The Bold Frontier Page 29

  Face to face, the adversaries struggled. The Indian shot his knife hand up to strike. Nick shifted his left hand and caught the wrist in the air. The Yamassee’s bare belly was exposed. Nick snatched his own long knife from his belt; buried it halfway to the hilt.

  Spurting blood hit him. The Indian crumpled. Worthless continued to worry his leg until Nick called him off.

  Noggins gestured urgently. Nick lurched after him into the palmettos. The shrieking was nearer. Through a break in the brush Nick saw old Poll on his knees, running blood making his face a redbrown mask. He was being scalped alive, from behind, by two Indians.

  Nick ran to try to save the old man. The Indians saw him coming. One plunged the bloody scalp knife into Poll’s back and grinned. Old Poll toppled forward, dead before he sprawled onto the ground. Nick screamed and lunged at the Indians, his long knife raised. They fled.

  Noggins grabbed Nick’s sleeve and dragged him ahead to a small open area carpeted with damp, decaying leaves. There, two of their party had abandoned themselves to their fate: Jelks Wyndham, leaning against a live oak with another, smaller pistol in hand; and Barbara, behind the tree, for what scant cover it afforded. One pale hand hugged the bark; only half her face was visible.

  When she saw Nick her eyes grew as round as the eyes of the Indian Noggins had shot. Her mouth opened in an O of horror. Nick glanced down. She was staring at his blood-soaked leggings.

  “Wyndham, where’s your mother?” It had come to Nick that Mrs. Thring’s cries had stopped.

  Wyndham’s fine, fair hair straggled in his face. His linen blouse was torn and soaked with sweat. Waving, he said, “Out there somewhere, I don’t know.”

  “Look sharp, Nicky,” Noggins yelled. Nick spun as an Indian with an old fowling piece ran into the clearing. Nick’s eyes flew wide. So did the Indian’s. Tattooed dragons raged on the Indian’s muscular arms.

  “Nick Bray, I warned you.” There was a note of despair in King Coweto’s cry. Nick and the chief stared at each other for what seemed a very long time, as if neither man could decide what to do to the other.

  King Coweto was faster to recover. He shouldered the fowling piece, but shifted his aim to Wyndham. Wyndham fired his pistol and missed.

  Two other Yamassee leaped from the palmettos to corner Noggins between jabbing lances. Wyndham caught Nick’s waist from behind and dragged him backward, as a shield. “Jelks,” Barbara cried out in outrage.

  Wyndham’s arms were strong. Nick lunged one way, then another, unsuccessfully. In desperation he cut Wyndham’s right hand with his knife. King Coweto was hovering near them, trying for a clear shot with the fowling piece. Wyndham spat like some viper and Nick tore free and dropped on his face as King Coweto fired. Jelks Wyndham flew back against the tree and then slid down. Blood streamed from his right eye socket.

  Nose mashing into rotted leaves, Nick fought a fierce stab of conscience. He knew their only chance lay in a deed he abominated. But he had no choice if they hoped to live. His left hand caught King Coweto’s ankle and yanked on it.

  The chief fought for his balance, regained it, and tried to brain Nick with the fowling piece. As he leaned over, Nick’s right hand flew upward. King Coweto was very nearly lifted from the ground when the knife tore into his belly, to the hilt.

  The Indian doubled, falling. Nick’s trembling arm couldn’t sustain the weight. He rolled and King Coweto toppled to one side. Coweto crashed to earth, still fighting with the knife in his gut. His hands closed on Nick’s windpipe.

  Coweto’s long nails tore Nick’s skin; blood reddened the Indian’s fingers. Nick and Coweto lay on their sides, united by that death grip. Nick’s cheeks purpled. His eyes seemed to bulge from his head. Noggins had taken one more Yamassee out of the fray, rearming himself with the fallen man’s lance. He was clack-clacking lances with another Yamassee like some modern Friar Tuck. But there were earnest, murderous looks on Noggins’s face and that of his foe.

