River Runs Deep (14 page)

“See?”

“Elias,” Stephen went on. “What did you see?”

Elias thought. “You. I was looking for you. . . . I needed to show you something . . . and I seen you loading up your pack at that hidey-hole, so I followed you. Then I heard you talking with somebody. Then I came here and seen all those cook fires and a whole bunch of people—”

“Enough.” Stephen sounded almost done in. There was more whispering, then Stephen asked. “Why'd you follow me?”

“I . . . I found a dead pigeon, one of Pennyrile's. It had a letter Pennryile must have meant to send out. I—” He hesitated, embarrassed to admit what he'd done. “I read it. And it seemed sort of funny to me, like there was something wrong in it, and I couldn't think of no one else to ask about it except you, so I went out to show you but then I got curious.”

“We in it now,” a new voice said.

“Who was that?” Elias asked.

Stephen didn't answer right away, sighing. Then he said, “Put him down, Davie.”

Suddenly Elias's feet were back on the ground. A tinderbox slid open and soon the lamp was burning again. Stephen held up the light.

“You shouldn't have followed me.” But Elias, looking around, was too stunned to reply. So many faces, not one of them familiar, gazed at him. Some were as dark as Nick's; others lighter like Stephen's, but it was plain enough to see now what he had missed when they were all shadowed by the cook fires: they were all Negroes. And not a one looked happy to see him.

Beyond the little circle other lamps flared and the cook fires began to burn again. More people. So many more. Elias saw that near the edges of the chamber, sheets and tarps had been strung up for privacy. They were living down here, Elias marveled. And they were all colored. And if those two things were true . . .

“Runaways,” Elias whispered.

“You done it now, Stephen!” another voice called, sounding desperate.

Stephen ignored him. “Give me Pennyrile's letter, Elias.”

Elias didn't move, just tried to take it all in. “Runaways!” he repeated. Then he looked sharp at Stephen. “How many are there? How long they been here?”

“Elias, give me the letter.” Stephen dropped his chin. There was something pleading in the tone, so Elias handed it over.

Stephen took it, then addressed the one who'd been holding Elias. “Keep an eye on him, Davie.” And to Elias he said, “Stay right here, understand?”

“Where you going?”

Stephen gestured toward one of the cook fires. “Just over there. To talk to somebody.”

“But—”

“Elias, you've put me in a bind here, so the least you can do is listen to me and wait a minute.”

“But—”

“No!” Stephen said, his temper flaring white-hot before he reined it back in. He waved over a boy who was standing nearby, watching silently. “Stay with him.”

The boy was a few inches taller than Elias, though wider and stronger by more than that margin. His hair stuck out in wiry little twists all over his head.

“Whatev' you say, Stephen,” the boy said, and Elias instantly recognized the voice.

Jonah!

“You,” Elias managed, staring at Jonah.

Jonah took a step nearer Elias and sat down on the sand. Elias did the same, keeping his gaze on Jonah, half afraid that if he blinked, Jonah would disappear.

“You can settle down, Davie,” Jonah said to the big man. “He won't go nowhere.”

“I didn't know what else to do,” Davie rumbled, his voice rich and deep. “I seen him coming over the wall and I just—”

“You did right, Davie,” Jonah said. “This all is partly my fault anyhow. I helped Stephen fetch in them supplies. If I'd a stayed my post, Elias wouldn't have got so far.”

“Post?” Elias asked. The more he heard, the more confused he felt.

Jonah nodded. “Back up the way, we got a spot we keep watch. Enough room to slip ahead and warn ev'body if someone ain't one of us wanders down.”

“Somebody like me,” Elias guessed.

“Yep,” Jonah said.

All Elias's questions seemed to jockey for position, demanding to be asked first.
How many are here? How long have they been hiding? Who knows about it? Nick? Mat? Lillian or the others? How do they get by?
But he settled on one he thought might catch him the most information. “What is this place?”

