The Bold Frontier (35 page)

“That is a possibility,” he said.

But it was more than that.

The finest feature of Wyndham’s Barony was the name. The estate consisted of hilly grazing land and a single dirt track leading away in the direction of the great house. At the border of Wyndham’s land, where the dirt track forked from the traders’ path, a shanty sheltered two black men. Each had a blunderbuss. The trumpet-shaped muzzles were dented, the brass tarnished. But that wouldn’t keep the weapons from tearing a man open with several ounces of sheet lead chopped into irregularly shaped pieces.

The blacks looked at the white men apprehensively. Nick identified himself; they were waved on.

A small pain began to devil his belly as they jogged up the road between scraggly pines. The pain showed how tightly his nerves were drawn. He was a fool to be here, but it was too late to go back. He must concentrate first on keeping his temper in what would be, at best, a tindery situation.

“Where are his cows?” Noggins wondered aloud. Nick shrugged. He, too, was puzzled by the emptiness of the fields roundabout. But as they approached the last hill before the main house, they heard lowing. They exchanged looks. This grew stranger every moment.

At the summit of the low hill Nick reined his horse. Wyndham’s home, a rambling log structure surrounded by a palisade and shaded by old oaks, sprawled on the summit of the next rise. Behind it were the cow pens, full. Nick surmised that Wyndham had his entire herd of about two hundred there. His black cattle minders were going about their tasks slowly in the heat.

The palisade gate was open. On a platform inside, a large, rusty swivel gun was mounted so it projected over the wall. Nick recognized it as a punt gun, removed from the boat of some waterman down-country who made his living slaughtering ducks and geese. Such guns fired two or three pounds of chopped lead or small nails. They were not especially accurate, but at close hand they were deadly. They were also illegal, but that would hardly concern the owner of Wyndham’s Barony.

They passed through the open gate in the palisade and reached the house without interference. The yard smelled of dust and cow dung. A white-haired black man in a cast-off gentleman’s vest of brocade bowed them into the lower hall.

“Master Wyndham been waiting for you, sars.”

“I expected he might be at the door to greet us.”

“Master Wyndham hurt himself, sar. Can’t walk.”

Nick’s belly felt heavy. The pain was sharper. What was going on here?

The dark old hall, brightened only by light from open doors at front and rear, smelled of some kind of broiled meat. Flies buzzed around Nick’s head. The cattle lowed.

In the great room he confronted Jelks Wyndham, who sat in a fine gilt chair with his right hand on a silver-knobbed cane and a bandaged left leg resting on a stool.

“My apologies, Bray. Some kind of half-breed nigger devil ambushed me at the creek last Thursday. Struck me with an iron hatchet. Probably one you sold him.” He smiled sourly. “Before I disarmed him he succeeded in crippling me temporarily. I hung him up for the turkey buzzards, but it’s small consolation.”

Nick Bray despised Jelks Wyndham more than he despised any man he knew. In moments of candor he admitted this was because he envied him. First, Wyndham was handsome: fair-haired, with a perfect nose, delicate mouth, soft, hairless hands. Almost a beautiful man, in the Grecian sense; no one should be so perfect.

Second, he had taken Barbara.

Nick waited to see where the talk would lead. He heard a ticking behind him. Worthless sauntered in. Wyndham gave the bulldog a look. Worthless began to growl, a low, ugly sound.

“Kindly take that animal out of here before he soils the house.”

“He won’t.” But as a concession Nick said, “Hold him, will you, Huger?”

Nick’s partner crouched beside the bulldog. Wyndham rapped his cane on the floor twice, perhaps to show displeasure. “What difficulties did you encounter coming from Charles Town?”

“None, because we did our best to avoid them. But there’s a deal of trouble between here and there.” He briefly described what they’d seen. “If you’re packed up, we should start for the coast as soon as possible. How many men do you have?”

“Six niggers.”

“How many can we depend on?”

“In the event of an attack? Two. The ones presently guarding the road. I allow the others no weapons.”

“It’s my understanding that Barbara will be going back with us. Is your mother here?”

“Yes, she’ll go with us also. You’ll see them both at supper. We’ve cleared out one of the tabby slave pens for you and your partner.”

“I think we should leave this afternoon.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Wyndham said with a shake of his head. It was a clear challenge. But not worth pushing to a fight.

