The Cane Creek Regulators

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “When?” she asked, wanting to know everything. “When did you see him?”

  He began trimming, shrugged, and finally replied, “Two days ago.”

  She wanted more information, but he seemed focused on the chore, and her father had taught her to be patient, not just with Indians, but everyone. Well, he had tried to teach her patience.

  “Said to meet him here. I come.” He had finished, and began picking up the kindling.

  She dropped to her knees to help. “Carrying on a conversation with you, Go-la-nv Pinetree, is like pulling teeth.”

  He looked up at her, face devoid of any expression. She had to grin, then found herself laughing until the sound of hoofs caught her attention.

  Pinetree stood, and Emily, feeling her heart jump, sprang to her feet.

  “Mum!” she called in the direction of the tavern. The bits of wood fell to the ground as Emily lifted the hems of her skirt, and ran. “Mum! Elizabeth! Alan! It’s Da. He’s home!” She felt the tears of relief rolling down her cheeks, and, for once, she was not ashamed.

  Breck Stewart came out of the saddle before his horse had slid to a complete stop, and he scooped Emily into his arms, squeezing her, spinning her around. She wanted to kiss her father’s bearded cheeks, but he wouldn’t let her go, just kept spinning and spinning until they both collapsed into a heap.

  “Daughter,” he said, gasping for breath, “I have missed you so much.”

  She pulled herself to her knees, reached over, and hugged him around his neck, even tighter. She heard the door to the tavern open, and then the squeals of Elizabeth and Alan as they ran to greet their father. Blinking back the tears, she saw her mother standing in the doorway, wringing the towel in her hands.

  Emily could not remember ever feeling so much relief. She pulled herself up from the ground as her father greeted his two youngest children.

  Then, as only Donnan could, her brother spoiled the mood.

  “What in hell’s name is that damned Cherokee doing here?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sometimes her father’s eyes frightened Emily more than her brother’s looks of utter hatred. Breck Stewart certainly did not hate his son, but his face hardened even as he kissed the cheeks of Elizabeth and Alan, before rising slowly and turning around and taking three steps toward Donnan.

  “Because I sent word for Go-la-nv to come,” Stewart told his son. “And he came.”

  Spinning on his heel, Stewart walked over to Go-la-nv Pinetree, and gripped the young Cherokee’s hand with both of his, thanking him in both English and Cherokee.

  When he was released from Stewart’s hard grip, he pointed at the pelts on the porch.

  Stewart saw them, and shook his head. “Go-la-nv,” he said softly, the rage fading, “you misunderstand. I will pay you for your services, and pay you handsomely.”

  Stiffly Donnan dismounted, and dismissed the weary, bearded, red-eyed regulators, telling them that they would reassemble in two days.

  As the men rode off to their homes, Donnan grabbed the reins to his and his father’s horses, and led them to the barn. There were no prisoners, for which Emily felt relief.

  * * * * *

  “A week in the woods, Machara,” Stewart said, “and nothing to show for it but a chaffed backside and these infernal chigger bites.” He began scratching his arm furiously.

  He had bathed and shaved, and now Donnan sat outside in the washtub, scrubbing off a week’s worth of horsehair and dirt. Sitting at the family table in the tavern, Stewart mopped up the remnants of the stew with corn pone, washing the food down with a healthy swallow of ale.

  “The Cherokee will scout for us,” he said after he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of the clean shirt. “And I have asked Doctor Bayard to keep an eye out for a peculiar individual we are beginning to suspicion.”

  “Who?” Machara asked.

  Stewart’s head shook. “I should not mention his name. We shall see what the doctor learns.”

  Emily didn’t have to hear the name of the suspect. She knew. James Robinson, who lived close to the Huguenots. Her head shook at what she considered irony. Once Robinson had been considered a worthy suitor for Emily’s hand. Now, she suspected, Robinson was bound for the stocks or the whipping post.

  Machara sighed. “How long will you be gone this time?”

  Emily studied her mother, and felt her heartbreak. Standing in the tavern, wringing her hands, she was not a woman to display her emotions, not in front of her children, and certainly not in a room crowded with men—neighbors though they might be.

