Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

   (This is the final part of this adventure – Part One is here, Part Two here  and Part Three here. The entire adventure will be added to a separate page for it – and with one more adventure, I believe there will be sufficient for a nice-sized book. Which may be the first of several – depending on the response of readers to this venture into classic Western adventure seen through a new paradigm.)

 

Jim milked the nanny goat one last time, while Albert Biddle and Toby carried the body of the woman to the hut, and placed it side by side with that of Armando the goatherd. The poles upholding the roof of the hut, and the roof itself all came down with very little effort, making the proper appearance of a grave. Albert suffered a fit of sneezing in the cloud of dust which rose up briefly. They watered the horses one last time, ensured that every canteen was filled to the brim, and Toby laced small James Albert Toby into the makeshift cradle-board with narrow strips of blanket. Into the cradleboard with the baby went several handfuls of wool from the eviscerated pillow. When he had finished, Toby looked upon his handiwork with satisfaction. The baby blinked back at him, seemingly comfortable in his wicker and wool swaddling, with only his tiny red face visible. Albert Biddle grinned.

“I must say, Mr. Shaw – this infant a portmanteau of yours is remarkable for simplicity and ease of transport – just hang it on our saddle-horns like a holster. And the little one seems perfectly content. I think that I should make a sketch of your contrivance, and take it back East with me. It might start a new fashion for those ladies with large families.”

“We should take turns,” Jim suggested. He settled himself into the saddle with a soft groan. He ached with exhaustion, knowing that the day’s journey was not yet over. He squinted at the sun, now sliding imperceptibly towards the far horizon. Two days travel to the Rio Grande – the first water they would see after leaving this place. “And we’d best get a move on,” he added. “We’ll make a dry camp of it … it may be best to keep moving. The moon is near enough to full to make no difference if it’s day or night.”

“If you say so,” Albert Biddle agreed, and Toby consented with a brief nod. Jim could tell that his friends were as tired as he was – but fulfilling their promise to Armando’s wife, and getting their tiny son to Laredo, to the house of Graciela on the plaza by the church of San Augustin – that took every precedent.

 

Their horses plodded on, Jim in a weary daze which was only half the blink of an eye towards falling asleep. Some of Jack’s other Rangers could sleep in the saddle, which he had never thought possible until now. To his vague astonishment, James Albert Toby appeared to find the gentle sway of the cradle-board hanging from Toby’s saddle equally as soporific, for the infant was silent as they rode. The sun, after seeming to hang in the sky for hours at an angle intended to shine directly into their eyes, eventually set. They rode on, through the thickening twilight.

Albert Biddle spoke, his voice suddenly loud after the long silence. “I think we should rest now – give the child some more milk, and sleep until moonrise.”

In spite of the urgency of getting to Laredo, Jim found himself agreeing completely. There was just light enough remaining in the sky for them to find a sheltered place; a shallow dry arroyo with a small sapling overhanging a narrow and sandy sward refreshingly free from any prickly weeds, cactus thorns or evidence of ant-mounds. Indeed, the sand looked to be as inviting as a warm featherbed to Jim’s exhausted gaze.

They left their horses saddled, tying the reins to the spindly tree. Toby simply cast himself down on the sand, curling up like a cat – and like a cat, falling instantly to sleep. Little James Albert Toby fussed, in a half-hearted fashion, until Albert Biddle filled the kid-glove with luke-warm goat milk and let the baby suckle on it for a few minutes. Both Albert and the baby fell asleep after some five minutes of this exercise. Jim – as the captain of this little party, as he saw it – removed the flaccid, milk-sodden glove from Albert Biddle’s grasp. He hung the cradle-board with the slumbering infant in it from the lowest branch of the tree, where it rocked in the slight breeze and the tug of their horses’ reins, as their mounts cropped at the few blades of green grass and leaves within reach. Jim lay himself down on the sand, taking care before he did so to hollow out a small declivity for his hips and shoulders. That, so he had been told by Jack, and before that by Dan’l, was the trick for sleeping comfortably on the ground, if simple bone-exhaustion didn’t do the trick.

