Paxton and the Lone Star (10 page)

Elizabeth, watching her mother, wondered if she was pretending to be asleep so she wouldn't have to face her daughter. She needn't have worried, Elizabeth thought dully. Hester could have said anything she wanted. Her dutiful daughter had no stomach for another scene. Elizabeth would be a good girl. Elizabeth would be what her father wanted her to be, as long as he did not touch her again. Elizabeth loved her father. Elizabeth hated her father. And how was Elizabeth to explain that to a woman like Hester who, carried a thousand miles from a home she had never wanted to leave, teetered precariously on the edge of hysteria?

Hester stirred and moaned in her sleep. Feeling a stab of pity, Elizabeth reached to pull the cover over her. The lantern she had lit earlier burned low, a dim light that did little to alleviate the darkness. Outside, the rain drummed down harder and a rising wind pressed the arched canvas to the ribs that held it erect. Yawning, Elizabeth wrapped the blanket more tightly about her and wondered what time it was. It felt as if her father had been gone for hours. Her back stung and she shifted her position. High overhead, thunder prowled the invisible sky like a wild beast stalking its prey. And on earth, something could be seen on the path, moving in a sudden flash of lightning.

Quickly, Elizabeth pulled on her father's hat, grabbed the lantern and a rain tarpaulin, and stepped out. “Lottie?” she called. “Father?”

“Beth? It's me, Beth,” Lottie answered. “And Mr. Jones.”

Dark shapes loomed out of the rain, slipping and stumbling through the mud. Elizabeth hurried to them and threw the tarp over them.

“You told,” Lottie gasped. “Curse you, you told.”

“Father made me,” Elizabeth explained. “Where's …” She held up the lantern. A bedraggled Jones stared back at her. “Where's Father?” she asked.

“Still there, far as I know,” Jones said, obviously disgusted with the whole soggy affair. “That road's pure mud.”

“I was just dancing,” Lottie whined. “I wasn't doing anything wrong.” She wiped a muddy wrist across her face. “Just dancing, that's all. Holton wanted to go out back, but I wouldn't let him, and then Father found us.”

“Where is he?” Elizabeth asked.

“He was awful! Why did you have to tell? It's all your fault.”

Rain ran down her back, soaked into her shoes, beat on her hat. Elizabeth thought she would go mad.
“Where is he?”
she screamed. “For the love of God, where—”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” A bolt of lightning struck nearby. All three cringed and moved closer to the wagon. “What do you mean you don't know?”

“They began to fight. I was so frightened I just ran, and then he—” She gestured to Jones. “—found me and took me away. I don't know. I don't know.”

Furious, Elizabeth turned her wrath on the wagon train leader. “You didn't help him?” she screeched, pounding the black man's chest with her fist. “You just left him—”

“That'll be enough, miss,” Jones interrupted, catching her wrist and restraining her as easily as if she were a child. “Señor Medina hired me to take you people to Texas, not fight your unnecessary fights. If your pa wants to fight, he does so without me.”

“But you could have at least gone to see—”

“I'm a black man and this is the east side of the river, miss. Once we cross the Sabine into Texas it's another story. But east of the Sabine?” He shook his head. “You got to understand how it is, miss. If I walked into any one of them places, I'd have the chance of a rattlesnake in front of a herd of buffalo.”

“But—”

Jones was losing patience. “No buts, durn it. Now, you take your sister inside that wagon and both of you get some dry clothes on.” He stepped out from under the tarp and saw that it was firmly wrapped around the two girls. “I'm gonna go and do the same, and have me a cup of coffee. Another hour, when this lets up, you come and tell me if he ain't back yet, and I'll take the chance and go scout around. But not until, you hear? Can't nobody do nothin' in this rain.”

“But you can't—”

“I can, miss!” Jones grabbed Elizabeth's shoulder and turned her around so that she faced the wagon. “Now do as I say 'for I get ired. There's nothin' you can do.”

He sloshed off. In a moment, the sound of his footsteps had faded. “Where did you leave him?” Elizabeth asked, restraining Lottie when she started toward the wagon.

“Mr. Jones said—”

Elizabeth's hand lashed out and caught Lottie's dress at the shoulder. “So help me, Lottie, I'll tear this dress off you and you'll only have one left. Now where did you leave him?”