  Nick freed the bloody knife from Coweto’s belly. King Coweto felt it and strangled the harder. Nick looked into Coweto’s eyes for some sign of humanity, but there was none. The eyes were demonic, as if in his pain Coweto no longer recognized his victim, only knew he must claim his life before he died himself. Nick steeled himself. Dark veils were obscuring his sight. There was no other way. …

  By sheer muscular force he lifted his right forearm high enough to position the knife. He cut King Coweto’s throat. He couldn’t roll away from the torrent of blood fast enough.

  A short while later he regained his feet. His memories of the moments that had passed were two. The Indian dueling with Noggins had turned and fled— which is exactly what Nick had hoped for once he’d steeled himself to slay the chief, a man for whom he bore no great grudge, understanding as he did why Coweto took to the path of war.

  Secondly, there was Barbara’s face. Turned to him in horror … disbelief …

  Revulsion.

  From hairline to breastbone, he was as red as if he’d dyed himself for war. Sadly, he knew what her expression meant.

  He knelt by Jelks Wyndham, who had tried to sacrifice Nick to save himself. Wyndham was dead; Nick could feel no sense of loss. The thought that occurred to him was shameful: Wyndham’s cattle, if they had not all run off, belonged to any man who would take them.

  “Nicky?”

  He swung his head around, saw Noggins motioning with a terrified look. Nick reeled to his feet. He felt the sudden exhaustion always produced by hard physical combat. He listened, thought he heard sounds that signified a general Indian retreat in the wake of the death of their leader.

  Noggins led him a short way to a crumpled heap of cloth, which on inspection turned out to be the skirts of Mrs. Thring. Nick fell to his knees a second time and gently rolled her onto her back. He examined her dirty gown and what expanses of freckled old skin he could find.

  “Not a mark. Not a cut, nor any bullet wound, Huger.”

  “She was breathing just fine when I laid her there, I swear.”

  “Poor old woman must have died of fright. Wyndham didn’t care who, or how many, he sacrificed for his goddamned property. What a sorry mess.”

  Nick stood up. Mrs. Thring seemed to be gazing past him through the treetops at the Carolina sky, which was clearing now, turning a pale blue, like the edging on a fine plate. Mrs. Thring’s cheeks were a darker blue, her lips purplish.

  Worthless limped out of the underbrush. Some knife or lance had gashed the shank of his left rear leg. He was making piteous sounds and snapping his head around, trying to lick the wound. Nick supposed he’d be all right. The dog had half a dozen scars already. Only steel through the heart would kill him.

  Nick and Noggins found two of the slaves alive. They expressed gratitude to Nick and his partner, then willingly ran into the savanna while Nick and Noggins found their horses and remounted.

  Barbara said she would remain with Mrs. Thring’s body. “I need some time by myself. I need some time to reckon all this. To cry over Jelks’s poor mother.”

  At evening, a brilliant red-gold sky overhung the savannas and the bloody woodland. Wind was rising. The two white men and the two blacks had recovered about one hundred head of cattle, a profitable afternoon’s work. Nick ceremoniously thanked the blacks, then said:

  “Take your leave. There are hundreds of miles of safe forest between here and the next man who wants to enslave you. You’ll never meet that man if you’re cagey. Avoid the Spaniards in Florida—they’ll chain you up. Make for the Gulf. The islands of the Antilles. Find a place to live free.”

  One slave’s eyes brimmed with tears; they shone like red gems in the sundown. He started to kiss Nick’s hand.

  “No, don’t do that. Don’t do that to any man, ever.”

  Without a word the two ragged black men faded away into the waving grass.

  “I’ll take every pound you promised me,” Nick Bray said to Sir Pierce Cottloe in Charles Town. “Though I do think thirty silver pieces wou
ld be more appropriate to the business.”

  Sir Pierce counted it out. “Nicholas, I had no idea that you would encounter such terrible—”

  “You’re lying, you damned fraud. But don’t worry about me, sir. Not at all. Worry about yourself. Your peace of mind. Reflect on what you did. For the rest of your life, when you can’t sleep—if I were a devout man I would pray for your sleeplessness—think about the mother of your fellow conspirator. Think of Sophie Thring. If you’d never tricked me and sent me up there, if we’d never made the journey back down the trading path, that harmless old lady would be alive now. So would an old black man named Poll who didn’t have the strength to harm a child. So would a couple of Wyndham’s black chattels. The kind of men you brush aside or kill like summer flies. How much Sunday holiness will it take to wash all that off your conscience?”