 

To Jim’s mixed discomfiture and relief, all of them – even the baby and the horses – slept until well-past moon-rise. It was, in fact, the hour before sunrise, when the sky in the east turned the pale of an oyster-shell, when he woke. Toby sat, cross-legged in his customary posture on the bank above their heads – obviously as a belated sentry. Albert Biddle had the cradle-board in his lap, appearing to have finished a round of feeding, for the infant seemed well-content, blinking sleepily at no one in particular.

“You should have wakened me, Brother,” Jim said, while Toby shrugged. “It was of no matter.”

Albert Biddle observed, “We have about half the goat-milk left; enough for another day, a day and a half at most.”

“Then we had best better move on,” Jim answered, and Alfred Biddle laughed, as he handed over the cradle-board to him.

“Agreed – and it is your turn to play nursemaid.”

“The responsibility of command,” Jim observed with a sigh. They set off in the chill grey morning, wisps of vapor rising from the low places along the trail where the nightly dew had settled overnight. The sun rose at their backs, sending pale gold fingers of light reaching here and there, slipping between the sparse trees and the tops of the sand hills, and sending their elongated shadows ahead. The cradle-board hung from the short length of rope looped over Jim’s saddle-horn, and now and again bumped against his knee. Such did not seem to disturb the tiny passenger, Jim noted with relief. As for himself, the brief halt did not seem to have rested him very much – Jim felt only a little less weary than he had the night before. No, Laredo would be a welcome sight, all the crumbling adobe walls and rust-red roof-tiles of it, punctuated with the tower of the church of San Augustin and the sere and sage-green line of brush and trees which marked the line of the river.

A half-length ahead of him on the trail, Toby suddenly drew rein – so suddenly that Jim’s paint-pony nearly rammed into Toby’s own horse.

“Someone is coming,” Toby whispered. “Down the trail, towards us, from the other side of that rise.”

“How many?” Jim woke from the half-stupor of exhaustion, alert in every fiber. This path they followed was an unfrequented one, because of the rough land and the lack of water.

“I do not know, James – more than one, but not many.” Toby answered. The back of Jim’s neck prickled; no, thinking of the murdered goatherd Armando and the looting of his tiny hut did not give cause for comfortable reassurance. Jim loosened the revolving pistol in its holster at his waist. Since leaving the spring he had kept it loaded and ready at hand.

“Trouble?” Albert Biddle ventured, soft-voiced and low, as he drew his horse level with Jim.

“Don’t know – but be wary,” Jim replied. “Let’s pick up the pace, gentlemen – and surprise them.” In obedience, Toby heeled his own horse to a slow trot; Jim and Albert Biddle followed – Jim only realizing at the last second that the increased pace might jostle the cradle-board. Within a few lengths, they topped the gentle rise and had a momentary advantage.

Which was a good thing, as Jim saw in that first tense moment, for they had surprised the two men on the other side; men who had no good reason for having their own weapons in hand – two men of light complexion but dressed in rough Mexican style and with the dust of the trail on their clothes and hair. The man in the lead seemed familiar, and shock and rage lit a fire in Jim’s blood as he recognized him. He knew that profile, the uncut reddish hair, the ragged beard – the last face that he recalled before waking in a shallow cave after an explosion of darkness.

“Gallatin!” he shouted. “You cur!” Cold and unthinking rage swept through Jim. All thought of his intent to arrest the renegade Ranger, bring him to Bexar to face chargers of murder – went from his mind in an instant. From that moment, things seemed to happen at once, and yet slowly, every motion etched in his mind as if it were a pantomime. Just as Gallatin lowered his own pistol – a heavy old-fashioned flintlock dragoon – Albert Biddle’s horse plunged in between Jim, as Albert Biddle shouted his name.

