The Road to Reckoning (7 page)

‘I cannot leave it here!’ My voice went high and I hated myself for it.

‘Can
you
ride and will
he
ride?’ He jerked a thumb at Jude Brown.

‘Father used to ride him on his business sometimes.’

‘Good. You will have no saddle and I know that will not suit you.’

‘I do not mind.’

‘You will tomorrow.’ He had freed Jude Brown, who was happy for it and trotted over to the big black stud and nuzzled him as cats do. The stud ignored him.

He pulled out my sack from the wagon. ‘What is this?’

‘It is my food.’

‘Well, that’s a blessing. It figures you would not have any means to cook it up.’

‘Thomas Heywood took our pot.’

‘What a grand rogue this man must be.’ He pulled the wooden Paterson out. ‘And what the hell is this?’

‘It is what it is. It is a model of the gun.’

He cocked and fired it. ‘This gets better and better. Do you have wooden shot for it also?’

‘As it happens there were but—’

‘The great and terrible Thomas Heywood took thems as well?’

I nodded.

‘Let us hope he thinks them ball-candy.’ He dropped it back into the bag and walked to the horses, shoving the sack to me. He had done with the wagon. ‘Pick up them reins. I’ll tie you a blanket at least.’

I did and followed. He made a surcingle with the wagon’s leather and with skill he tied the blanket to Jude Brown and cut a short rein with a huge knife hilted with antler bone.

‘Get up,’ he commanded.

I surmised the situation without trying. ‘I cannot. I will need a stump.’

He hauled me up by my pants. ‘Gets better and better,’ he growled, and set me on Jude Brown. He led off and I traipsed after. I looked back at the Brewster.

One of the most melancholy sights in the world is a forlorn wagon. I am told that they litter the plains. The skeletons of settlers’ hopes and dreams. Piece by piece I was losing what little I had and getting closer to the little I had in front of me.

I imagined a carnival tent with a man in a red coat and top hat lording over my wares.

‘See here! These are Thomas Walker’s father’s bones. Left out in the wild by an ungrateful son with blankets to keep him warm! These are his clothes and this pile of iron is the guns, kettle, and pot he let be taken from him, and the last pistol entrusted he gave away in his selfishness. And finally, this sad, sorrowful object is the wagon that his mother loved. Left on the side of the road like carrion.’ After a pause to let the crowd shake their heads he would raise his arms. ‘But, folks, that is not the worse of it. Behind this curtain is Thomas Walker’s greatest villainy, the final insult and his greatest shame.’ But he would not reveal it for free and I did not have the extra ten cents to see it yet.

We went on in silence with me behind, watching Henry Stands’s and his horse’s haunches roll lazily side to side. It would now be close to dinnertime, judged by my belly-growl, and I knew that the next settlement along our path would be Bloom’s. I asked if we would be stopping to eat.

‘You will eat in the saddle. We will stop before dark.’

Like most civilized folks’, my belly was used to a large dinner and a simple supper. All this dry-food nonsense of sea-tack and jerky was for crows. Besides, the movement on the road did not play well with my water.

‘I will have to stop for a moment,’ I called.

‘I will not,’ he called back without moving his head, but I think he slowed anyways.

I got down for my business and with difficulty held Jude Brown’s reins in my hand while he looked and huffed at me and did his business just where he stood to show how foolish I was to not be able to do the same. After I was done I went through my bag for some dodgers to chew on the road and stuffed my pockets, now envious of Henry Stands’s jerky.

It was at this moment that I realized I could not get back on Jude Brown! With no saddle horn or stirrups for purchase I was like a mouse to a lion. I tried but every time I scrambled Jude Brown tripped forward and I brushed off. Mister Stands had gone from sight now for the road was hilly. I settled down quickly and led Jude Brown on. I would look for a log or a stump and if I walked quickly I could probably catch up. For the most part of the morning out of Milton we had gone across wide-open land, the blue mountains like another country on our right, but now we were in woodlands and had been climbing all the while. The ghost trees of winter had gone and everything was green but high up. You could see quite a way left and right through the narrow trunks but I kept my eye keen for a step so I could mount again. This was a very pretty time and even with all my woes I felt a peace about the nature of it all that you do not get in the city. To my surprise I came upon mister Stands as if waiting for me, a spyglass to his eye. He saw me approach and folded it and a leather packet of paper into his bags. Perhaps he had been pretending to look at a map and landmarks instead of holding for me!

