Sword of Vengeance (10 page)

Almost everyone in the tent gasped. Even the scenes of Revolutionary War battles had failed to elicit such a response. Grisly massacres at the hands of red-skinned heathens were the limner’s most popular renditions. There was something especially awful about such depredations. And the audience was suitably horrified and thrilled. It was at that moment Kit remembered Iron Hand O’Keefe, Young Otter, and Stalking Fox, all who had saved his life. He had fought side by side with the Irishman and the Choctaws and driven off a Creek war party near the Tallapoosa River, and they had proved more faithful comrades-at-arms than Bill Tibbs.

The limner, Patrick Blackwell, gestured to the painting with a sweep of his hand. “Here you see, goodly neighbors, my own depiction of the dangers to be found when traveling the Father of Waters. Behold these poor, brave souls who battle bravely against such savages. I have remained true to the accounts personally rendered unto me by riverboat men come all the way from St. Louis to petition our government for aid and assistance against such attacks as what I have depicted.”

Kit snorted in disgust as he studied the painting. Blackwell had portrayed the supposed Choctaws as half-naked savages with shaved skulls and faces hideously tattooed.

“Uncle Kit, those are awful men,” Esther Rose gasped, her strong little hand tightened, and her eyes were wide with a mixture of fascination and fear, much like the other people in the tent.

“And now, dear ladies and gentlemen, another painting, if you will, showing the aftermath of this murderous rampage.” Blackwell, with a great deal of dramatic flourish, indicated an easel to his left. The painting was hidden behind a coverlet of scarlet satin. “Please. If you will, cover the eyes of any children present. Quickly, now, for what you will see is for the eyes of grown men and women. I dare not wish to ruin the sleep of our innocents.”

“Oh, no. Uncle Kit—” Esther tried to protest, but Kit covered her eyes with his hands. He glanced at Penelope, who returned his look with a “don’t even think of it” glare. She was thirteen, a child no longer and determined to prove it.

“The keelboat men are at last overcome and killed to a man, but alas, the women and children aboard the boat are not so fortunate,” the limner entoned. “Pity the women and children, my friends, for theirs is the cruelest fate of all. Behold!”

Blackwell yanked the satin cloth away to reveal an ornately framed canvas on which the limner had painted a scene of unparalleled brutality, at least to the eyes of the audience. In the background the keelboat from the previous picture was in flames. Upon a curiously barren riverbank, three rather buxom women were struggling as their garments were torn from their bodies by the savages. Another woman, with her bodice ripped asunder, lay sprawled upon the ground, her hand clutching the dagger she had plunged into her naked breast. She had taken her own life rather than submit to the indignities these red devils had in store for her.

As for the children, ropes had been tied around their necks, and they were being led off into a captivity that Blackwell began to describe in such lurid detail that several of the farmers were reduced to tears, while others knotted their fists and muttered empty, angry threats. Two women swooned and had to be taken from the tent, which was certain to provoke the interest of those still waiting to pay their dimes and enter the limner’s exhibition. Several of the women in the audience openly wept as Blackwell continued his tale of woe.

Kit had to admit that what the limner lacked in artistic talent he made up for in showmanship. His oratory was descriptive, flowery, and full of passion. His voice quavered as he regaled his listeners with an account of the tragedy he had so “humbly” sought to present.

Kit noticed that Penelope, whose features had grown pale, had drawn closer to him as if for protection. She chose well. Two years had not softened Kit McQueen in the slightest. He possessed no rank, nor was he a man of inordinate stature, yet his compact frame was sleek and powerful and there was in his eyes the look of a man who had faced death on more than one occasion.

He was dressed in a loose cotton shirt, nankeen trousers, and worn leather boots and carried a double-edged knife whose foot-long blade rode in a sheath on his left side. His pistols he had left tucked away beneath the seat of the phaeton he had driven into Springtown from the family farm. His mother and his sister Hannah were elsewhere on the Springtown Commons, no doubt prepared to give him a tongue-lashing for sneaking off with his nieces to the limner’s exhibit.