Gallatin’s pistol barked once, sounding like a cannon, in a cloud of black-powder smoke. The other man with Gallatin stood spurred his horse forward with a yell like a banshee, only to collide heavily with Toby’s lighter mount. With a shout of his own, Toby swung the heavy war-club back-handing the other rider in the chest, even as his own horse fell, thrashing in a whirlwind of dust and sand. The club connected with a sickening crunch of stone on bone as the other man slumped from the saddle, falling to the ground. Jim fired off three shots at Gallatin, even as Albert Biddle’s horse collapsed. Albert Biddle fell with it and Gallatin pulled savagely on his own mount’s reins. Gallatin’s horse sprang away – he was going to run, escape again! Jim snapped off one more shot and would have followed, heedless of any peril to himself but for Toby, rising from the ground with the speed of a rattlesnake striking.

“No, James!” Toby shouted. “The cradle!”

Jim’s mind cleared in an instant, as of those words had doused him in ice-water. How could he have forgotten the baby – now startled awake and howling? Alfred Biddle was down, wounded how badly? Every fiber of Jim’s being urged him to follow after J.J. Gallatin – murderer, thief, scalp-hunter and how many other crimes might be laid at his door? Likely the murder of Armando the goat-herder, too – but Gallatin was gone, the hoofbeats of his horse fading on the morning air. His companion lay on the ground, a marionette with broken strings. Jim needed only a glance to tell him that Gallatin’s companion was dead, the horse that he fell from already rearing, pawing the air with it’s hoofs, panicked by the smell of blood and black powder. That horse tossed its head and ran, stirrups flapping and reins trailing to the ground, gone before either Jim or Toby could restrain it. Meanwhile, Toby’s horse staggered up from the ground, the whites of its eyes showing all the way around, and favoring one fore-leg, keeping it from the ground.  Albert Biddle’s own horse lay sprawled ungainly, a tide-pool of red widening around its muzzle and another larger puddle under its shoulder. Even as Jim swung down from his own saddle, the sides of the wounded horse rose once, and then the beast shuddered and lay still. Toby already had Albert Biddle’s shoulders, for his right leg was trapped underneath the downed animal.

“Are you harmed?” Jim gasped, for Albert Biddle’s countenance was contorted in pain as they both dragged him free of the dead horse. Now Jim saw that the leg of Albert Biddle’s trousers oozed water and blood – both canteens had been smashed, likely by the single bullet that had killed his horse and gored Albert Biddle’s leg. The precious water in them soaked into the earth by the dead horse and was gone.

“A small thing,” Albert Biddle gasped. “I pray it is not so deep as a grave nor so wide as a church door …” a groan of agony was wrenched from his lips, before he clenched his teeth together. Jim did not like the look of this; Albert Biddle’s lips were already grey, like a man already half in the grave. Jim feared that he soon would be, as they had only two canteens of water left for themselves and the surviving horses, and the one half-full of goat milk for the baby. In the sudden silence the baby wailed thinly. “I was afraid the child would be injured when he fired at you,” Albert Biddle whispered. “I do not like to see hurt to children. Mr. Reade. They are so small, so incapable of protecting themselves…”

Jim answered, in bracing tones, “No, assure yourself, Albert – our godson is well. And we will not leave you behind. Recall, we all promised to bring him safely to the house of Graciela, in the square by San Agustin’s church. If he can cry that strongly – then he is well. But of yourself – I fear that we must put a hot iron into your wound, to stop the bleeding and prevent a poison in the flesh…You are bleeding from a large blood vessel in your leg, although the bullet went through and through.”

“Do what you must,” Albert Biddle gasped, and in his expression Jim read pain and resolve.

“Give me your trouser braces, then,” Jim said, “To make a tourniquet – and Brother … kindle a fire. Some of those healing herbs of yours would also be most welcome.”