Jonah scooped up a handful of sand and let it drain through his fingers. “Haven? 'Bout what it look like. Mess of fugitives, like me. But we're fair organized. Even got us a school,” he said proudly, gesturing toward a corner of the room where a cluster of people were gathered around a man who was writing on a flat piece of the cave wall with a chunk of charred wood.

“But it's nighttime, ain't it?” Elias asked.

Jonah scooped and sifted another handful of sand. “Nolin—he's the teacher—he has classes all times. Folks got to stuff they heads full and got plenty of time to do it down here. Nolin reckons all us can at least learn our letters and how to make our names. He keeps trying to get me to come so he can get me to read, but I ain't got the patience.”

A school. Elias watched Nolin trying to wrangle his students back to attention, but they were all too busy staring at Elias. He recalled the books in Stephen's bag that night, understanding at last where he'd been going with them.

Jonah continued. “Stephen and Hughes—”

“Hughes?”

Jonah pointed at the man talking with Stephen across the room. “Hughes in charge. Been here as long as anybody, I think.”

“How long's that?”

Jonah picked at his thumbnail. “Almost two years, I expect.”

Two years! Elias hadn't even been there for two months.

“Does everybody stay that long?”

Jonah shook his head. “Used to be folks came and went all time. Come for a while to hide, then go when they figure the trackers weren't looking for 'em as keen. When it was safer to get on North, or strike out to the West for one of the free territories.”

“Used to be?”

Jonah chucked another handful of sand. “Yeah. There's been trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Elias asked.

“A boat moored downriver a couple of months ago. Been poking round the spots where river go in and out the cave. Got everybody spooked. And got us pinned down. Cain't get folk in easy, can't hardly get 'em out at all, and moving the water's been near impossible.”

“Water?” Elias asked.

“Jonah,” the big fellow called Davie warned.

Jonah lifted a hand. “I know, I know. Let Hughes tell him the rest.”

Elias studied Hughes. He was swaybacked and held a walking stick. And even though he was seated on a rock, it seemed to Elias like he was somehow still bigger than everyone gathered around him, sort of like King Arthur on a throne.

“What do you suppose they're talking about?” Elias asked.

Jonah looked over at them, then back at Elias. “What to do with you, reckon.”

“What to do with me?” Elias yelped. “What's that mean?”

“Means you seen Haven. You know 'bout us. And they can't let that be.”

Elias went cold. Was it possible? Would they really . . . “They wouldn't—”

Jonah gaped at him. “What? You think? Naw! We runaways, but we ain't murderers. They're probably figgerin' on keeping you down here, making up some story to tell that doctor about how you went wanderin' and got lost—”

“They can't keep me down here!” Elias started to climb to his feet, but Davie's massive hand clamped back on his shoulder.

“Cain't let you run off telling 'bout what you seen, neither.”

“I—”

“Hush, now,” Jonah said. “Stephen's ready.”

Stephen waved Elias over, and Davie's grip relaxed. “Looks like they ready for you,” Davie said.

Elias swallowed. Jonah wouldn't meet Elias's eyes, but he walked with him to where the man sat on the boulder.

“Hughes, this is Elias,” Stephen said. “He's a friend.”

Y
ou put us in a tight spot, sir,” Hughes said. “Real tight spot. What we want to know now is, can we count on you? Stephen here says we can.”

“Count on me to what?” Elias managed.

“Help,” Hughes said simply.

“What kind of help?” Elias asked. If they'd even consider keeping him down here, there was no telling what they might ask of him. Could he trust them? Stephen, sure. Jonah, maybe.

But all of them?

Hughes assessed him. Elias wished somebody would put the lights out again just so he could avoid that stare. After the moment stretched out long enough to make Elias even more uneasy, Hughes handed the letter back.

“We read that letter . . . ,” Hughes began. “You swear you don't know what it's about?”

Elias shook his head.

“Your Pennyrile come in August,” Hughes continued. Elias took plenty of exception to the way Hughes seemed ready to lump him in with Pennyrile, but he kept quiet. Hughes, he could tell, wasn't one to trifle with. Hughes went on, “Few weeks later this flat-bottom boat hid itself up near Cave City.”