“And now, my dear friends, the last but hardly least of my canvases,” Blackwell intoned, demurely covering the scenes of massacre. He hurried over to the last of his works. This painting he had framed in cherry wood embossed with gold highlights. “On this joyous day of our nation’s celebration, even in this time of war, we pause to remember the glory that was and ever will be, the triumph of freedom!” With one last flourish the limner swept the coverlet from this final masterpiece, a thirty-six by thirty-six-inch painting of Cornwallis surrendering to Washington at Yorktown with the British troops and the continentals looking on in a vast sea of bodies. The crowd in the tent erupted into a thunderous applause and cries of “Well done” and “God bless these United States.”

Kit noticed Colonel Tim Pepperidge, a stout, gray-haired gentleman standing with his wife Mercy, edge close to the historical painting. Tim was one of the heroes of the Revolution. As a young man he had fought alongside Daniel McQueen, Kit’s father, against Tory raiders at the Battle of Phoebe’s Farm. The Daughters of Phoebe, a religious order of unmarried women, had worked a farm an hour’s ride from Springtown. The Daughters eventually abandoned their calling, and the farm was sold to Tim and Mercy. Colonel Tim Pepperidge had followed Washington to Yorktown and been present at the surrender.

Tim’s eyes misted over and his lower lip trembled as he studied the picture that, for all its probable inaccuracies, brought back a time of strife and struggle and glory the colonel would never forget.

Blackwell seemed pleased with the reactions of the people in the tent. But another audience awaited. The limner quickly made his way to the door flap and held back the canvas panel to allow the townspeople to pass through. They filed past an assortment of merchants and farm families who were excited about entering the exhibition. They had heard the cheers and outcries of horror and were eager to discover for themselves what their friends and neighbors had experienced.

To Kit’s relief, Kate and Hannah Louise were nowhere around. He commended himself on his luck and hurried Penelope and Esther away from the limner’s tent so he would not even be suspected of misconduct. He heard a round of applause from across the Springtown Commons and noticed the crowd that had gathered around the tables on the opposite side of the Green. No wonder Kate and Hannah weren’t close by. The judging of the pies had begun. Hannah was convinced that her sweet cherry cobbler was going to claim one of the prize ribbons this year. Kate had come along to give her daughter moral support.

“I’m going to find Mother,” Penelope said. “I want to be there when she wins.”

“You want me to walk with you?”

“No,” Penelope replied breezily. “There’s Matthew Schraner.” She pointed at a solid-looking young man whom Kit had noticed in the limner’s tent. “I’ll walk with him.”

The shy boy had been unable to give his attention to the paintings in the presence of such a beauty as Penelope. Kit noted with amusement that Matthew was standing a few yards away, staring with mock interest at a potter busily hand-building pinchpots in the shade of a gaily striped three-sided tent.

“Are you sure he’s up to it?” Kit asked. “You are a handful.”

“Oh, Uncle Kit,” Penelope said, exasperated. Then she hurried over to Matthew Schraner, who almost fainted dead away that his lady love should speak to him. He glanced at Kit, who nodded his permission. Then Matthew walked off, arm in arm with Penelope, who led him along.

“Gently, girl,” Kit said in a wistful tone. “Gently.”

Kit felt a tug on his sleeve. Esther Rose looked up at him, her cherub cheeks a blushing pink. “Now we’re alone.”

Kit looked down at his eight-year-old niece and thought to himself that in another ten years she would be quite the temptress. The boys of Springtown had better beware. He knelt in the dust at her side. She wore a calico dress with a blue lace cap upon her head and blue slippers that were smudged from all the dust and dirt.

“And what, my pretty, did you have in mind?” Kit asked. “Shall I ask the fiddlers yonder to play us a merry two-step, and we’ll dance a jig for the amusement of the crowd? And I insist you promise every dance to me.”

“Oh, Uncle Kit, you’re so silly.” The little girl laughed, then showed him a handbill she had hidden behind her back. “I want to see him.”

The handbill was an advertisement for the Trenton Titan, a man of uncommon strength and ferocity, at least according to the handbill’s author. Beneath the caricature was an open challenge to all hardy souls to try their luck against the Trenton Titan. Any man forcing the Titan beyond the boundaries of a circle drawn in the earth would win five shiny silver dollars for wagering one.

Kit had just finished reading the handbill when the Titan’s partner, a short, sly, weasel-faced man, began calling out to one and all to gather around. A crowd had already begun to gather as he completed the circle he had drawn in the dirt.

“Esther Rose, this isn’t for you,” Kit said.

“I want to see. I want to see.”

