In the Rogue Blood (5 page)

The sky grew darkly purple with thick rolling storm clouds and early that afternoon a hard rain came sweeping down. It fell for two hours and then abruptly ceased and the clouds broke and the sun shone through. Steam
rose off the tamped earth of the river trace and their clothes were dry by sunset.

They put down for the night in a clearing hard by the river. They built a good high fire and some of the wood was yet damp and popped like pistol shots and threw high trailing sparks. They cut thin willow branches and sharpened them to fine points and sharpened too a dozen smaller greensticks. Each then took up a flaming hickory brand and a willow spear and went to the riverbank and stepped down to the edge of the reeds where colonies of frogs were ringing in a steady clamor. They held their torches forth and saw a horde of red eyes shining in the cattails. They worked quickly and with practiced smoothness, gigging frogs on the spearheads and wrist-whipping the willow lances backward to send the frogs arcing up to the higher ground to writhe and spasm in the glow of the fire. In minutes they took four dozen and then put aside their gigs and torches and cut the legs off the frogs and pitched the remains in the river. They stripped the skin off the legs and pinned several legs on each greenstick and roasted them over the fire until the juices dripped and hissed in the flames. Then they sat back against the broad trunk of a huge oak and ate loudly, smacking lips and licking fingers and tossing the thin bones into the river reeds and pausing but to burp. When they were done with eating, Edward took out the pipe and pouch of tobacco he’d removed from Daddyjack’s body and filled the bowl and fired it with a match and took several billowing puffs before handing the pipe to John.

They passed the pipe back and forth and smoked in silence for a time. The wavering light of the fire played on their faces. Then John said:

“What if we was to run up on her?”

Edward looked at him. “On who?”

“Momma. What if we come up on her twixt here and Texas?”

“You been thinkin on
that?
”

John shrugged “Kindly. I’d like to know how come she just up and went like she did.”

“Cause she’s craziern a drunk Indian is how come.”

“Well, I don’t reckon it’d hurt nothin to ask after her.”

Edward looked at him. “I tell you what—I hope to hell we
do
find her, cause I want them mules.”

John stared at him for a moment. “I guess she figured she had right to em.”

“Well
I
figure we got as much right to em as she do. Leastways to one
of them. Wouldnt have to walk all the way to Texas if we had us a damn mule.”

They stared into the fire for a time and then John said: “What-all you figure we gone
do
in Texas?”

Edward looked at his brother and shrugged. “What
you
figure?”

“I aint give it a lot a thought.”

“Well I aint neither. I figure we just get there and then we see what-all we do.”

“That’s all right by me,” John said. He studied the cloud-streaked sky for a moment and then hawked and spit in the fire. “Still, I been thinkin on it
some
the last coupla days. I been thinkin how maybe, well, it’d be nice we had us our own place.”

Edward stared at him.

“Why not?” John said, his tone defensive against the argument he perceived in his brother’s eyes. “You’ve heard all them pilgrims talkin about the timberland in Texas. They say it’s ever bit as good as in Florida, better maybe. We could get us a piece of it and work that sumbitch into somethin good. Who knows more about axin trees than we do? Tell me somethin we don’t know about sawyerin. We could have our own mill is what we could have. If Daddyjack wasnt no good for nothin else he sure enough taught us all there’s to know about cuttin wood.”

Edward fell to repacking the pipe. They had never spoken of it but he had always sensed that John desired nothing so much as to work his own land and raise a family and live in the way of most men. The Florida homestead would have been his elder brother’s natural birthright, but now they both of them stood unrooted and Edward knew the circumstance weighed more sorely on John than on himself. As he tamped down the pipe and struck a lucifer to light it, he knew too that he could not favor his own vague and restless yearnings above fidelity to his brother, who was all that remained to him of loyal kinship in the world. If nothing else would do for John but to settle in Texas and work a tract of timber, then that’s what they would do.

Still, there were arguments to be made.

“What if it’s noplace left to homestead?” he asked. “What if we got to pay cash money for this here piece a property ye be so set on?”

“No place
left?
In
Texas?
About the biggest damn place ye ever laid eyes on? Where they say the timber just goes on and on as far as you can see and then goes yonder more?”

“I’m just sayin what
if?
”

“Well, it’s like sayin what
if
the sun falls down tomorrow is what it’s like sayin. It just don’t make sense.”

“What
if
, Johnny?”

“Then we’ll work for wages, goddamnit, till we’ve saved up the stake we need,” John said. “It’s others who done it and you know it well as me. You think it’s somethin others can do that we can’t? You and me together, Ward, we can do any damn thing and just show me the man says we can’t.”

So ardent was his brother’s faith that Edward had to smile.

“Listen Ward, Daddyjack was right about one thing. A man with no place to call his own aint but a feather on the wind.”

Edward’s grin widened. “Is that why I been feelin so light in the ass lately?”

