The Bold Frontier Read online

  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.

  About noon they stopped to rest and water the herd in a little stream the dry weather had reduced to a trickle in the mud. Noggins pulled off his tall wool hat and swabbed his forehead with his arm. He looked southward, to a great waving expanse of grass.

  “See that, Nicky? ’Tisn’t all the wind.” He kept his voice low.

  Nick gave a slow nod. “I noticed it a while ago.” Behind them the slaves were shouting at the cows and whacking them with sticks. There was a pronounced ripple in the middle of the savanna, distinct from the movement of the surrounding grass. The ripple worked its way southeast in front of them, like a sea wave. Beyond, some distance on, a smudgy line of trees hooked to the right. Continuing to move in that direction, the ripple seemed to smooth out, fade away.

  “Well, they spied us,” Nick said. “They’re in front of us now. They’ll wait till they find a suitable place and a suitable moment.”

  Noggins scratched his unshaven stubble. “Want me to tell the others?”

  “No.”

  “This is a cursed journey, Nicky.”

  “That, we and they already know.”

  He checked the powder in his pistols before they rode on.

  The march continued through the afternoon, without incident. Dusk brought little relief from the heat. They camped in the woods, a dark cathedral of old, gnarled oaks with smaller volunteer pines between them. The air smelled of wet earth and pinesap.

  Barbara supervised the fire. Poll and another slave heated the mixture of rice and black beans and served it with some soggy corn bread. Mrs. Thring loudly declined any food and remained in her cart, moaning at regular intervals as if she feared she’d be forgotten.

  Nick slid his tinware plate under the bulldog’s snout. Worthless lapped it clean in a trice. Nick smiled, his first smile all day, but rather empty for all that.

  Barbara and Poll moved off together to talk. Jelks Wyndham circled the fire, whose heat improved no one’s disposition. Wyndham braced his left side with his cane. He was well armed, a beautiful silver-chased pistol and a fine English knife thrust into the sash of his doublet. He seemed less assured than previously. He quirked hi
s pale eyebrows at the darkening treetops.

  “A lot of owls and mockingbirds abroad tonight.”

  “Mockingbirds without wings.” Nick drank from a bottle of claret Noggins had provided. Noggins was off walking the perimeter of the rope pens strung for the cattle.

  “Will we be attacked?”

  “It’s almost a certainty.”

  “Any idea as to when?”

  “That’s the part that makes for strain. It could be any moment, when we’re awake or when we’re resting. They won’t rest till it’s over. They’ve prepared themselves, you see. Worked themselves up over several days—danced, sung, fasted. I’m sure they’ve swallowed the black drink.”

  “What the devil is the black drink?”

  “A powerful emetic. It must be mixed by a conjurer. They drink it in preparation for war.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Nor have most white men in the colony. That’s why the Indians are stronger than we are. War to them is more than it is to us. To us it’s defense of our thievery. To them it’s defense, and sport, and a holy cause in one.”

  “Fortunately, Barbara has no idea of the seriousness of our situation.”

  “God, you give her no credit for brains. Of course she does. Your poor mother, too, I expect. They all know you’re willing to sacrifice them for your precious cattle. Well, you aren’t going to sacrifice my partner, or me.”

  “Explain the meaning of that, if you please.”

  Nick took pleasure in turning his back without answering.

  Wyndham spread his blanket near Barbara, who was resting against a wheel of the cart, then laid his pistol on his stomach, his right hand curled around it. He fell asleep almost at once, which only reinforced Nick’s feeling that the man was a worthless fool.

  Nick had another bad night. He spelled Noggins on guard duty, walking his tour around the pens for three hours and then collapsing near the remains of the fire, which still cast faint, ruddy light over their clearing. By that dim glow Nick saw eyes shining.

  Barbara’s. She was awake.

  When their eyes met, she gave him a weary, despairing smile. He tried to grin back in a cocky way, but it was too late for bravado, and the smile was wan; false.

  Out in the woods, the owls and mockingbirds conversed.

  An hour after they got under way, the skies opened and poured down one of those hot rains typical of Carolina. The roaring shower lasted but a few minutes. In its wake came worse heat, and insects from nowhere, and clouds of steam from the earth. They were following the hooking curve of the forest, running roughly southeast. The dark rampart of woods to their left smelled wet and rank. Little could be seen there except heavy palmetto growth between the taller trees near the perimeter.

  Nick crossed a stream the rain had temporarily replenished. He felt the mud of the streambed under his horse but gave it little thought, all his attention fixed on the path ahead. It snaked through tall grass along the edge of the forest.

  Suddenly, behind, Jelks Wyndham yelled, “Whip the ox. Make him move.”

  Nick looked back; cursed. Mrs. Thring’s cart had rolled into the stream and its off wheel was sunk to the hub. The ox, already on the near bank, strained against the yoke. The steeply tilted cart rose slightly but wouldn’t pull free. Mrs. Thring, thrown against the side of the tilted cart, wailed and thrashed about. Wyndham rode into the stream and began to beat the ox with his fancy stick. Nick turned his horse around, shouting, “Huger, lend me a hand.”

  In a moment his sweating partner rode up from the other side of the stream. Nick was already dismounted. Noggins jumped down and, behind the screen of his wool hat, whispered, “They’re coming. They’re close. Behind us now, I think. Following in the woods.”

  “Help me push the wheel.”

  “There isn’t room for two to work. Let me try by myself.”

  Nick didn’t argue. The round little man walked into the stream, backed against the mired wheel, lowered his body just a little, then reached behind with both hands to seize the wheel’s rim. “When I give the word, Wyndham, hit the ox. Not before.”

