Soul Catcher (13 page)

But on the other, he could secretly identify with Darius's desire to strike out on some new path, as Cain himself longed to do. Cain could not imagine wasting his life hoeing a furrow in a field, picking cotton or tobacco, whether it was his own or someone else's. Of course, the fundamental difference was that Cain was white and Darius black, that the former had the innate capacity to make decisions for himself, and thus had been given free will, and the latter didn't. It was all as simple, as clear-cut, as that.

He became so adept at hunting down his father's runaway slave, so skilled at tracking and knowing his ways, that other slave owners and farmers and planters in and around Nottoway Chase would call upon Cain to help them find their runaways, too. He soon realized he was good at it, had an aptitude for the trade, a nose for his prey. As with hunting deer or bear, he found that he could think like the thing he was hunting, know where he'd go, where he would try to hide, how he would act if cornered. Soon he acquired something of a reputation: Augustus Cain, slave catcher. He was proud of his so-called notoriety, delighted in the fact that wealthy planters or respected townspeople would come to him, a mere youth, for his advice, his expertise, his knowledge. They treated him with respect, and he felt important, something he'd never felt working on his father's farm.

Mostly he worked for them as a matter of courtesy, though when he refused their money they would usually offer him an expensive gun or a fine saddle horse, which he accepted as a courtesy of one gentleman to another. Sometimes over cigars and whiskey, there would even be the not-so-veiled allusion to the proffered hand of some daughter in marriage. Cain was, after all, considered one of the most eligible bachelors in Nottoway Chase. Tall and raw-boned, perhaps a little too long of face, yet with his curly brown hair and those sad gray eyes, he was the object of much speculation among the females of town. Often, wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat sporting an ostrich plume and set at a jaunty angle on his head, Cain cut a dashing figure as he galloped wildly down Main Street astride an impressive roan gelding, scattering chickens and pedestrians alike. At the county fair he'd usually win the horse race or the turkey shoot, or be asked to judge a pie contest. When he passed by, the heart of every marriageable woman, and, for that matter, many a married woman, too, would go all aflutter at the sight of the young Augustus Cain.

The name, though, that was most often mentioned in the same breath with his was that of Alexandra Throgmorton, the daughter of Cain's neighbor. He had known her all his life. As a child she was called Lexi, a tomboy with blond hair and hard, bronzed arms and the lithe body of a boy. She used to fish and ride horses with Cain and his brother TJ. When the Cains were invited to the Throgmorton residence for dinner, the three adolescents would mount up and ride down to the creek that divided the imposing Throgmorton estate from the much smaller Cain farm. Sometimes the three of them would go fishing or swimming in its cool dark waters. Lexi handled herself well on a horse, rode as skillfully as TJ, and almost as well as Cain himself. She and Cain would race back to the house, she on a fast bay named Princess, her long blond hair flying backward as she rode.

Perhaps because it was her fate, she grew into one of those delicate creatures of southern womanhood, demure and charming with a reserve that seemed almost instinctual. Hardly unattractive in a pale, genteel sort of fashion, she had no shortage of suitors, especially those with an eye to the main chance, because of her father's wealth. Yet Cain would have had to be blind not to notice the coy looks and meaningful smiles she began to throw his way. Once, the Throgmortons had held a grand affair at their house, inviting nearly half the county. Alexandra--as she was known now--quickly found her dance card full, but near the end of the night had managed to find Cain and ask him to dance. He had felt the stiffness of her stays pressing into him and he breathed in the heady fragrance of her hair and perfume, the appealing aura of her newly found womanness. Later, under the pretense of getting a breath of air, she suggested they take a walk in the moonlight, which they did. Stopping under a tulip poplar, she had looked up at him, smiling expectantly. She was lovely, he thought, and, feeling she expected him to kiss her, he did so. He'd always been fond of Lexi, held her in high regard as a friend, and he had no doubt she'd make a wonderful wife--for some man. He understood, too, that both families expected him to be that man. Perhaps he even expected it of himself. Somewhere down the line, he supposed it was a thing destined, inevitable that he marry her, just as it was inevitable that he would take over his father's farm. The word love never entered his thoughts. At least not the sort that existed between a husband and a wife. Not even the sort he'd felt for Eileen McDuffy, the whore.