He wheeled away before I could ask for a hand but soon enough I spied a dead log and pulled Jude Brown into the wood to jump on it. I was sure that mister Stands had accepted a level of responsibility to me, however reluctantly. I felt safe for the first time in a while and he let me catch up.

‘I had almost forgotten about you,’ he said over his shoulder, and I smiled because he could not see it.

The road climbed, the wind took up our coats, and the clouds fell about the hills, and I understood why Henry Stands wore a greatcoat in April. I did not recognize any of this country although this would have been the way I had come. I ached for conversation and for rest. My rear had become raw bone and I wondered when Bloom Town would show and reconcile me.

Eventually mister Stands raised his hand and turned off the trail. Without ask or tell I dismounted and went off for wood and stones. The unfortunate was that although I had my sofkee I had no means to cook it and I did not know how to word this comfortably with a man who hardly talked; anyhow, mister Stands did not like my wood.

‘This is dead. And you are a deadhead traveling free as you are. It will smoke and blind us both all night. Did your father not have an ax to cut?’

‘We did just fine with fallen wood.’

He harrumphed, as he would, but made up the fire anyways. ‘Go downhill until you find water.’ He handed me his canteen after filling up his boiler, which was not much bigger than a can, and I missed my Dutch pot. I was thinking of my hunger, and that small boiler would have to cook twice to feed us both. I took our canteens and wandered down and down until I found a stream, which was full of leaf trash that sucked into the canteens more than the water and I picked them out constantly, which they seemed to find game as they did it again and again.

It was getting to twilight when I came back. I had fallen once and now had a little finger that I had landed on that hurt like I had broken my hand, but I would not tell it. Mister Stands had made his camp with the horses tethered and had boiled tea. He had a mug at least but I did not expect him to have another. He handed it to me to share and I took it with my shirt cuff pulled over my hand for it was boiling and he chuckled at this. It was strong as ever I had it and went all around me like a blanket and I forgot about the walk to the stream and back. I went to hand it over and said thanks.

‘You drink it. I will have rum. Fill it up again and we will empty the boiler for your Indian meal.’

I was happy to do so. If he would eat my sofkee I would no longer be his deadhead. We would be partners.

He had laid out his oilcloth with bedroll on top and sat on a log in a faded red capote shirt and braces and replaced his hat with a wool cap. He laid his belt with its guns and pockets beside him, his knife and ax on his blanket. He now looked like a riverman instead of the marauder previous. He had a great belly and broad limbs that looked like they could carry anything he cared to. I had never seen a bigger man, not one of older age anyways. He looked larger with his coat off. The length of it slimmed him down.

‘Do you take rum?’ he asked. He pulled the cork and offered it to me first. I gathered this is what he took as society.

‘I do not.’

‘For your tea. It will keep you warm.’

I accepted because these were the kindest words he had yet said. I tasted my new tea and did not regret it and he saw and nodded approval. He had dragged us two logs to sit on but I had no bed. I would sleep in my coat, I figured, or if that did not suit I could be a standee across the horses’ rope. You had to pay for that privilege at a hostler if you could not afford a bed.

The tea gone, I filled the boiler again to make the sofkee and mister Stands filled a pipe. This was the first time I had seen anyone smoke. In the woods we were sheltered from the wind and as the lid on the boiler flapped with the heat I decided I would know more about Henry Stands.

‘What is an Indiana ranger, sir?’

He rolled a little. ‘You do not know?’

‘It is something to do with the war?’

‘The war! Ha!’ He snorted and slugged his rum. ‘There is a reluctance to call it what it was now our politic men side with the English more than not. It was for independence again. Make no error.’

‘What was your part?’