“Your mother would skin me alive.”

“I want to see!” Esther Rose said. Then she changed her tone and stared up at Kit with a doe-eyed expression that would melt the heart of a Hun. “Please? I won’t tell. Just for this much minutes.” She held up her thumb and forefinger barely an inch apart.

Kit reached over and narrowed the gap even farther.

“For this much minutes,” he corrected. Esther seemed satisfied. Kit gathered her into his arms.

“I love you, Uncle Kit,” she said close in his ear.

“I love you, too, my pretty.”

Kit entered the crowd and made his way to the edge of a circle about twenty feet in diameter. Kit was soon surrounded by the nervous and daring. He sighed. A dollar was a fool’s wager, even to win five. This Titan no doubt was an experienced brawler and undoubtedly knew every trick in the book.

“Oh, look, the hairy man, the hairy man! From the picture!” The child’s voice served to galvanize the crowd’s attention, and all heads turned and voices stilled as the Trenton Titan brushed through the townsmen.

He stood just under six feet tall and wore boots and woolen trousers. He was bare-chested and his upper torso was covered with coarse, black hair on chest, back, and sloping shoulders. He was stout with a hard, round belly. His legs were slightly bowed, his thighs and arms heavily muscled. His features were hard and bunched, and he peered out at the world through a visage of gristle and bone that had taken one too many hammerings.

He looked around at the crowd, placed his hands on his hips, and rocked back on his heels with loud, raucous laughter that was thick with contempt. For in truth, the man emanated such meanness that quite suddenly a dollar seemed much too precious to wager for the chance at five dollars and a broken back.

“Come one, come all,” the Titan’s partner continued to exhort. “You need only force my man out of the circle. Step up, you flower of Springtown’s manhood, and cover yourself with victory laurels on this glorious Fourth.”

“You mean funeral columbines,” Jonah Greene, a storekeeper’s son, muttered. A brash, handsome youth of eighteen, Jonah had lost his nerve at the sight of the ruffian, much to his lady’s disappointment. The girl beside him pouted and looked away as if her escort had disgraced her. The storekeeper’s son could not bear her scorn. A big, strapping lad, he reached in his pocket, withdrew the coin, and held it aloft. Now his lady fair beamed as Jonah stepped out into the circle and faced the Trenton Titan, who grinned and charged.

Jonah tried to brace himself. He was young and strong and had a girl to impress, which might have helped him carry the day. But stopping the Trenton Titan was like trying to halt a wild bull.

Kit winced at the crunch of bone and flesh as the Titan slammed into Jonah. He tried to cover Esther’s eyes, but she was too slippery for him. As for the action in the center of the circle, it was mercifully brief. With a
woof
of expelled air, Jonah seemed to cave inward as the Titan smacked into the youth, lifted him in a bear hug, continued on a few paces, then hurled the storekeeper’s son from the circle. The girl who had incited him to his fate stifled a cry, grew pale, and ran to the youth’s side, where he lay stunned and gasping for breath.

“
Ha—ha—ha
.” The Titan threw back his head and roared. “Is that the best Springtown can do?” He stooped over, retrieved Jonah’s dollar coin from the dirt, and made a great show of flipping it to his partner.

Half a dozen riverboat men who had come up from Trenton in hopes of earning a little wager money on their champion joined in and continued to deride the crowd in hopes of stirring up enough civic pride that a host of townsmen would step forward and add to the Trenton winnings. Kit stood aside, bemused at the riverboat men’s antics. Esther noticed his expression.

“You think the hairy man is funny, too, Uncle Kit?” the little girl asked as she was lowered to the ground.

“Well, lass, he’s a formidable champion, all right, but he’s either too proud or too stupid a blowhard to play this crowd for a profit,” Kit replied. “He’s intimidated folks. Now they’re afraid of him.”

He glanced at his niece and grinned. She was trying to understand, but the Titan had distracted her. One of his cohorts began to play upon a pipe, and the Titan, in taunting the crowd, had begun to dance a jig.

Suddenly, big Abram Hawthorne, the town blacksmith, tossed a dollar into the circle and advanced on the Titan. The chorus of cheers that greeted his arrival soon turned to cries of dismay as he met a fate similar to Jonah Greene’s. A head butt to the chin knocked him senseless, and the Titan had only to drag him out of the circle right in front of Esther Rose.