  He walked out of the house, leaving Cottloe gasping like a beached fish.

  On the east-facing piazza he met Barbara, for what he had already decided would have to be a quick farewell. The memory of what he’d done to King Coweto was gall; a heart wound that would never heal. There was a temptation to parcel out the blame to others, but only one hand had driven the steel.

  He clasped Barbara’s hands in his and looked earnestly into her blue eyes. “Your father was wrong about Jelks, but he was right about me: I’m not the sort of man you could display in London town.”

  He showed her his hands. Dried blood still clung under his thick fingernails. He’d washed and scrubbed repeatedly, but it would not come out.

  “I won’t argue with you,” she whispered, beginning to cry. “I know your mind is set.”

  “And yours. I saw it when I killed King Coweto. I saw it when you looked at me.”

  She didn’t say he was wrong.

  He leaned in to her, grasping her arm as he kissed her. It was a warm afternoon. The air smelled of the ocean. Her hair smelled lightly of lavender.

  “Will I see you?”

  “If you stay in Carolina. If you look quick, somewhere between the wind and the clouds and the shadows.”

  “Nick, you saved my life. …”

  “I’d have done that even if I didn’t love you. Good-bye, Barbara.”

  He vaulted down the high steps two at a time, crossed the rectangular garden, and went out the street gate without a backward look.

  Noggins and Worthless were waiting in the garden wall’s cool shadow, the one leaning, the other sleeping with his drooly underjaw stuck out. The dog’s injured leg was oozing; he tore off every bandage Nick or Noggins tied on him.

  Sounding tired, Nick said, “We’ll take the cattle down to one of the sea islands to fatten them. We’ll have plenty of time to drink. I need to drink for a week. For a month …”

  “Listen, Nicky, are you sure about this? At the Ram’s Gate I heard there are pirates on the coast again. Ralph Rowland and his rotten crew.”

  “But there are sharks here in Charles Town—much harder to recognize and avoid than those that hide in the sea. I’ll take my chances with Roaring Ralph and his mates.”

  With a resigned sigh Noggins said, “Then I guess I will also.”

  Worthless snorted in some kind of agreement, and wobbled to his feet as the two friends set out. The men and the dog passed through a patch of shade at the next corner. They turned the corner and disappeared. Over the cream and ivory walls of the street, sound fell lightly. The closing of a shutter; then a woman weeping. The pastel light danced with motes of dust. It was as if Nick Bray had never been there at all.

  Snakehead

  LAMAR TISDALE LEFT THE Ohio Christian Orphan’s Home on September 1, 1883. His twelfth birthday. All inmates of the home graduated into the hard world at age twelve.

  The managers of the home presented Lamar with a rail ticket to Council Bluffs and a letter of introduction to the supervisor of passenger services. Union Pacific Railroad. Lamar was hired as a peanut butcher, making regular trips between Omaha and Cheyenne.

  On this run he traveled with the line’s legendary conductor, C. O. (“Redbird”) Seelbinder. Redbird Seelbinder was famous for defying management by wearing a red bandanna with his uniform. His nose was as red as the bandanna. He was magnificent at his job, but seldom sober doing it.

  Redbird was also famous for his stories, recitations, jokes, and aphorisms, some comprehensible, some not.

  Lamar was a stout boy with shrewd brown eyes and a disposition not yet shaped by the world. On his first trip, Redbird took a shine to him, and helped excuse and smooth over the beginner’s mistakes. In the baggage car, Redbird took a hearty swig from the bottle of spirits always present in a capacious pocket and insisted that Lamar sit on his knee. Lamar was too large for this, but since the conductor was famous, he obliged. Seelbinder held forth for an hour. He said such things as:

  “If you meet a Chinaman, try to think like a Chinaman. If you meet a mountain lion, try to think like a mountain lion. Might save your skin.”

  And:

  “The evil of this world doesn’t come like a smart fox, it comes like a drunk ox.”

