that the hand-blown glass sported a few tiny bubbles. A light frost coated each blade of grass.

  Tiptoeing down the stairs so as not to awaken Margaret, she carried her hunt coat and boots to the big room with a huge carved fireplace at one end. She pulled on her boots then tiptoed to the center hall of the house. She opened the back door at the end of the hall and stepped outside, the brisk temperature fully awakening her.

  She noticed things she hadn’t noticed yesterday when she was disoriented and exhausted. An outhouse was off to the side of the house by some thirty yards. A little dip near the woods revealed a springhouse solidly constructed of fieldstone. A corncrib stood next to the barn. A small granary was ten yards from the corncrib. Chicken coops dotted one edge of a small paddock. The cats patrolled the granary as well they should. Smaller brick buildings, the color of paprika, fanned out over the handsome quad behind the big house. The barn anchored the near corner of the quad, roughly one hundred yards long by seventy wide.

  Cig jogged to the outhouse. Once inside there were no amenities other than a large bucket of water to clean oneself.

  These people are around the bend, she thought to herself. It was one thing to be authentic, another to be uncomfortable, and that cold water tingled. She used an old towel to wipe her hands.

  That finished she walked over to
the barn, looking for telephone or electrical wires swaying overhead. She knew the power company charged ten dollars a buried foot. She hoped the Deyhles had buried their power line and that she’d find some modern convenience inside.

  Out of curiosity she investigated the outside of the barn. No fuse box or circuit breaker revealed itself, no telltale black umbilical cord popped out of the earth.

  Could be inside, she thought, fighting back rising panic. Margaret knew her name, which really unnerved her. She had no recollection of reenactors using the Deyhle name. What she did know was that she had to reach Hunter and 1-aura, who would be frantic.

  Full Throttle joyously greeted her when she entered the barn. She patted him and searched for grain, finding high-quality oats. She fed Throttle, Helen, who looked like a warmblood, and Castor and Pollux, the draft horses, as well.

  She climbed up into the hayloft on a sturdy ladder to throw down the hay, a delicious mixture of clover and timothy. The hay wasn’t baled and twined but rather stored loose in the cavernous, well-ventilated loft. This was a safe method of age, ensuring against the combustion that could occasionally happen with baled hay. Ladders were fastened to each side of the loft so one could climb up to the two cupolas to clean them out. The ladders were also useful for walking across the enormous beams to get quickly from one end of the barn to the other. Peering closer at the beams she could see they were handhewn tree trunks. The workmanship was beautiful where the blade of the ax cut into the wood. The smaller joists and beams were whipsawed, which meant two men, one on the ground and one in a pit below, had held either end of a long saw as they laboriously cut the slabs of wood perched over the pit. It was backbreaking labor and few men knew how to do it anymore, or had the muscle power even to try.

  The hayloft, carefully planned, allowed one to throw down hay directly into the horses’ stalls, which were on one side of the barn, or to the cattle feeders on the other side. Sweet-smelling straw was also stored in the loft so when the horses were turned out and the stalls picked clean, one need only push straw from above, then go down and spread it around. The design spared the human back.

  Labor was so terribly expensive that barns were rarely built to this scale anymore. So hay and straw were baled. You lifted the bales, tossing them over the edge of the hayloft. After cutting the twine you fed flakes of hay. The baled straw, twine removed, would then be strewn around the stall. As the leaf or stalk had been compacted in the baling process it took a little time to fluff up the straw. The hay bales grew heavier and heavier the more you tossed up or down.

  Cig appreciated the wise design of this barn. Although Margaret had told her otherwise, she assumed the Deyhles were extravagantly wealthy to build something this huge, with handhewn beams yet.

  She couldn’t find phone wires anywhere. Perfectionists or not about recreating early Virginia, the Deyhles had to have a phone. She hoped it was tucked away in the barn somewhere.

  No tractors, trucks, or manure spreaders appeared. She was stunned to think they ran this farm with draft horses. Wooden pitchforks and rakes hung neatly on the inside walls. Hay wagons and flat wagons sat side by side under an overhang and the peculiar odor of some kind of grease curled into her nostrils. Didn’t smell like any petroleum product she used.

  A saucy rooster sauntered outside, lifted his sleek russet head and let out a glorious cock-a-doodle-do, convinced that he and he alone had brought forth the dawn. She stuck her head out of the main barn door, painted blue, to behold the tip of the sun, deep red, breaking over the horizon. Within moments a path of molten red spread over the swift-moving James River.

  Not a wisp of mist hung over the river this morning. The Chill morning air would give way to another perfect October day.

  Cig ducked back inside and saddled up Full Throttle. It seemed rude just to leave. Weird as her host and hostess might be they were kind people with a sweet directness which put her off-balance.

  The satin lining of her hunting jacket felt smooth against her skin as she reached inside the interior pocket for the Smythe’s leatherbound notebook she carried. She walked into the handsomely appointed tackroom to sit down and write a note. The brass saddle racks and bridle holders gleamed.