John laughed. “Go ahead on and make all the jokes you want, but you know it’s true. You and me, we aint gone stay no feathers on the wind, not us. Hell, Ward, we can have us a nice place, a damn
business
is what we could have us, if we do this right.”

“Whatever you say, big brother,” Edward said. “Whatever you say.”

They followed the river trace downstream for the next two days in a steady rain that eased to a drizzle as they slogged into Mobile like apparitions of the drowned. The streets lay deep in red mud and the air was heavy with the smell of clay. They checked the hotels first thing and found that no one named Lilith Little had lately been registered in any of them and none of the desk clerks recognized John’s descriptions of her.

They decided to check the liveries and in the first one they entered they saw one of their mules standing in a stall.

“Hey Foots,” Edward said. The mule swung its head to look at him and twitched its ears. The Remus mule wasn’t there.

The stableman had got up out his rocker with a grin when the brothers entered but their apparent recognition of the mule wiped the false cheer off his face. A white bulldog stood at his side growling low with its nape bristled and teeth showing. The stableman hushed it with a snap of his fingers. He was tall and beefy and was missing the larger portion of his
nose which looked to have recently been bitten off or somehow torn away and the wound was raw and gaping.

“You boys need yourselfs a mount?”

“Done got one,” John said. “That mule there’s ours.”

The man looked over at the mule and then back at the brothers. “That a fact?” He regarded them closely and then spat to the side. “I guess yall got a paper on it?”

John looked at Edward and Edward stared back at him and then they both looked at the stableman.

“We don’t know about a paper,” John said.

The stableman crossed his arms. “Then yall got no proof the animal’s yours.”

“Don’t need no damn paper to know what’s ours,” John said.

“Reckon not,” the stableman said. “But knowin and provin’s two different things. The law don’t care a good goddamn what all you know, only what you got the proof of. You want that animal, you got to prove it’s yours or you got to pay for it.”

“
You
got a paper on that mule?” Edward asked.

The stableman sighed and went to a battered desk in the corner and dug a key out of his pocket and worked it noisily in the drawer lock and opened it. He thumbed through a thin stack of papers and extracted a sheet and called the bulldog over beside him and told it to stand fast and then beckoned the brothers to the table and the light of the overhanging lantern. “I reckon you boys can read?”

John reached for the paper but the man put his big hand over it and held it flat on the table. “You aint got to touch it to read it.”

The signature at the bottom of the bill of sale said Joan Armstrong but John recognized his mother’s hand. He looked up from the paper and nodded at Edward. The stableman described her as having hair reddish dark like a roast apple. “Face of a angel but for them eyes. Them eyes seen things no angel ever did I’ll wager you that. And somebody done recent put a shiner on one of them. Tell me true, boys: You know the woman?”

Edward looked away and spat. John said, “We might know her.”

“Thought you might,” the stableman said, looking closely at them both. He told the brothers she’d been there two days ago. “Walked in here with the mule on a lead and said she wanted to sell it. I said how much and she said whatever’s fair. I said did she have a paper on it and she said no. I said who’s it belong to and she said it belonged to her
husband who up and died real sudden and didn’t leave her much and that was why she had to sell the animal. You boys tell me now—was that a lie, do you know?”

“No,” John said. “It wasn’t exactly no lie.”

“Not exactly,” the stableman echoed. He pursed his lips and nodded as though mulling a fact of significance. “She was some galled at bein asked for a paper,” he said. “Asked me did she look like a dishonest person. Well, my momma didn’t raise no peckerwoods but she raised me never to offend a lady neither, so I said no mam, I’d be proud to buy the animal if she’d be so kind as to sign this here bill to make it all nice and legal and above the board, as they say.”

“Says here you paid but twenty dollars,” Edward said.

The stableman chuckled. “I started at twelve but she wouldn’t have it. But I could see she was in kind of a hurry to be on her way so I hemmed and hawed and raised the offer one slow dollar at a time and she practically called me a damn thief. I said she was free to go to some other stable and see could she do any better and she said we were probly all in cahoots. I do believe she been around some. But like I say, she looked in a hurry, and when I said twenty was as high as I was ever goin to go she took it.”

“Was there a girl with her?” John asked. “Bout yay high.”

Edward looked at his brother. They had neither one spoken of their sister since they’d abandoned the charred homestead. He himself did not want to believe that what their mother had told them was true, he did not
feel
that it was, and he was surprised to know that John still had his doubts as well.

“Didn’t see no girl. Come in by her sweet lonesome.”

“Twenty dollars is some less than that animal’s worth,” Edward said.

“That’s a true fact,” the stableman said. The raw nose holes flared over a broad grin. “It’s some of us with a natural-born talent for business.”

Edward took the pistol from his waistband and said, “I’ll give you twenty dollars and this here gun for it,” Edward said.

The stableman laughed and shook his head. “Got a sense of fun, don’t ye boy?” he said.

Edward’s eyes narrowed. The pistol muzzle was pointed at the ceiling but now he slid his finger over the trigger and put his thumb on the hammer. The stableman glanced at the pistol but did not yield his smile.