  And:

  “When I was serving on the old Callawassie & Charleston, our rails were strap iron on top but wood below, spiked down. Now sometimes spikes worked loose and a rail would curl up and ram through the floor of a passing car. It happened to me. This snakehead, as it was called, ripped through the carpet and its coating of tobacco juice—passengers spit right on the floor in those days, don’t y’know—and caught me just here, clean through the leg, and pinned me to the car like a butterfly. I bled like a scarlet Niagara Falls for a while. But I was determined not to die, although in hellish pain. A lady loaned me her parasol and I bit down on the handle of it for one and a half hours, until a doctor arrived and saved me. Every man meets a snakehead at least once, Lamar. Prepare to meet yours.”

  Lamar Tisdale never forgot that admonition.

  A year later, the summer of ’84, a Nebraska farmer named Carl Lukendorf went crazy. Lukendorf had been accumulating anger for fifteen years, and one morning he just snapped.

  Lamar hadn’t yet made Lukendorf’s acquaintance on the day he left Omaha on another run. It was hot weather. White skies, muttering thunder, no wind, nearly a month gone by without rain. Lamar, by now a cynical veteran of the cars, was feeling uneasy as he filled his tray with his stock of apples, tin whistles, nausea pills, Beadle novels, hard candies, and playing cards depicting famous Indians chiefs as the kings and knaves.

  The westbound express consisted of the locomotive, a thirty-five-ton Baldwin 4-4-2 named Pride of Cheyenne, a tender, a combination mail-baggage car, and three passenger cars. One of these was a second-class day coach, the other two first-class through cars to California (no smoking). Of these, one was a Pullman Palace Reclining Chair Car. The other featured Mr. Pullman’s ingenious upper and lower berths that appeared miraculously at night.

  Lamar’s procedure was the same for every trip, and for either class of car. He slipped the cord of his tray over his head and worked his way through the train, intuitively matching passengers to items in the tray. He would throw an item into a passenger’s lap uninvited and move on. When finished, he’d work the train in the other direction. Some passengers returned his items, but the majority didn’t. By the time Lamar made his second trip, they had cracked the seal on the cards, or started reading, or spit on the apple to polish it. So they paid him. In a good week, at twenty percent commission on each sale, he made a hundred dollars.

  On this day, Redbird stood swigging and swaying on the platform between the first-class cars. He never held on; he never fell off. They were rattling west by the sludgy Platte, the only river water in America that you had to chew, as the saying went. Everywhere the sky was the same bright, oppressive white. Air fanning over the platform blew from some unseen furnace.

  “This weather makes men and livestock crazy,” Redbird remarked between drinks. The conductor always had a firm grip on his bottle. He would weep, rave, or fight if acciden
tally parted from it for more than a few seconds.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that some of the passengers are pretty cross,” Lamar said.

  “Got a celebrity in the next car, by the way.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Bart Stopper.”

  “The Pinkerton detective? You don’t mean it.”

  “I do. He’s in there with his wife and little girl, all of them preening like peacocks. They’re going on vacation in the Rockies.”

  “I can’t wait to get a look at him,” Lamar exclaimed. Bart Stopper, who caught outlaws and broke up strikes by trade-union members, had a national reputation.

  “When you do, you won’t see much,” Redbird said. But Lamar had already gone into the car.

  Lamar spotted the Stopper family right off. They occupied a facing double seat, with a table latched to the wall between seats. At night the colored porter, Xerxes Johnson, a former slave, removed the table, converted the seats into the lower berth, and dropped the upper berth on chains from its storage space above. The great detective was riding backward, lounging and fanning himself with his derby, and occasionally stroking his handlebar mustache. He was a young man with a bullying expression. It was evident that he wore a shoulder gun, much too large, under his coat.

  The detective’s wife was severe-looking, and his daughter, about Lamar’s age, had the same baleful, ax-nosed face as her mother. Both ladies were dressed to the maximum, in frills and hoop skirts right out of the latest issue of Godey’s.

  Already in a state, Lamar worked his way toward them. He was nervous about selecting something for the Stopper girl because of her father’s occupation and fame. He chose the reddest, ripest apple in his tray. He put a deck of cards with it. Instead of flinging the items into her lap, his usual technique, he placed them with great care. In the process, his hand accidentally came in contact with her skirt.

  “How dare you touch me?” the girl cried. “Papa, he touched me!”