Wyndham shifted uncomfortably. He poked at his bandaged ankle with the cane. Nick saw an ooze of blood on Wyndham’s white stocking. “The cattle travel best before it’s too hot,” Wyndham said.

“Cattle?” Nick repeated.

“Why yes, didn’t Sir Pierce explain? The contents of those pens are movable property. Extremely valuable. We’re taking them with us to Charles Town so they won’t be slaughtered.”

Blood rushed into Nick’s face. “So that’s why I’m here. To be a damn cattle minder. To take your damn
property
to safety. Is Barbara included?”

Wyndham fought to rise, fingers white on the cane head. “Curb your mouth, you greasy guttersnipe. You’re being well paid.”

“But I’d never have agreed if Sir Pierce had told me the truth. The real nature of the scheme.” He felt gulled; hopelessly stupid. Open windows, their weathered gray shutters folded back, showed vistas of empty hills under hot white sky. Nick’s feeling of dread sharpened again.

“And I wouldn’t need you to lead us out if I could walk,” Wyndham snarled at him. “But I can’t, and you certainly won’t abandon us. That is, you certainly won’t abandon Barbara and my helpless mother. Will you, now?”

Worthless growled. Noggins muttered something to calm him. Nick wanted to wheel and ride out, but Wyndham had him.

“You bastard,” he said. “What time do the condemned eat their supper around here?”

Nick didn’t set eyes on Barbara until the aforementioned supper. She was almost completely silent throughout. The same couldn’t be said for Wyndham’s mother, Mrs. Thring, a widow who had acquired her last name from her late second husband, a planter on Barbados. Mrs. Thring was a great whale of a woman with knuckles the size of hailstones. Wyndham informed Nick and Noggins that she would have to be borne to Charles Town in a shaded ox cart.

“Won’t be very quick going, then,” Noggins muttered.

“But it’s necessary; any man with half a brain can see that.”

The reproof silenced Noggins, and would do so for the rest of the meal, Nick assumed. Noggins was always shy in the presence of those he deemed his betters. Of course, he had it the wrong way around: Wyndham was inferior to Noggins in so many matters of character, Nick couldn’t begin to count them. No good trying to convince Noggins, though.

He shot a look at Barbara. She was as slender and beautiful as memory always painted her. Yet her face lacked the outdoor color he remembered, and her blue eyes danced nervously away from his every time he glanced at her.

When they finished their pewter plates of rice and overcooked pork, and two jugs of excellent claret, Nick pushed his chair back without ceremony. “Barbara, come for a stroll. We’ve a bit of talking to do.”

He took her wrist gently and lifted it, to show he’d brook no argument. She looked relieved that the strained meal was over. Wyndham said, “Walking in the dark is dangerous.”

“I believe I can deal with that, sir,” Nick said, not a little sarcastic.

“Then stay within the palisade, hear?”

“I am your guide, Wyndham, but I’m not under your orders. Remember that.”

He bowed Barbara ahead of him to the hall.

“This is a damned rotten trick, you know,” he said once they were safely out of the house. A black man on watch at the gate tried to stop them from going on. Nick brushed him aside.

Barbara walked a safe distance to his left as they climbed a hill. “Oh, Nick, I know. Jelks never said a word about the cattle until just before supper tonight. I knew he sent a runner to Charles Town to appeal for help, but I thought it was to protect his mother and me.”

Nick made a scoffing sound. “It’s all been very artful, Barbara. Your father enlisted me by saying your mother’s ill. ‘Grievously ill’—I believe those were his words. Is it so?”

Barbara’s voice sounded small. “I don’t think so. She was perfectly well when I left last week.”

“Then Wyndham’s cattle are the reason I’m here, and they set it up between them. Jelks is injured”—
a nice curtain for cowardice, that
—“so I’m to take care of his property. But he had to deceive me, with your father’s assistance, to bring it about.”

“You paint him very dark, Nick. Don’t you think Jelks cares about his own mother? Or the woman he’s supposed to marry?”

“Barbara, I wouldn’t hazard a guess out loud. I fear if I did, it would offend your feminine sensibilities. The language as well as the content.”

“My God, you are bitter.” She rubbed her arms.

“With cause. Throwing away my own life is one thing, but gulling someone good and harmless like Noggins into doing it is another.”