The fire nearby popped loud and fierce. Elias thought it out. The knots on Pennyrile's wrap, how Croghan told him he was a riverman, that the place the pigeons had been trained to fly home to must be nearby. “You reckon Pennyrile's part of that boat's crew?”

“Timing's a bit too neat for him not to be,” Stephen admitted. “But he seemed to be just another patient. And he isn't faking. He's consumptive in his neck. Lillian says she never seen worse. So I didn't think it was important—”

“I decide what's important,” Hughes said, but he didn't say it mean. Just stern.

“He's after something,” Elias pointed out.

“Seems so,” Hughes said. “He ever tell you what?”

“The note mentioned a fount,” Elias said. “But no, he never said anything about it to me.”

“A fount,” Hughes repeated.

Elias grew impatient with having to ask and wished they'd just lay it out. “What's it mean?”

Stephen waited for Hughes to speak, but Hughes nodded to Stephen. “You tell it.”

Stephen took a breath. “Not long after it was decided that this place was going to be a permanent sort of station on the road North, we saw we were going to need more supplies and provisions than just what folk came here with when they arrived.”

Elias thought about the scraggly shrub planted outside Shem's hut. “Can't grow food down here. And I don't expect those fish Nick's been collecting are enough to feed a body on.”

Stephen smiled. “More bone than meat, Nick's fish.”

Hughes broke in. “We spent a long time trying to figure out ways to scare up supplies. We pilfered some in the early days, but that was too dangerous. Even a few eggs or a side of bacon go missing from a smokehouse, and folk start asking questions.”

“So we knew we had to make a way to get some ready money to buy supplies. We found it not far from where we're standing now. A spring”—Stephen pointed back into the shadows—“other side of th—”

Stephen stopped short, seeing what Elias nearly missed: a signal, Hughes's sharp shake of the head. But Elias caught it at the last second, like the tail of a snake slipping through dry leaves. And he instantly understood Hughes didn't want Elias to know where it was.

“What's so special about this spring?” Elias asked.

“We settled on using it for drinking water, and going over to the river for bathing and washing. River water is bad over here, but the spring water was clean, even if it had a strong taste to it. Anyway, folks who were in rough shape, or still nursing wounds they'd gotten from masters before they ran, or ones they picked up on the way . . . Well, at any rate, once they got inside, after being on the run for so long, everybody started healing up quick.”

Elias thought of what Croghan had said about the cave's effect on people, how the vapors made them feel like they could walk for days. “Quicker than normal,” Stephen added.

“Folk started saying maybe the water was special,” Hughes explained.

Elias thought back to the medicine shows and elixir sellers who used to set up on the landing back home, the miracle cure men with their little rounded hats and smart vests and smarter talk about whatever magic cordial they were shilling. Granny always said they weren't any count, weren't anything but connivers getting desperate folk to toss good money at the wind, for all the healing they'd bring. Even so, Mama had tried half a dozen of them on Daddy before she quit hoping too. “Y'all think you got tonic water,” Elias determined.

Hughes cleared his throat. “What we got is a way to keep this place alive. Something out there that people bought and that would let us get supplies. Leastways, we
did
.”

“Does it work, though?” Elias pressed, his mind racing.

Stephen shook his head. “It's more likely just being in the cave and getting rest is what does it.”

“Some believe, though,” Jonah pointed out. Elias thought Jonah said it like
he
might believe it.

“
Might
it work?” Elias asked, careful not to sound too hopeful. “The water? Might it?”

“We . . . well . . . we've already tried it on you, Elias,” Stephen told him.

Elias's eyes went wide as he recalled the metallic taste of the water Nick had given him when they were out that night together, how he'd said it came from a different spring. “And I've been getting better—the doc even said—”

“We've given it to all of them up there,” Stephen said softly.

Elias felt the hope that had begun to bloom inside him leak away. “All of them? Lillian's never given it to me up at the ward.”