Alexandra, too, assumed they would be married. After a while she began to treat him as if he were already her husband. She rebuked him when she'd heard of his having gotten so slewed in Richmond that his brother had to lay him out in the back of a wagon and cart him home. Or when they'd ride out into the fields together, sometimes she'd bring up the subject of where they'd eventually build their own house. When Cain remained mute on the topic, Alexandra would say, "You do want our own place someday, Augustus? After all, we wouldn't want to live with my parents forever." And Cain, not wanting to hurt her feelings, would finally say, "Of course."

One time a valuable slave of Mr. Throgmorton's named Gabriel had run off and the man had called upon Cain's services. Cain hunted him for nearly a week before apprehending him finally in Charlottesville, where he'd hidden out with a freed aunt. Out of gratitude, Mr. Throgmorton invited him over to his place. In his study lined with vellum-covered books the man had never opened, he plied Cain with Cuban cigars and well-aged Kentucky bourbon. Cain was twenty-five, and Mr. Throgmorton talked not only of Cain's future but also of that of his beloved daughter, too. Like Cain's father, it seemed that Mr. Throgmorton had had designs on uniting their two properties. Nevertheless, Cain didn't cotton to the notion of putting himself in the other man's debt, or of shackling himself to a piece of ground by virtue of marriage. He told Mr. Throgmorton that he liked his daughter very much, to which the man gave him a fatherly pat on the back and poured him another drink. However, somewhere along about Cain's sixth or seventh whiskey that night, Mr. Throgmorton must have made a formal proposal of his daughter's hand, to which Cain must have acceded, or at least hadn't had the heart to refuse, and things were set in motion. The next morning he woke to a splitting headache and to the hearty congratulations of his father on the news that he and Alexandra were finally to be wed. His father thought that his wayward son was at last going to settle down. More than that, his father's dream of uniting the two properties would finally be realized.

* * *

But that was all a long, long time ago, almost another life.

He'd been slave catching for the last ten years or so, ever since he returned, wounded, from the war. He wasn't ashamed of his profession, which was fully sanctioned both by two hundred years of precedent and by the Congress of the United States through the Fugitive Slave Law of1850. What Cain had always found objectionable was the sort of person the slave-catching business attracted, drawn to it like flies to a dead possum. The riffraff and scoundrels, the no 'counts and rogues, the illiterate fools and men of no honor-- the human flotsam that became slave catchers and slave traders, blackbirders and agents, auctioneers and jailers. Even the owners. Especially the owners. Men like this Eberly. Men who thought they could buy you, heart and soul, to do their bidding, so that you were little better than a nigger yourself. But he couldn't deny the seductive attraction of the money it offered. He could make more in a week's time bringing a slave back than he could doing just about anything else in a year. Besides, when he'd gotten back from the war, hobbling with his bum leg, there wasn't much open to someone like himself. He couldn't go back to Nottoway Chase. From TJ, with whom he maintained an infrequent correspondence, he'd heard that his father had left his brother the farm, and TJ, ever the dutiful son, had gone ahead and done the dutiful thing and married Lexi. Cain hadn't even been surprised when he read that. He even wished them well.

Cain had made a go of a few jobs--as a puddler in the Tredegar Iron Works, a teamster driving horses, even a sheriff's deputy. None of it suited him. All seemed to ask of him what he didn't have to give. Down on his luck, not a rock in his pocket, he chanced to see a wanted ad in the Richmond newspaper:

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$100 reward! Ranaway slave. Negro buck named Samuel eloped from my farm in Chesterfield County, 28th inst. Said Negro is about 24 years of age. Dark brown or gingerbread complexion. Has scar over his right eyebrow, about five feet ten inches, bulky made. Clear marks from previous lashings. Has an agreeable personality. Last seen wearing striped pantaloons, a blue frock coat and vest. Samuel has been used to housework. Reads and writes some. May attempt to flee to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has kin. Will pay anyone for bringing runaway to county jail. Contact Pierce Butler of Miss Lucy plantation.