The lantern was held close to her face, the glass almost touching her cheek. Lottie shrank back. “I don't know,” she said, frightened. “A place. A dance hall, I guess. It was big, with two stories and lots of people.…” She stumbled when Elizabeth let her go, handed her the lantern, and ripped the tarp from around her shoulders. “Don't do it, Beth! It's horrible there. I'll tell Mr. Jones that—”

“You'll tell Mr. Jones nothing for at least an hour!” Elizabeth hissed. She wrapped the tarp around herself and snatched the lantern from Lottie's hand. “Now go to the wagon. Mother's asleep. If she wakes up, tell her I've gone after Father and that I'll be back in a little while. Do you understand me?”

Tired and drenched to the skin, Lottie nodded dumbly and trudged through the mud to the wagon. Elizabeth pulled the hat down over her ears and, with the lantern held low to light the way, disappeared into the gap in the trees.

The path to town was lined with oak trees and yellow pine, eerily moss-hung and menacingly spiny against the devilish glow of the lightning. Here and there along the trail, betrayed to Elizabeth by a crack of light or the barking of a dog, humble lodgings lay nestled in the heavy woods. When Thaddeus Jones had first instructed the settlers to stay away from Natchez Under the Hill, he had described the path to town. They would know when they were nearing Natchez when the path suddenly became a road at the end of a low, whitewashed picket fence that surrounded a country estate. Shortly thereafter the road branched, the left fork leading to Natchez itself, the right to its iniquitous companion. Elizabeth found the picket fence as expected and, a hundred yards farther along, a great two-story house that was brightly lit against the night. Short paces later, the road branched as Jones had said it would. “This has to be it,” she mumbled, pausing momentarily and squinting through the rain. Ahead she could see lights that marked the outskirts of Natchez proper. To her right she could hear the Mississippi running in darkness. With a deep breath, she turned and entered the narrow, tree-overhung path that, she discovered soon enough, sloped down precipitously. She slipped and slid, caught at branches for support, once stepped off the path itself and found herself knee deep in what must have been a ditch. Thunder crashed on every side. Lightning cast grasping shadows of lurking monsters. The lantern barely lit the few feet of path in front of her and, quite suddenly and surprisingly, revealed a sheer red clay and mud wall that was the base of the bluff under which lay Natchez Under the Hill.

The Mississippi roared in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. Dim outlines of squat buildings, shot through with myriad holes that leaked warm lantern light, marched in irregular formation ahead of her. Elizabeth approached one and saw that the windows were covered with clapboard shutters to keep out the rain. She pressed close to a peephole and peered inside where a conglomeration of unsavory-looking individuals danced with chunkily built, painted harlots who spun and bobbed in approximate time to an out-of-tune piano. Cigar and pipesmoke hovered over the whirling assembly, giving it the appearance of a scene from the nether world her father was so quick to describe on each occasion of her or Lottie's slightest misdeed.

Lottie had described a large, two-story dance hall filled with lots of people. Elizabeth leaned against the wall, wiped the water from her face, and looked up just as a flash of lightning revealed a half dozen or so buildings to her right and a single two-story structure. “As good a place to start as any,” she said aloud, more to bolster her spirits than to be heard.

A boardwalk constructed by some mad inebriate angled out from the tavern and passed in front of two or three other buildings before becoming indistinguishable from the mud that filled the street. Elizabeth scraped some of the mud off her shoes and struck out along the boardwalk. The rain was coming fitfully now. Driven off the river by hard gusts, it whipped the edges of the tarpaulin she wore. A sign creaked overhead.
KARANKAWA KATIE,
it said. From inside, a loud crash and a flurry of curses, shouts, shrieks, and a single shot sent her scurrying away. The next building was completely dark and smelled of smoke and charred wood. Just beyond it, the sound of a violent struggle came from an alley. Elizabeth paused, then almost ran before she heard what sounded like her father's voice. Her heart beating wildly, she jumped off the boardwalk, nearly tripped on a half-sunken beam, caught hold of a post for balance, and entered the alley where two shadowy figures were rolling in the mud.

“Stop!” Elizabeth shouted.

The man on top glanced up, but kept pummeling his victim.