He hooked his thumbs in his broad belt and leaned against a live oak on the hilltop. Lamps in the main house shone through windows and the open gate of the palisade. The dark land roundabout still exuded a damp heat, and a curious menace under a sky full of stars all smeary and wan.

“There are scores aplenty mounting up here,” Nick said. “But we’d best not think too deeply about them. Not with half the parishes besieged by the Indians.”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“I truly didn’t know about any of this, except for the messenger.”

After a space he said, “I believe you.”

“Will we be attacked on the journey?”

“That will be a matter of chance and luck. The Conjurer and his allies are roaming far and wide. We’ll be traveling much too slowly, thanks to the cattle and the cart. Christ, Barbara. You ought to hate that man for dragging you into this.”

There was a silence. “I’m pledged to marry him. Perhaps there was a time … a time after we parted—”

“
Were
parted. By others.”

“I meant to say there may have been a time when I saw qualities in Jelks that really aren’t there. Good qualities. It’s too late to reconsider, I’m afraid. A lady can’t break her vow.”

“Oh, Barbara. What nonsense. With sufficient courage—”

He stopped. He knew very well the kind of society in which Barbara lived. Knew she’d been raised to be an honorable member of it. “Never mind. Let’s say a proper good-bye now. There may not be another chance.”

The pale oval of her face shone before him. She kept her hands at her sides, not trying to bar his hands as he put them on her shoulders and kissed her, long and ardently.

They separated, their faces close together. He could taste a sweet clove on her breath. He touched her cheek and felt tears. She gripped the back of his neck with both hands.

“I’ll marry him, Nick. But I’ll always love you.”

“You’ll marry him if we get to Charles Town, which is by no means certain.”

They kissed again. At one point, still with his mouth on hers, something made him nervous and he opened his right eye. In the gate of the palisade he saw two figures, one leaning on the other. The leaning man’s left hand was propped up by a cane.

What could he see in the dark? It didn’t matter. In his wrathful and jealous mind he’d see pictures far worse than the real ones.

Still clinging to Barbara, Nick was cold.

Nick slept badly. For long periods he lay rigid, with all the night sounds of the hilly country rising outside the little tabby slave house. In the dark of his imagination he saw Barbara. He felt and tasted her kisses again and again. He didn’t dare hope there could be a chance for the two of them, after the long separation. But he did hope, wildly, exultantly, in spite of the danger waiting in the morning. The excited state kept him wakeful almost until first light. Noggins had no such problem. He snored all night.

Jelks Wyndham chose his strongest horse for himself. Two of his bondsmen helped hoist him into the saddle, with much groaning and cursing on his part. One of the blacks lengthened the left stirrup and in so doing accidentally bumped the injured leg. Wyndham caned him, five hard blows. The slave kept his head bowed. Nick saw blood on the collar of the man’s ragged shirt.

And he saw Barbara watching her father’s choice with a look of distaste on her drawn, perspiring face.

Noggins supervised the three mounted slaves who would help him drive the herd. The old man from the house, whose name was Poll, was responsible for attending Mrs. Thring once she was seated in the ox cart with the awning on four bamboo poles adjusted above her.

The line of march began with Nick; Wyndham generously allowed him to be the first target for an arrow or a lead ball. Next came Wyndham and Barbara, riding side by side. Then the cart and lastly the lowing cattle. Noggins and his black helpers would eat the dust raised by the caravan.

It was another stifling morning. White sky; no air stirring. Grouchy from lack of sleep and no longer imagining a glorious new future, Nick pointed toward the coast and rode away. He left it to the others to follow.

Worthless struggled along on stumpy legs, sometimes next to Nick’s horse, sometimes under him. By the middle of the morning Mrs. Thring was exclaiming constantly and weeping intermittently. The traders’ path was rutted and rough, hard on the old lady despite the cushioning of every pillow from Wyndham’s house, nine in all. She was flung back and forth, and each collision with the side rails of the cart produced a cry. It made the slaves nervous; silent, where they had been quietly talkative at the start of the journey.

Mrs. Thring called her son to the cart and demanded that they turn back and await cooler weather. He leaned down from his horse and patted her ringed hand to soothe her. She complained all the louder. His face went blank and he trotted away to rejoin Barbara. Mrs. Thring looked furious, then destitute, as if finally coming to realize that her son put his own wishes above hers.