  Wyndham slapped his cheek. The crushed insect left a bloody spot. He glared at Noggins, then at Nick, as if the bite, and all his problems, were somehow their fault.

  Short hairs on Nick’s forearms itched unmercifully. Something was about to happen; every sensibility cried the alarm. He twisted around to look at the cattle but saw no problems there. The herd had stopped short of the stream, some animals cropping grass while the slaves fearfully eyed the woods or the empty savanna stretching away. A hot, airless vista, but nothing dangerous to be seen.

  Yet Nick’s nerves were screaming.

  Noggins clenched his jaws. His face turned dark as a ripe apple. He shuddered. He shut his eyes. Vessels in his neck thickened under his skin. His forehead seemed to bulge. His lips peeled back from his teeth as the sunken side of the cart rose a little, pulled up out of the mud by his immense strength and will.

  “Now, Wyndham. Hit!”

  Wyndham was a trifle slow, but he beat the ox as instructed. The ox lunged against the yoke. Noggins made a noise, or Nick thought he did, but it was peculiar—shrill, like a cry of fright. The mired wheel rose and the ox hauled the cart onto the bank, where Nick was now remounting.

  “Nick!” He saw Barbara, wildly waving. He understood then. He had heard someone other than Noggins. He wheeled his horse around. It was a slave who’d cried out. The man was vainly trying to keep his seat on his horse while clutching one hand around the shaft of the arrow that was sunk deep in his shirt bosom, where a red flower of blood had bloomed. Nick pulled a pistol from its holster.

  Wyndham was paying no attention. He was dismounted, reaching through the cart rails to comfort his distraught mother. The cattle were moving, the leaders starting to run south, over the savanna, away from the trees. Painted Indians were pouring out of the forest behind them. Perhaps twenty of them. Worthless began to bark and snarl and run in circles in the grass.

  The slave struck by the arrow slid slowly out of sight. The Indians ran among the other slaves with arrows nocked, lances poised, hatchets raised. They stabbed and lanced the slave horses indiscriminately. A few of the Indians had firearms. An old snaphaunce boomed. Nick ducked low; heard the lead whisper by.

  The cattle began to stampede with mad bellowing. Nick charged his horse toward Barbara. “Into the trees. The trees! We need cover.” He rammed his horse against hers to get her going. She responded quickly, booting her mount ahead and plunging into the woods. Noggins caught his horse, but the rope bridle broke and the animal ran off. Holding the pistol barrel in his teeth, Nick dragged Noggins up behind him as the Indians split into two groups, the nearer flowing toward the whites while the others chased cows on foot and brought the slower ones down with lance or hatchet.

  Wyndham couldn’t prise his mother out of the cart. She was wailing and hanging on to the rails. He abandoned her and rode for the woods. “Blessed Jesus,” Noggins exclaimed.

  He jumped off Nick’s horse and loped back to the cart. With fisted hands he hammered Mrs. Thring’s fingers until she let go of the rails. Then he pulled her out, lifted her not inconsiderable bulk to his shoulder, and staggered toward the trees.

  Nick quickly positioned his horse between Noggins, who was faltering under his load, and the Indians charging toward them from the other side of the stream. He laid his pistol across his left elbow, aimed, and drew the hammer back. He compensated as best he could for the dancing of his horse. The pistol fired, spewing smoke into his face. One of the feathered Indians fell, a great chunk missing from his right shoulder.

  Noggins reached the cover of the gloomy woods. Nick was riding right behind, with Worthless practically underneath. He could no longer see Barbara, or Wyndham. The palmettos grew high and thick in here, concealing whoever might be moving behind their cover. Riding was difficult; Nick jumped down off his horse.

  “Barbara?”

  �
��Here.” She was some distance away, and the noise of Indians moving back into the forest, rattling the underbrush, made it hard to fix her location precisely.

  Noggins was already out of sight. There was noise in the tall palmettos directly in front of Nick. His heart was beating hard. A sickening sense of doom enveloped him. “Huger? Where are you? We must stay together.”

  The palmettos parted and an Indian leaped out: a Yamassee wearing feathers, with yellow and ocher slashes on his cheeks and his sweating breast. While Nick grabbed his second pistol, the Yamassee raised his blunderbuss and aimed at Nick’s face. A shattering explosion followed. For an instant Nick wondered why he felt no pain; no impact from the ball. The Yamassee’s mouth opened wide. His eyes grew round and he swayed forward. As Nick started to leap back the Indian fell on him; the Indian’s blunderbuss fetched him a hard blow on the temple.

  The Yamassee fell into his arms like a lover. On the Indian’s bare back blood flowed over the yellow paint slashes. A step away, shaky, Noggins blew out the muzzle of his empty pistol.

  “Him or you,” Noggins said as his justification for a shot in the back.

  Nick lowered the dying Indian to the ground. A welter of sounds filled the woods. Mrs. Thring crying out; the attackers thrashing among the palmettos and yipping like dogs; Worthless snarling back; a sustained shrieking which Nick took for one of the blacks being tortured. In the distance, the cattle lowed; the sound was receding. Wyndham’s property was in flight.

  “Where are the others, Huger?”

  “Nearby, but scattered.”

  “Let’s find Barbara first, then we—”

  Two Yamassee leaped out of the brush to their left. Noggins dived for the fallen blunderbuss, an action which saved him from a lance through the chest. The lance sailed over his head. Noggins seized the blunderbuss by the bell muzzle and swung it against the head of the lance thrower, stunning him.

  The other Yamassee leaped at Nick with his scalp knife swinging. Nick rammed his left elbow under the Indian’s jaw, pushing upward. Worthless shot into view and began to savage the Indian’s leg like a joint of meat.