  The flat saddles made her wonder if the Deyhles rode Saddlebreds although she had not seen any. The tackroom was paneled in golden oak. Uneven, heavy floorboards worn smooth completed the cozy feel of the place. She examined a long-shanked bit on one of the bridles. It was made of heavy steel; she did not recognize its origin. Cig could usually tell if steel was American, German, or English, the very best for bits. This bit was solid and in the wrong hands would be brutal, but then any bit in the wrong hands is brutal.

  She let go of the bit as a jagged bolt of fear ripped into her. For a fleeting moment she could almost believe it was 1699.

  A polished wooden trunk contained gorgeous blankets. She found a conté crayon, a hardened piece of rectangular graphite like artists use, on the lip of a standing desk like an old schoolteacher’s. She placed her Smythe notebook on the slanting top, pulled out the small pencil from the spine and scribbled; tore out the page and hung it outside Throttle’s stall where another bridle rack was placed for the convenience of tacking up in the stall.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Deyhle,

  Thank you for the hospitality. I couldn’t find a phone so I’m heading for home. My family will be worried sick about me. My number is 540/279-4462. Please call me tonight so that I might properly thank you.

  Yours truly,

  Pryor Deyhle Blackwood, MFH

  Normally Cig didn’t attach Master of Foxhounds behind her name unless corresponding with other foxhunters but she thought it would help the Deyhles if they wanted to check her out before calling. All they needed to do was call the Master of Princess Anne, down the river, or Deep Run, upriver. Foxhunters are a good pipeline for information.

  She then walked Full Throttle out to the massive mounting block, a huge, smooth, flat-topped river stone. She swung her right leg over, he twitched his ears, then they moved off as the three cats watched in fascination.

  Cig trotted west on the winding river road. She passed the small dock that served Buckingham. She knew that nearby there was a two-lane paved highway, Route 5, which fed into Route 156. She vaguely remembered a gas station at the intersection. Anxious to call the kids, she urged Full Throttle into a brisker trot. They were both stiff from yesterday’s wild ride but she’d be at the phone booth soon enough. The road didn’t appear where it was supposed to, though; in fact, nothing familiar appeared except the James River, which conformed to her memory of it. Timber towered overhead. She’d never witnessed so much abundant wildlife. The great estates along the James were nowhere to be found. She knew this territory. She’d hunted this territory since childhood, plus she’d attended William and Mary, which was 150 miles from her home.

  The James lapped against the shore. Unconsciously she squeezed Full Throttle and he broke into a canter. She slowed him down, tried to keep cool and trotted on. As the sun rose higher, she peered over the wide expanse of the river. She perceived a few cleared fields amid the thick woods but nothing else. Nothing. Not a stick.

  The road continued. She slowed to a walk. It wouldn’t do to push the horse or herself. She needed to think clearly, calmly, sensibly. A rustle to her right alerted her. She turned as a ten-point buck leaped out, saw her and Full Throttle, then leaped back into the forest. She heard him crashing away.

  The road hugged the river. She peered down, hoping for a track, a hoofprint, anything to quell her fears. Baked hard as brick, the road yielded no comforts. Although the temperature couldn’t have been over fifty degrees, sweat rolled down her back, under her armpits.

  She scanned the river for sight of a boat, a skiff, a dingy, even a raft. Nothing.

  As she rounded a bend, a wedge of mist, ground fog, curved across the road. Full Throttle snorted and stopped. She knew her horse well enough to trust his senses more than her own. A human form appeared,
as startled to see her as she was to see him. He looked like an Indian, in ragged leather pants. The right side of his head was shaved clean, and a long knot of hair, braided, hung down the left side. She thought she saw a tomahawk in his belt, a knife in his right hand. That quickly he darted into the woods.

  “Hey, hey, wait a minute. Please,” she called out.

  She again looked down at the road as the mist swirled around. Drops of blood dotted the dry, dusty surface. The mist lifted, and she rode forward. More blood. She shivered.

  A crumpled figure lay to the side of the road. She hurried over. Cig had a strong stomach but it turned over.

  An Indian, his neck half-severed, lay on his side. The killer had started to lift off his scalp at the forehead. His full head of hair was trimmed blunt at his shoulder. She must have startled the attacker just as he cut into the forehead. Full Throttle snorted and backed up. The odor of fresh blood upset him.

  “Whoa boy, whoa boy.” She stared at the corpse. A copper gorget protected his neck. His breeches, soft buttery leather, amazed her they were so beautiful. Blood seeped through his ripped deerskin shirt.

  She had to call the sheriff and then her children. Why would anyone murder another human being like this?

  She headed back down the James. If nothing else she knew where the Deyhles were and strange as they might be with their living history trip, surely they would summon a sheriff.

  They cantered, brightly colored trees flying by, and a black bear scurried to get out of the way. Within twenty minutes she was back at the solid brick building.

  Tom shot out the door. “Pryor, you had us worried to death.”

  “You have to call the sheriff—right now! A man has been killed. An Indian.”