‘To be a privateer. I wanted to sail but a ship is for a young man. I wanted to kill those blue-light traitors. But I was not for sailing. Before that, Tipton, that’s John Shields Tipton, enlisted me in the rangers. I protected two forts with him and rode with Zachary Taylor, a Virginian like me, but that was in the Seventh Infantry. I believe they are both in Washington now. I was paid a dollar a day and had a smart leather hat and vest. We were militia and I believe we were smarter than those army buckskins. Could shoot at least. The shame of it came at Wildcat Creek. What them who were not there call the Spurs Defeat.’ He spat and swallowed the words back with more rum.

‘Thems who say the army turned and ran from the Indians with their spurs bleeding their mounts to gets away faster. Them scribblers call it the Spurs Defeat. That is true for some of the boys.’ He drank longer. ‘Not us.

‘There was a man called Benoît who was a trader with the tribes. It was believed that he had betrayed what we would be at. He was caught and set to be burned alive at a stake. I took up my wind-rifle that I had taken from an Austrian fighting for the British and shot him before the flame was lit. No-one really minded. I just didn’t see that any man should be killed like that. Just as long as he died was good enough.’

‘And after the war? You were still a ranger?’

‘We protected.’

‘Protected what?’

‘Settlers. Fought the Indians that had betrayed us in the wars. They started to move out anyways. I never killed one that did not go at me. Killed three Choctaw with my hands when they had pulled me from my horse. They were not much older than you. I have not now been a ranger for seventeen years.’ He drank to this.

‘What is your work now?’ The rum had loosed his tongue and I had the conversation that was as good as food to me for without it my mind hung too much on what had passed. And I needed the words of men.

‘Well, it may surprise that I was born in a brick house in Orange county, Virginia. My father had twenty slaves. I am an educated man and my father had served with Washington, and that’s a fact you can bank. I had seven brothers and sisters. My father’s name was Fear Stands—you may picture him from that. I know none of them now. I left when my mother died and took my inheritance before my father died on the agreement that I would not bother him again. I was a hell-raiser and dabbler in the flesh, which did not suit my rearing. In naught-eight I joined the Seventh and we went into Indiana and I met Tipton and he brought me into the rangers, who drank more and was looser, and that I liked.’

I had asked about his living and perhaps he had not heard me or perhaps this was his way of explaining it. He took a drink and got to it.

‘I will sell tobacco and I will sell horses or anything I can. I do not want for much. You have caught me on my way to Cherry Hill, where they will have men who have escaped. Men like prison in the winter but the summer is not to their liking. You can live rough, you can find work, find a crew and stay the hangman, impregnate a woman and plead her belly. They will pay me fifty dollars to bring one back.’

I jumped on his words. ‘Perhaps this Thomas Heywood is one who has escaped!’

‘That is as like. More he is a teamster on hard times. It is sorrowful for young men nowadays.’

I did not like these words of sympathy for a murderer. But I was all in with Henry Stands so I let it ride. He might have still kicked me to the road. The night came in and our Indian meal was done. We had one wooden spoon so eating was slow, but as it was hot I did not mind. He pulled out a yellow pocket map while I ate my share.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let us see where to lose you.’ He leaned back and forward at the map, squinting all the while. ‘I have had this atlas yet two months and it blurs already. Damn their ink!’ It was a small Tanner’s atlas that showed the canals, railroads and stage roads of Pennsylvania and beyond. ‘Well, we could go south to Danville—there will be law there—and report this matter to them. They would have a care of you. That is still Columbia county so they will take interest and you will be off my spine.’

This did not suit me and I was relieved at his next words.

‘But that is off my path. So Berwick is here tomorrow and cross into … damn this ink! I know where I am going! Damn this ink! What is that? It is Luzerne but I do not know what!’

I came behind his shoulder and leaned over beside his ear. He smelled of smoke and firewood. I have never lit a fire since and not pictured him nor seen a scarecrow and not smiled upon it.

The Tanner’s atlas was colorful and exact. The greens and yellows like a mythical land. Lake Erie a monster in the left corner eating its way across. The fire did not help Henry Stands’s eyes, nor the rum, I supposed. I pushed my head in closer. He snatched the paper away.

‘I think you will not appraise! Eat your supper, deadhead.’