 

It took some little time the fire of dead sagebrush to burn properly – although dried at the heart, was yet damp on the surface. Toby hastily fed the baby, with another glove of goat-milk and laid the cradle board in the meagre shade of a bush. Young James Albert Toby immediately went to sleep, for which Jim was grateful. When the fire had burned to coals, Jim thrust the end of the ramrod from his rifle into the heart of it, and heated the ramrod until nearly red-hot. Meanwhile Toby cut the gash in Albert Biddle’s trouser leg a little wider and bared the wound, from which blood came in regular spurts.

“Ready?” He asked of Albert Biddle, who nodded. He had a clean handkerchief, folded into a thick pad to bite down upon against the expected agony of the hot iron. It was, Jim reflected – about the cleanest garment between the three of them and the baby – and of course, being a well-bred Yankee gentleman, Albert Biddle had two more in his saddle-bag. “Hold him now,” Jim commanded of Toby, who knelt opposite him, leaning his weight on Albert Biddle’s knees. Jim had little liking for this process and even less stomach for it – but this crude surgery needed to be done, and done swiftly. Jim took up the cool end of his ramrod and plunged the smoking hot end into the gash. It went with a sizzle and a sick-making smell of burning meat. Albert Biddle gave a half-strangled cry, muffled by the handkerchief, struggled against Jim and Toby for a moment and then went mercifully limp. Toby gently loosed the tourniquet and they both watched, anxiously for a renewal of bleeding. No more blood came from the wound and Jim felt a surge of relief.

“We’ll have to put him on your horse,” Toby said, with a decided air of practicality – and somewhat indistinct as his mouth was full. “Mine is lame. Perhaps carry the baby – nothing heavier.” He was chewing on a small quantity of dried leaves. When sufficiently moistened, he spat them into his hand and packed them into Albert Biddle’s wound. Jim handed him Biddle’s two clean handkerchiefs for a wound-dressing. Buy the time Toby finished binding the handkerchiefs in place with one of Albert Biddle’s trouser-braces, Albert had regained his senses. Toby handed him a tin-cup full of sage tea.

“For fever,” Toby said only, and Albert Biddle obediently drank it down, grimacing only slightly at the taste. “Can you ride?”

“Not like there’s any choice in the matter,” the Yankee answered. Jim and Tony boosted him into the saddle of Jim’s pony; to his credit and grit, he remained in the saddle, only swaying a little from weakness. Toby hung the cradle-board with the sleeping infant from the horn of his own saddle, and they each took a few mouthfuls of water from the remaining canteens.

“You do not wish to observe the decencies, then?” Jim nodded towards the corpse of Gallatin’s companion, who lay next to the awkward bulk of Albert Biddle’s dead horse. Toby’s mouth made a straight grim line.

“No,” he answered. “No, James – they were preparing to murder us, save that we moved against them first. Let the birds have him. I care nothing, in this instance.”

“Good,” Jim answered. “For certain, I do not have the inclination or the spirit to dig a grave. And we do not have the time – or the water. Inclination agrees with the circumstances, so I am content. In any case, it will be a long walk to Laredo.”

 

Jim took the reins of his own horse, and Toby the reins of his limping beast. No;  he could not have abandoned his comrades or that promise to a dying woman to pursue the murderer Gallatin. He did regret that he had missed the fleeing Gallatin – three times. How Dan’l would have mocked his bad marksmanship – and for a certainty, Jack Hays would order him to go and practice more with his revolving pistols. He also regretting not capturing the dead renegade’s runaway horse, and said so to Toby.

“It is of no matter, James,” Toby answered with confident tranquility. “It would do us good to walk – to be in touch with the earth. And it will not be more than another day, if that.”

“I hope so,” Jim answered, wondering privately what else could go wrong. This journey to Laredo had turned out to be much more eventful than called for. Short on water, on foot and burdened with an infant and an injured man! “Just for once, I wish Captain Jack would send us to do something dull and routine.”