  “The Indian,” Stewart said, “will make things quicker, I believe.”

  How did Emily feel? She wasn’t certain. Go-la-nv Pinetree riding with the Cane Creek Regulators? With Donnan? Her brother had said few words since his arrival, not even to his mother, and he had brushed past Alan and Elizabeth without saying anything as he headed to the tavern’s bar and found a jug of rum.

  Before long, other members of the Cane Creek Regulators—the bachelors, primarily, with no family to go home to, and those black-eyed men who had lost their families—joined Donnan. They drank with little conversation, and few bothered to even eat.

  “With the Cherokee with us,” her father said, “the renegades soon will pay for their misdeeds.”

  His words proved prophetic.

  * * * * *

  When she went to the well those summer mornings, filling the bucket with water, dreading the chore that awaited her, she recalled her father’s prediction. Sometimes Ol’ Benji Cooper would see her, and rush over to lend his giant hands, but usually Emily did it alone.

  On this morning, she struggled with the bucket, sloshing the water over the rim, drenching her stockings and shoes. The sun had barely topped the tree line, yet she was sweating from the heat and humidity. From one of the distant cabins, she heard the door open, and knew Rachel Zachary stood there, staring, thinking of what stories she could tell her friends, what gossip she could spread.

  Emily stopped at the first stock, tried to steady her nerves, then brought the ladle up in her trembling hands, and held it next to the sunburned man’s lips. She did not think a person could smell water—perhaps, maybe swamp water, but not the cool water from the Stewarts’ well—but it seemed to arouse the man’s heavy eyes. His lips parted as his eyes opened, rimmed red, swollen. His lips were cracked and bleeding, and when he opened his mouth, she saw the horrible condition of his teeth and gums, and his tongue was so swollen it must have hurt him even just to try to swallow.

  “Can you drink, sir?”

  He didn’t answer, probably had no strength to speak, so she tilted the ladle, and saw the relief in his face from just the few sips he managed to get down. She bent, refilled the ladle, let him drink again.

  Silently she looked down the path between Cormorant’s Rock and the Taylor place. Every stock held a prisoner, three of them white, two men of color, and one about which she wasn’t sure. Mrs. Taylor had said he must be a pirate—as if that was a nationality—but Reverend Monteith said he was a Turk. Likely a slave of some sort. Maybe a former prisoner who had escaped his sentence in Georgia. The man said nothing. Never, as if his tongue had been cut out.

  Six men. Prisoners, caught by the Cane Creek Regulators, sentenced to four weeks in the stocks. Four weeks, and only one had passed.

  This was July, and the six men blistering in the heat, drying up from the sun, had not been the first to be put in the stocks. Go-la-nv Pinetree had been a huge help to the Cane Creek Regulators. Three days after Breck Stewart had left with his band of vigilantes, they had returned to Cane Creek with four men. And Emily learned they had buried three others on the Georgia side of the Savannah.

  In May, Dr. Bayard had brought word to Breck Stewart, and the following morning, Hickox, Middleton and Ferguson, under the command of Ensign Donnan Stewart, had brought a
barefooted Joseph Robinson, hands bound behind his back and his smock ripped and dangling behind his trousers to the front of the tavern.

  She closed her eyes, trying to block out that memory, but, as always, failed.

  * * * * *

  “What is the meaning of this, Breck Stewart?” Robinson asked.

  “Who paid you a visit three bells past midnight two days ago?”

  “No one.”

  “Parson, bring out your Bible. Put the prisoner’s hand on it. Aye. Good. Yes, good indeed. Now, Robinson, tell us again, tell us before our Anglican minister and the Lord Jehovah himself … tell us that no one visited you.”

  “Are you spying on me, Breck Stewart?”

  “Answer the question!”

  “I live on Cane Creek. Hunters, white and red, pass by my house. Is it a crime to show Christian charity to a wayfarer heading north to the dark and bloody ground?”

  “No. But it is a crime … it is high treason … to sell out your neighbors and friends for thirty pieces of silver.”