John put his hand on Edward’s arm and said, “Leave it be. He got the paper and that’s the damn law. Let’s go.” Edward stood fast a moment
longer and stared hard at the stableman but the man refused to be stared down and simply grinned at him. Edward spat to the side and tucked the pistol in his pants and the brothers went out into a sprinkling rain.

The stableman went to the door and looked after them and called: “You boys come back and see me you decide you need yourselfs some mounts. I give the best deals in town and that’s a fact.”

The dark sky rumbled steadily as they went about the town and looked in the few other liveries but the Remus mule was in none of them nor Daddyjack’s horse. None of the stablemen had seen any woman or girl fitting the descriptions the brothers gave.

By the time they’d checked the last livery the rain was falling hard once again, pocking the muddy streets and clattering on the rooftops. They went in a tavern and the lantern flames guttered in their sooty glass in the sudden flux of air admitted through the door. The roof drummed with rain and the room was close and dimly lighted and rank with the smell of dampened men too long unwashed. Shadowed faces turned their way and conversation fell off as the brothers stood and slung water off their hats onto the floor. They went to the bar and ordered whiskey and gulped it down and ordered another and sipped at it mutely as the talk in the room gradually renewed. When they finished the second drink they went outside and stood on the small porch and watched the rain.

“Well, it aint like to let up anytime soon,” John said, scanning the heavy sky and then looking down the street to westward. “Last I heard, Texas was still yonderway. Sooner we get goin again the sooner we be there.”

“I aint leavin without that mule,” Edward said.

John looked at him.

“Well I aint. I aint lettin no thievin smitty have that mule for twenty dollars. I don’t care she signed a paper on it.”

“Well hell, bubba, when you decide
this?
”

“In there just now.” Edward was looking toward a side street and John followed his gaze and recognized the street as leading to the stable where they’d seen the Foots mule. He looked at Edward and said, “That stablebuck looks a rough ole boy.”

“He cheated her of that mule and I aim to get it back. And he don’t scare me none.”

“Didn’t say he did and he don’t me neither,” John said. He looked down the street again. “You want that mule, I say let’s get it.”

Edward regarded the overcast sky. “Be full dark soon. Best wait till then.” He caught John’s look at the tavern door. “I aint scared a him but probly better we don’t front him half-drunk, either.”

John shrugged and nodded. They’d wrapped their firearms in their blankets to protect them from the rain and now uncovered them and checked the locks to make sure they were still dry and then wrapped the guns again. They sat on the porch with their backs against the wall and waited for nightfall and when it came they got up and trudged down the thickmudded street.

The rain had again slackened to a drizzle amid continuing growls of thunder but the clouds were yet thick and roily and riding low. Sporadic lightning shimmered the street with blue light and black shadows. The wind was stronger now and shook water off the trees in heavy splattering sheets. They could hear the river’s swollen rush. The smell of raw clay was strong on the air. The buildings along the main street were closed and dark but for the taverns and pleasure parlors whose windows showed wavering lamplight and resounded with music and laughter. A pair of horsemen draped with slickers went sploshing past, joking loudly about Mobile’s sporting ladies.

They rounded the corner and saw a cast of pale yellow light in the livery and eased up to the door and looked inside. The stableman sat in his rocker sipping from a jug and addressing the bulldog lying at his feet with its chin on its paws. They stepped inside and the dog flexed to its feet with its back roached and fangs bared, growling low.

The stableman set the jug on the floor and rose from his chair and John leveled the Hawken at him from the hip and the man stood fast and looked mournful. Edward took a coiled rope off a stall gate and tossed it to him and told him to tie the dog short to a post. The man did it and then Edward ordered him to hand over the key to the desk drawer and sit back down in the rocker. He bound the man snug to the chair with a length of rope while the bulldog snarled and slobbered and strained against its short leash but did not bark. John fashioned a rope hackamore for the mule and slipped it on the animal while Edward went to the desk and opened the drawer and found the bill of sale and folded it and put it in his pocket.

“We could take any of these mounts we want,” Edward told the stableman, “but we aint here to steal from you, only to take what’s rightly ours. You paid twenty dollars for old Foots, but it was cheatin money cause you know good and well this mule’s worth more, so it’s only fittin you lose what you paid.”

As John began cutting a wide strip off a burlap bag the stableman said, “You thievin me, boys, no matter how you shine the light on it. You gone have the law on you. You sure you want that?”

“How you gonna prove to the law you even had a mule stole?” Edward said. He patted his pocket. “Where’s your damn paper on it?”

“You ever decide you want to make us a fair offer on it,” John said, “you come see us in Pensacola.” He winked at Edward over the stableman’s head. “That’s our home and that’s where we headed.”

John rolled the burlap strip and gagged the man with it. Edward stepped outside to make sure the going was clear and then John blew out the lantern and the brothers doubled up on the Foots mule and rode down the street and out of Mobile in the falling rain.