“The Great Spirit disposes as he thinks fit, not as we would ask,” Toby answered with a philosophical air, which Jim found to be curiously comforting. On the day that Toby Shaw despaired – then he would know for certain they were really in a hopeless situation.

 

The faint track at their feet led them on, and on; at mid-day the last of the thin clouds burned away by the sun. In high summer it would have been an unbearable torment, but the cool northerly fanned them gently; Jim went so far as to unbutton his coat. They rationed themselves to no more than two swallows of water at a time. Toby suggested the old trick of putting a pebble in the mouth to combat the torment of thirst. Albert Biddle rode slumped in the saddle, but uncomplaining. On and on they plodded, one foot in front of the other, leading the two horses by their bridles. Just as Jim began to fear that the journey was endless – that perhaps they were all dead and in some cruel Purgatory – Toby said,

“James, there is the river.”

“What?” Jim came out of his own stupor, miserably and newly aware of the sand in his boots which abraded his feet with every step. “The river? The Rio Grande?” He shaded his eyes with one hand – yes; across the dun-colored landscape ran a scribbled like of darker green foliage, now and again sparked with a mirror-flash of sunlight on water, just where the angle was right. “Not a mirage?”

“No – a true seeing,” Toby answered, and by the relief in his voice, Jim knew that Toby had been worried; if not for himself than for Albert Biddle, and the infant. Two hours since they had fed him the last of the goat milk, and now Albert Biddle’s eyes were closed. If they had gone on much longer, Jim was afraid they would have to tie him to the saddle, or lay him across it like so much killed game. Toby spat out the pebble in his mouth, and Jim did the same. “Look, James – there is smoke in the sky … smoke from the chimneys and cookfires of Laredo and the new Mexican town across the river. We are almost there.”

“Thank god,” Jim replied with feeling. “We’ll be there at sundown, Brother. I believe that this is the longest day we have ever endured.”

(Part one of my reworking of a certain classic western serial adventure – this one with plot elements lifted from a classic John Wayne Western.)