  * * * * *

  Joseph Robinson had been the first man she had ever seen flogged. Whipped thirty-nine times. Then cut down and dragged into the wilderness, back to his home, he was told to leave while he still breathed.

  Never had she cared much for the pompous Virginian, but even a man like Joseph Robinson deserved better treatment. Her father had called it justice, but Emily did not remember any trial. In Charlestown, in London, in Glasgow, men were allowed fair trials. But this …?

  No one had seen Joseph Robinson since. She had heard Mrs. Cochrane tell Mrs. Ferguson that the poor man had stolen a mule and retreated to Charlestown, and probably was back in Liverpool by now. Mrs. Cochrane believed anything she heard or imagined she had heard. But it was a better, more hopeful story, than others she had heard: that Robinson’s stomach had been slit open, weighted down with stones before being thrown into Cane Creek to feed the gars and catfish—that Go-la-nv Pinetree had showed him just how cruel the Cherokees could be—that Donnan had shot the man in the back of his head while he prayed for mercy, while her father had watched with deaf ears.

  Others had been whipped. Others had been put in the stocks. How many? Emily had lost count.

  At least, she did not have to clean up the prisoner’s mess. For that task, Robert Gouedy sent some of his slaves each evening.

  Her instructions were to give the prisoners water each morning, just two ladles, no more. They would be fed by Gouedy’s slaves at noon, and only noon. The slaves would water the prisoners that night. A piece of stale bread, and four ladles of water. She did not know what these men’s crimes were, but such a sentence seemed inhumane.

  “Miss Emily!”

  She moved to the next prisoner—a Negro with a full black beard—and was bringing the first ladle to his lips by the time Douglas Monteith caught up with her.

  “Miss Emily.” The parson took the ladle from her hand, and let the prisoner drink. “I do not know why you continue to do this. I said I would tend to these men. This is no place …”

  “For a lady?” She shook her head. “You forget, Reverend, that I live in Ninety Six.”

  “You are becoming as bitter as your brother.”

  That made her really mad, but she bit her tongue, and, even though she no longer held the ladle, moved on to the next prisoner, who had turned his head and was begging for water in a dry whisper.

  “Do not feel sorry for this foul lot,” the preacher said.

  “An eye for an eye?” she said, and immediately regretted the words.

  While the prisoner drank, Monteith stared at her. “You seem to forget, Emily, that I was at the Welsh Neck, too. I remember Dogmael Jones’ family. I remember his daughters, especially the one whose body was never found, and I remember how his son was brutalized.”

  “These men were not there,” she said. “This I remember. Because I was there, too. I saw the prisoners.”

  “Yes. You have seen too much.”

  She moved on to the next man, leaving the bucket on the ground for the preacher to carry.

  “These men are lewd gamesters and thieves,” he said. “And for all we know, they may have been among those swine that robbed the life from Alroy O’Fionnagáin and his wife.”

  “No,” she said.

  He turned to her. “And how do you know this?”

  “Because Da and Donnan did not hang them.”

  Although the flows of the rivers had fallen to normal levels, Monteith had postponed his return to Charlestown, saying his work remained in the Ninety Six District. Emily believed him. Here was the proof. They moved on to the next man.

  There were other prisoners. The stockade constructed for protection during the Cherokee War had been rebuilt, turned into a jail of sorts. It, too, was full of men carrying heavy balls, or chained to pine logs. Dr. François Bayard and Pierre Maupin, the doctor’s farmer neighbor, had been assigned as guards of the prisoners. She seldom saw them any more, not having the heart or the stomach to walk to the Gouedy place and see the stockade. The stocks here smelled foul enough.

  She shot a quick glance at the two whipping posts, and found something for which to be thankful. At least no one had been flogged during the past week.

  “I should take you to Charlestown.” Monteith dipped the ladle in the bucket. “Our most merciful God has ended the smallpox outbreak in Georgetown, thus it will be safe for you to visit your grandparents’ home. To be far, far removed from this lawless place.”