“I have a gun!” she warned, raising her arm and hoping the lie sounded convincing.

The man struggled to his feet, waving his hands in front of his face. “Damn!” he cursed, and stumbled off down the alley to disappear among a tumble of barrels and crates.

Elizabeth ran to the downed man and crouched by him. “Father,” she said, turning him over and rolling him out of a puddle. “It's me, Father. Elizabeth.”

Lightning flared, revealed heavy-set features covered with a sheen of offal and mud. An arm encircled Elizabeth's neck and yanked her down to be kissed by a hideous, foul-smelling mouth. Horrified, Elizabeth struggled free with such force her momentum propelled her against the wall of the burned-out tavern. Barely able to keep from screaming, she watched as the figure approached. “I've been called a lot of things, honey, but never a father.”

It was a woman! Elizabeth's stomach churned and she tried to wipe the taste from her mouth.

The woman shook her head, spraying Elizabeth with the foul-smelling mud, and stuck her face under the torrent of water running off the roof. Grabbing Elizabeth's wrist, she raised the lantern to see Elizabeth better, and in so doing revealed her own face, pox-marked and bruised. “So it's a sweet innocent thing that's chased away my bucko. Well, I'll not hold it against you, dearie. Still, you'd best get back where you belong. This is no night for a young thing like you to be out.”

The woman lurched away in search of her lost bucko, leaving Elizabeth to feel her way back to the boardwalk, from where she saw she would have to descend once more into the mud in order to reach the two-story building. The raw, acrid taste of vomit burned in her throat; the taste of the woman in the alley lingered on her lips. Blinded by tears of revulsion, she stumbled out into the muddy street and into the path of a team of horses.

“Lawd!” A voice exclaimed.

Elizabeth screamed, and fell back as the horses reared over her and the driver fought to bring them under control. The mud was cold and deep. Elizabeth's hands sank to the wrists. The lantern hissed and, as the hot glass snapped with a crackling sound, went out. Above her, another lantern dangled from a thin arm.

“Mistuh,” the reedy voice went on angrily. “Ah'se sorry, but you run right in front of—Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy. Don't that beat all. You ain't no mistuh at all!”

Utterly defeated, drenched to the bone and covered with mud, Elizabeth realized how totally helpless she was. She didn't have the courage to search every building, brothel, tavern, shed, and alley in the hell in which she found herself; she would have to find the town constable and ask him to help locate her father. “Please,” she said, struggling to her feet and leaning wearily against the wagon. “Please help me. I'm looking … that is, I have to find the constable. Can you take me to him? It's important. Please help me.”

The black driver studied her suspiciously. She was not a woman from the district, for he knew all of them by sight. Moreover, this was little more than a girl, and lost at that. “Ah'll help you, miss,” he finally said, glancing around nervously in case anyone should see him in the presence of a white woman, no matter what the circumstances. “Ah'm on mah way to find ol' Cap'n Martin myself. Reckon you kin come along if'n you a mind. But you'll have to ride in back, 'cause Ah could git me in a pow'ful lot of trouble was you sittin' up here with me an' all. 'Course,” he added, jerking his head toward the back of the wagon, “you might not wanta ride there 'cause of what Ah'm takin' to the Cap'n, but that's up ta you.”

“I don't care,” Elizabeth said, her voice thick with exhaustion and anxiety. She climbed onto the step and into the rear. “Just as long as we find him, I don't care.”

“Jest watch yer step, Miss. And mind you stick close to the side. They's a tool box there you can set on, an' not git touched by—”

Too late. Lightning arced across the sky and the horses shied. Off balance, Elizabeth fell over the edge and onto something soft and clammy, then sucked in her breath and jerked away from a cold, damp hand that pressed against her.

The driver fought the plunging horses with one hand, and held the lantern so the girl could see better with the other. “Whoa, Bess, whoa, Blue,” he hollered. “You all right, miss? You sick?”

Elizabeth crouched on hands and knees and stared at the mud-crusted apparition lying on the floor in front of her. The skull was partly flattened, and oozed a grayish-white material. The rain, as it cleansed the blood from the bloodless face, fell into the lifeless eyes that stared past her and into eternity. The scream started in her stomach, and tore free from her throat.