“Tell me again, why we are going to Laredo, James?” Toby asked, as he and Jim rode out on the long road toward Monterrey, the road that would lead them south into the contested borderlands. “And why has Captain Jack sent us to escort Mr. Biddle? We both know well that he is very well fit to look after himself. After the matter of the Casa Wilkinson…”
“It is a matter of honor,” Jim replied. “Mr. Biddle did us a good turn, and now we are doing him one. His errand is to do with matters of those Americans who trade in Laredo … where half the town seems to prefer to live under the rule of an autocrat, rather than in a democracy…Have you ever heard of such a thing – moving the town, their homes and businesses over the river and declaring the place to be New Laredo?”
“It is one of those things,” Toby answered, in thoughtful fashion. “Men would prefer to be misruled by those of their kind and color than accept the authority of those who are of another.”
“Seems so,” Jim answered. He used his free hand to wrap the woolen muffler tighter around the lower part of his face. An unseasonable chill wind had come with a blue norther in the middle of the night, and what had been warm and pleasant breeze the previous day was now cutting like a bitter cold knife against his hands and exposed face. He envied the fine kid gloves that Albert Biddle had drawn from the depths of his old-fashioned coachman’s overcoat with its many thick woolen capes.
“But there is another reason for us both to accompany him to Laredo,” Toby persisted. “Is there not?”
“I didn’t think I should tell you until it became necessary,” Jim replied. “But among the rumors that come to Captain Jack’s ears is one; that Gallatin and some unsavory cronies of his have taken a commission from the Mexican governor of Santa Fe to hunt Apache. According to what Jack heard, the governor authorized a bounty for Apache scalps. It’s an unsavory business.”
“And Gallatin is …” Memory and consternation broke across Toby’s usually impassive features. He and Jim were alike haunted by the memories of Jim’s brother Daniel, and four Rangers of Daniel’s company, murdered by Gallatin and his renegades, all for nothing more than being in the way of a wagon-load of tainted gold. Toby had buried the dead and nursed Jim, the sole survivor, back to health. They had been sworn brothers ever since. “A man without tribe, cast off from his people; what makes you think he will be in Laredo, James?”
“He won’t be … but there is a man of the same name, keeping a taproom in Laredo; a brother, a cousin perhaps. He might know where our Gallatin is, and what he is up to. I want to see Gallatin brought to justice,” Jim set his face to firmness, under the muffler, and Toby wisely kept silent for some moments.
“He will be a hard man to catch, Brother,” Toby ventured at last. “And harder to bring to justice; best to serve him as he served your brother and comrades; my vote is for a bullet and a lonely grave in the desert, once the birds have had their fill.”
“So you have said,” Jim replied. It was an old argument, one revived with every report and rumor about the doings of Gallatin. In a corner of Jim’s heart, he kept always the memory of five graves, each marked with a cross made of willow stems and a cairn of rocks, and a sixth which was merely an empty decoy. “Someday, Gallatin will meet with justice. If it is to be, I will be the instrument which administers it.”
“In the meantime,” Albert Biddle added, riding up on Jim’s right hand, as Toby rode on his left, “We are to Laredo and my business with those American citizens of that place.”
“And that business would be?” Jim asked, laughing as Albert Biddle replied, also with a laugh.
“That of my own nation, naturally – just as yours is yours. Ask me no questions, Jim – and I’ll tell no lies. In the meantime, your pleasant company and that of Mr. Shaw is most welcome on a personal level. Knowing of Mr. Cooper’s Deerstalker tales, it is my utmost pleasure to venture onto a trail into the wilderness accompanied by the present-day Texian version.”
“You do me an unlooked-for and unworthy honor,” Jim answered, “Although not to Mr. Shaw – who is truly a modern Chingachgook in every respect.”
“Watching someone exercise their god-given natural skill,” Albert Biddle observed, “Is a pleasure not unlike watching a master-musician perform … an education as well as an entertainment.”
Jim snorted with laughter, “Wait until you taste some of his cooking, Mr. Biddle – there is, alas, no pleasure in it, only sustenance for the body.”
“I do cook better than your mother,” Toby answered, having taken no insult. Jim laughed again. “Touché, Brother. As it happens, we have brought along enough in supplies from the marketplace in Bexar not to have to depend on hunting for some days … now, you did pay mind to Captain Hays with regard to a pair of water canteens for yourself? There is little good water between here and the valley of the Rio Grande, and we may expect several dry marches between here and there.”
“Of course,” Albert Biddle replied. He leaned forward in his comfortable Spanish vaquero saddle and slapped the side of the canteen hanging from the saddle-horn. The canteen was full to the brim with good sweet water from the San Pedro spring; the slap sounded as a hollow thump. “I am not such an arrogant fool as to disregard the advice of those who know whereof they speak.”
“Good,” Jim said. “It’s a long thirsty ride, otherwise – even if it isn’t summer yet.”

Some four days later, the three travelers approached the driest stretch of their passage to Laredo, having chosen to avoid the established wagon road and the curiosity of other travelers as to their errands. Jim thought it a good trade for the slight dangers of travelling with only two other companions. Just before midday, Toby drew rein and shaded his eyes with his hand. He had no need to tell Jim what had drawn his attention – the sight of eight or ten scavenger-birds, circling on motionless wings, on the horizon. That many birds meant something of interest to them, and dead on the ground below.
“Something is the matter?” Albert Biddle likewise shaded his eyes; an intelligent man, for all that he was a Yankee – and he learned fast, which was good, considering. Slow learners in the borderlands tended to wind up as dead as whatever the vultures were circling.
“There is something interesting to them close to where the spring is,” Toby frowned. “I do not like this, Jim. Last year when I traveled this way with my uncle, there was a goat-herder with a little holding outside Laredo who liked to pasture his goats here in spring. The grass grew sweet and thick in the bottom of the arroyos, weeks earlier than anywhere else. That is, if there had not been too much rain.”
“A dead goat, maybe,” Jim suggested, and Toby shrugged in a noncommittal way. “There is no smoke from a campfire,” he said, and they rode on. Their canteens were all but empty, and their three horses were thirsty enough to set a lively pace as they scented the distant water.