So he answered the advertisement, got more information about the runaway, and hunted him down. It took him a week, but he caught the man just before he crossed over the Ohio River, and he brought him back and claimed his reward. Not counting gambling, it was just about the easiest money he'd ever made. So he answered another reward notice for a runaway. Then another. And just like back in Nottoway Chase, he quickly gained something of a reputation first in Richmond, then in all of Virginia, for his prowess as a slave catcher. Wealthy planters and factory owners and businessmen from all over soon started to seek him out, looking to have him return a valuable piece of property. Men who knew he could be depended upon, knew he could be discreet. Northerners who resided above the Mason-Dixon line but who secretly owned slaves in the South and didn't want anyone to know about it back home. Or like the big-shot senator from South Carolina, whose son had, as the father put it, "fallen under the spell of a nigger witch" and helped her escape to the North. They trusted him, knew he would not only get their slave back but also keep his mouth shut to boot. Besides, in the past seven years since the Fugitive Slave Act, Cain had seen the need for men in his profession grow, as more slaves took off for the North and the prices that slave owners were willing to pay doubled or even tripled.

The problem was that slave catching was not a vocation Cain had ever seen himself doing, or certainly not for very long. He'd viewed it as something he'd do until something better came along. Problem was, nothing ever did. He told himself that as soon as he had saved up enough he'd pursue another calling. And when he was flush with cash in his pocket, having just brought back a valuable runaway or from his winnings at cards or the faro banks, he would set his mind on that something else, perhaps traveling to Europe or sailing the seven seas. Or his favorite pastime, especially when he was drunk or his head floating in a laudanum haze--heading out to California. He'd always been taken with that possibility. Ever since '49 he'd toyed with the possibility of striking out for the West, seeking his fortune there, as so many others had tried. In all the years he'd been hunting down runaways, he always thought he'd do it for just a bit longer, one more slave, just one more, just until he could get a little ahead. But then he'd gamble or drink away what little he'd managed to save, or lavish it on some woman he'd become infatuated with. A while back, when his luck was running high, he'd won almost a thousand dollars at a faro bank; he'd decided, once and for all, he would quit the slave-catching profession and with the money he'd finally head out to California, throwing in his lot with those other forty-niners, those dreamers and malcontents, searching for a new life out there. He'd like to see San Francisco. With all the gold out there, he figured he could make a killing at the card table or faro bank. But once more, he had managed to squander that away, too, on women and drinking, and on the laudanum, which had started to get out of hand, as it often did with Cain.

* * *

He took another long drink from his flask. He no longer felt the ache in his leg, or rather, he no longer cared about it. His head felt both pinched and loose, the way it got when he'd taken too much of the laudanum. He heard the lone howl of a wolf somewhere up in the mountains. It was a sound high pitched and mournful, filled with a vague sadness made all the more so by the cold wind and the shadowy mountains, and, too, by Cain's own melancholic bent. He tried to picture the wolf, to imagine him up on some remote outcropping of stone, his head angled heavenward. In his imagination the creature had red, demonlike eyes that seemed to stare right at Cain. He then gazed off into the darkness surrounding and seeming to creep in on him. Just at the edge of light from the campfire, his eye chanced to fall on an image on the trunk of a gnarled hickory tree. A strange confluence of bark and limb and shadow, and given shape by Cain's own weary imagination and the conjuring properties of the laudanum. As he looked upon it, the figure slowly seemed to coalesce, to become something definite and not merely a figment of his imagination. After a while he could make out a nose, a mouth, even eyes aflame with a wolflike red gleam. "Get away," Cain called. Yet it seemed to inch closer, its mouth gaping wide and in its glare the accusation of some unstated crime. He picked up a stone and heaved it, but the thing