  To her surprise, the idea did not offend her. “Are you to return to Charlestown?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He let the next man drink. “There is much to be done in Charlestown, explanations are needed or I fear … well, yes, I should leave here, and afterward I should continue bringing the Word to the residents of the backcountry.”

  “Explanations?” she said.

  He paused, and she figured he would dismiss her, but instead he inhaled deeply, holding his breath while the prisoner drank, and then answered, “Governor Montagu, I fear, does not understand what we are doing here. Word has reached Charlestown of the actions of the Cane Creek Regulators … and other regulators.”

  “There are more?”

  “Yes, indeed. In the Peedee. At the Congaree. Cheraw to Mars Bluff. And as far north and west as the Tyger and Enoree Rivers. Your father was not the first, nor will he be the last. But it is Lord Montagu’s own fault. He could have done something. He could have listened.”

  Emily realized that, although Monteith had been in the backcountry for maybe a year, or even less than a year, his opinions had changed. He had hardened.

  “The governor will not send troops here?” Emily asked as a sudden, palpable fear struck her. “Will he?”

  “I do not know if Lord Montagu remains in Charlestown. It is late in the summer, and, as you well know, many men of wealth leave for the more temperate climes. But that trader that came through two days ago … the one bound for Fort Loudon … said that Lord Montagu has ordered all such forces of regulators to disperse.” They moved on to the final prisoner. “He fears that these men are no more than … what was the word that trader used … ah, yes, vigilantes. A nascent mob.”

  Maybe Lord Montagu was right. Perhaps the Cane Creek Regulators were nothing more than a wild mob, one that could indeed transform into something even more horrible. She looked at the bucket as the parson brought the ladle to the Turk, or whatever the dark-skinned man was. She could see her reflection in the water, and did not like how she looked. A year ago, she actually had considered herself pretty, but now she saw nothing but the bags under her eyes, a brow that seemed perpetually knotted, her hair filthy and uncombed, lips too thin, eyes too … unholy?

  “Dearest God in heaven!” cried Monteith.

  The ladle dropped at Emily’s feet as the preacher backed away so quickly, he bumped into her
and sent her sprawling on the grass.

  “Miss Emily!” It was Benjamin Cooper’s voice calling out. “Preacher!”

  She sat up, saw Monteith still backing away, then looked toward the carpenter’s shed. The big man ran toward them, but it wasn’t Cooper that had startled the Anglican minister. She turned again, and looked at the Turk, saw his eyes, and then shut her own. Another face to haunt her dreams.

  At the same time the prisoner next to the Turk rasped out, “God save us. God save us all. He is dead. They have killed him. They will kill us all.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shortly after noon on July 25, the Cane Creek Regulators hanged William Robert McIntosh at the gallows tree. Farmer Ferguson had caught him trying to steal a fat sow from one of his pens, and McIntosh had fought back, slicing Ferguson from wrist to elbow before the redheaded farmer had clubbed the would-be thief with the handle of his grub hoe. Even in Ninety Six, such crimes would not get a criminal hanged, but when Ferguson found a broach in the man’s pocket, he and his sons had dragged McIntosh to the tavern, hands bound behind him.

  “Do you recognize this?” Stewart asked as he held out the small piece of carved ivory in his massive hand.

  Machara glanced at it, bit her lip, and nodded. Tears streamed down her face, and she pushed herself out of the chair, grabbed the hands of Alan and Elizabeth, and led them out of the tavern, saying something about needing to see how the corn was looking.

  When the door closed, that giant hand swallowed the broach, and Stewart turned quickly, heading straight for McIntosh. With tears in his eyes, Stewart grabbed the man by his throat and lifted him off the floor.

  Emily gasped. Behind the bar, Donnan laughed.

  “Where did you get this?” Stewart asked.

  The man gagged.

  “He cannot answer you, Breck,” the preacher said, pointing to Stewart’s hand around McIntosh’s throat.

  Breck lowered McIntosh to the floor. “I shall ask you but once more.”

  “I … found it,” McIntosh choked out.

  “Aye. You found it. On the body of Kate O’Fionnagáin.”