(To be continued … there is a baby involved, of course.)

(The menace at Yoakum’s Landing is now obvious; Clay Huff has recognized his missing brothers’ saddle – and his cherished hunting dog – in the possession of the Yoakums – and Ethan Landry has panicked, at overhearing a plot by the Yoakums to murder him, now that Jim has made out a power of attorney allowing them to act in selling his property. Earlier chapters here, here, here and here.)

He grasped the front of Jim’s coat, babbling in unseemly hysteria.

“Calm yourself, Mr. Landry,” Jim snapped. “Who is going to kill you – and for what reason? You are among friends, and this is broad daylight! What has given you this notion?”

“The Yoakums,” Ethan Landry whispered. He seemed utterly undone, pale with terror. “For the property. They will kill me, and keep the money paid for it, using the written authority you drafted for me. I overheard the Squire and his son … they are plotting to kill me, and it is your fault! You have to help me!”

“Of course,” Jim grasped the younger man’s shoulder and shook it. “Pull yourself together, Landry – and stop acting like a spinster with a lizard in her petticoats. Now – come with us. Do you have a horse, at least?” The three of them headed towards the stable, with Toby in their wake – walking purposefully, but not at so rapid a pace as to draw unwanted attention.

“No,” Ethan shook his head. “I did … but I sold it to the Squire in payment for lodging here. How could I know they would prove such utter villains! Why didn’t anyone tell me! Why did you draw up that power of attorney? It is my undoing!”

“Because you asked it of me,” Jim answered, between his teeth. What to do now, with this sniveling fool hanging around his neck? He racked his mind for options, wondering how many of the guests at the Landing were in league with Squire Yoakum’s sinister purpose – and how many of them were truly innocent travelers. There was no time to seek for allies among them; Clay and Toby were the only ones he could trust without question. Once in the shelter of the barn, he turned to the others. “Clay – get your horse saddled, and I’ll get Toby’s mule. You know the Trace better than I. Take Mr. Landry with you and ride with all speed towards Tevis’s Bluff or any closer place of safety. You have your pistol with you? Good – I shall make a pretense of you feeling poorly.” To Toby, he added. “Mr. Shaw, I regret to say that I must ask for the loan of your coat and hat for Mr. Landry here. If they cannot be returned, I will purchase new to replace them.”

Toby shrugged, “It is of no matter to me, James.” Obligingly, he stripped off his own coat, and handed it to Landry, who regarded it with distaste, until Jim snapped,

“Put it on, Mr. Landry – it’s either freeze, or venture back to the house for your own.”

Clay, his face sent in grim lines, emerged from a stable-box leading his own horse, already bridled. It was the work of a moment to saddle it, fetch Toby’s mule and do likewise, although a Negro groom appeared as though they were halfway through this operation, a curry-comb in one hand, a bucket of oats in the other, and a protest on his lips.

“Seh, there ain’t no need…”

“There is,” Jim answered, and fixed the man with his most intent and purposeful gaze. “And you have not seen anything untoward in it. You have not seen anything at all, should your master or anyone else ask. Understand me?”

For a long moment, their gazes locked – and then the groom nodded slowly, in complete comprehension. “Seh … iff’n you ride out t’wards th’ bayeau, an’ follow the track through the woods, Massa an’ Miss Kate an’ all – they won’t see a t’ing.”

“Good,” Jim answered. The groom grinned briefly, his teeth a slash of white in his dark face. “And you did not see a thing at all.”

“No, seh,” the groom answered and took himself and his currycomb and oats into the farther recesses of the stable.

“You heard the man,” Jim said, when Clay and Landry were ready to ride. “The woodland track, until you can rejoin the trace. Return by the same way, as soon as you have deposited Mr. Landry in a place of safety. I will cover your absence as best as I can. I will say that you have been taken ill. When you return, come to the outside door of our chamber under cover of dark – tap three times, then three times again.”

“What then?” Clay took up a fistful of reins. “I do not relish leaving you in this den of treacherous serpents … since it was my concern which brought you here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jim replied. “Mr. Shaw and I – we have been in tight places before, and likely will be in tight places again. Ride fast, Clay; bring aid as soon as you can. Then we will decide what course to take then. I do not think Squire Yoakum will be able to deny the evidence of bones in his meadow, or your brother’s dog under his roof – let alone the evidence of Mr. Landry here.”

“I cannot testify!” Ethan Landry squeaked. Jim and Clay regarded him with the same degree of distaste. “I am wanted for murder in Alabama, having killed a man in a duel…”

“Then play the part of a man, you bleating fool,” Clay snarled. “You are not in Alabama any more – a notch on your dueling pistol is a recommendation here.”

 

Jim and Toby strolled from the stable by the wide entrance door visible to the house, making an elaborate show of disinterest in the quiet patter of hoof-falls that rapidly diminished out of the other end of the Yoakum’s stable. Toby, lagging half a step behind as was fitting in the pretense of being a servant, kept his voice a little above a whisper.

“What do you plan now, James?”

“On the pretext of Clay being indisposed, I intend to remain here a few days longer,” Jim answered. “Or as long as it takes to get a second look at that field, without arousing suspicion. I don’t imagine there’s anyone here at the Landing that we can trust, not even the servants. If the Yoakum’s neighbors fear and dislike them, I imagine the slaves are terrified – and I certainly don’t blame them.”

“The day is cold,” Toby said, not appearing to feel any such thing with the brisk wind flattening this thin shirt against his shoulders. “While there is none about, let us take another look now.”

“May as well,” Jim agreed. With Clay and Landry safely away and no one among the Yoakums raising the alarm, this moment might be their only chance. The two of them retraced their steps towards the meadow. The wind among the pine branches shook down icy drops upon them both, and Jim thought of tears falling. No smoke without a fire – and the fire at Yoakum’s Landing burned insatiably, like a Moloch demanding constant sacrifices.

Toby led him to the waterside, first – yes, at first one might have almost thought those bleached white shapes were not bones, but the revealed dead roots of trees, scoured by the sun – but no roots were curved like those of a man’s ribs, as small and intricate as finger and backbones, or knobbed at either end like leg and arm-bones. And the rounded shapes of human skulls could not be mistaken for anything. Jim looked down from the top of the bank for a long moment.

“Either buried at the edge where the ground was soft or these are bodies dumped into the water and washed up later,” he ventured at last. Toby nodded. “The other servants did not speak so much of this,” he said, his face an inscrutable mask. “But they spoke of it as a bad place, haunted by the spirits of the dead. None of them would go here after dark, not under threat of death by their master, unless driven by the most awful threats. I think that must have been in play, James – Yoakum and his kind, they would sooner force others to their bidding.”

“What of the other places?” Jim asked. “You said that it looked as if the ground had been often disturbed … as in that place where the dog had been digging.”

“I think we should take a look at that first,” Toby answered somberly.

They looked for the spot in the tumbled meadow where Randall Hoff’s dog had dug, from which Miss Kate had bid Jim take the dog.  Where the dog had come to sit vigil, the earth had been dug up the earth again and again. It was much softened and easy to shift with bare hands, and as Jim feared, the place revealed much. A short way down through it, Jim’s hand touched cloth, from which a vile odor of putrefaction came; the edge of a pair of trousers and the corroded leather of boot-tops. Jim rose from the side of that rude grave and remarked softly to no one in particular,

“Poor faithful Gem – I think we have found his master.” More »