Day of Independence (12 page)

The dream of the great Texas river in flood had been a terrible dream.

But Henriette Valcour had no time to deal with it now.

The sin-eater demanded all her attention.

He had come to her door in the middle of the night, a small, slight man with an ashen face and huge, haunted brown eyes.

To Henriette, the stench of mortal sin was a palpable assault that left her head reeling, and she sensed the nearness of a dead soul, as black as midnight.

Her immediate reaction was to send the little man away.

Soon she must interpret her dream and determine the danger that faced Baptiste.

But the man read her face and cried, “Mercy, Madame! Mercy for my sins!”

He had not said he was a sin-eater, but Henriette knew.

“How many mortal sins have you taken on yourself?” she said.

“Hundreds...” the man said. “Thousands...”

Out in the dark swamp a thing howled.

The little man's eyes widened in fear and he opened his mouth in a silent scream. The inside of his mouth was as black as soot.

“It is only the hungry loups-garous, but they will not harm you,” Henriette said. “Yours is poisoned meat.”

She told the man to come inside and set him in a chair by the fire.

Henriette did not offer him food or drink.

He had devoured so many dreadful sins that he would desire neither.

She knew she could not help him, but she listened.

After a while the man recovered enough composure to tell his story.

His name was Jacob Littlejohn, he was sixty-nine years old, and once he'd been a respectable clerk in a New York countinghouse, making a full five hundred dollars a year.

But after ten years he'd tired of dusty, mind-numbing tedium, and quit his desk to see the world.

Six months later, starving, he was asleep on a park bench in Baltimore town on a cold winter night when...

“I was wakened from fitful slumber by a man wearing a dusky greatcoat, a vast muffler of the same shade around his neck. He wore a black slouch hat pulled low over his eyes, and he seemed to be in a somewhat agitated state of mind. The night was dark and I was trembling, both from cold and fright.”

“And did the man talk to you?” Henriette prompted.

“Yes, he did. He said he was sorry to see me in such a state and asked how my life had come to this sorry pass.”

Suddenly Littlejohn threw back his head and wailed.

“O my sins! My mortal sins tear me apart!”

“You are a poor, lost creature,” Henriette said. “Damned for eternity like the loups-garous.”

“Oh dear God, must that be my fate?” the man said.

“No. I will save you if I can,” Henriette said.

“I was told you are a swamp witch of great fame.”

“I am only an old woman with the wisdom of years.”

Henriette used an iron poker to push a log farther into the fire. The log sent up a scarlet shower of sparks.

She said, “The man who wakened you in the Baltimore park told you to become a sin-eater. Is that not so?”

“Yes. He told me by taking on the sins of others I would become a success and never have to sleep on a bench again.”

Littlejohn screeched, like a man in agony.

“Thrice-cursed liar, he damned me for eternity!”

“Did he tell you his name?” Henriette said.

“Edgar.”

The old woman smiled. “Yes, Edgar. He died the very night he spoke to you, after he'd sowed one last mischief.”

“You knew him?”

“I knew him. Edgar Allan Poe practiced the black arts, and we were mortal enemies.” Henriette shook her head. “Can it be that he's been gone this two score years?”

She spat into the fire. “Ah well, that for him.”

Littlejohn threw his hands out in an odd, desperate gesture. “Can you take my sins from me, witch?” he said.

“How old are you?” Henriette said.

“Near seventy.”

“Then, poor thing, I will help you.”

The woman rose and found a clay cup. She poured in goat milk and then a pinch of powder from ajar on the shelf.

She stirred the mixture and handed it to Littlejohn.

“Drink. This will make your soul as white and pure as the liquid in the cup.”

“It will wash out my mortal sins?” Littlejohn said. “All the deadly sins I took from those who committed them?”

“It will give you the peace that your tormented soul has not known since the dreadful night you met Edgar.”

Littlejohn drank eagerly, and when he'd drained the cup, Henriette said, “You must go now. I will point the way back through the bayou.”

The man rose to his feet and danced a little jig.

“I feel as though a great weight has been lifted from me,” he said.

“It is the weight of your sins leaving,” Henriette said.

She refused Littlejohn's offer of payment, because his money was tainted.

 

 

Jacob Littlejohn had no lantern, but Henriette gave him one. She stood on her porch and pointed out a route to the man she said was a shortcut out of the bayou, well away from alligators and the loups-garous.

In fact, she knew it would lead Littlejohn deeper into the swamp.

But the poison she'd mixed with the goat milk would kill him quite quickly and without pain.

Henriette watched the bobbing lantern until it disappeared into the darkness.

Killing the man was a tender mercy.

Littlejohn had lived his allotted threescore and ten, and a clean death in the swamp was better, far better, than a descent into the haunted insanity that had killed Edgar.

As to how God would judge Littlejohn, rotted as the man was with mortal sin, she did not know.

All she could do was trust that the Good Lord would be merciful.

Henriette reverently crossed herself, and then went back inside.

Now she could finally take time to recall the details of her dreadful nightmare.

 

 

The moon rose high above the swamp and made delicate lace triangles of the spiderwebs at the corners of Henriette's porch. Water lapped against the pilings, but whether caused by the ripple of a passing alligator or a loup-garou she neither knew nor cared.

In the dream, she stood on the bank, her arms raised, but the tide that engulfed the great river was too mighty to hold back.

She saw Baptiste being swept away, others with him, as a fine town and its fertile land was laid waste by a great flood.

The fat man with the massive belly saw all this and was mightily pleased.

He stood on a hillock, his hands on his sides, and rocked back and forth as he laughed.

Henriette cursed him, but the fat man only laughed louder.

Then she woke. In stark terror.

The old woman reached for the whiskey jug beside her chair and drank deep.

Now she knew the meaning of her dream...

She did not possess the power to stop what was about to cross the great river.

Even Henriette's magic could not save her grandson from the evil to come.

The moon hung high over the darkened town of Last Chance as a tall man with the hesitant gait of an infirm, elderly person left the Big Bend Hotel and angled across the street toward the livery stable.

It was only two in the morning, but the saloons were shuttered, the sporting crowd apparently saving themselves for the Independence Day celebrations three days hence.

The only night sounds were the chink-chink of Hank Cannan's spurs and the whisper of the winnowing wind that clove through the gloom.

He stopped several times, breathing hard, and let the stabbing pain in his side lessen.

Then, his lips drawn back from his clenched teeth, he struggled on.

Blown sand drifted around Cannan's boots as he mustered his strength and pulled open the door of the stable. Its rusty iron hinges squealed in protest.

Shielded from the moonlight, the stable was murkier than the street, and Cannan let his eyes adjust to its almost total darkness.

But men with horses in their care are a restless breed, and a lantern immediately flared to orange life in the livery's office.

Cannan stepped into the rectangle of lamplight cast by the window and stood still, the Winchester in his hand held low by his side.

The office door opened slowly and a shotgun with a bell-shaped muzzle appeared.

Then a man's voice, creaky, shrunken with age.

“Mister, this here blunderbuss is both wife and child to me. She's loaded with cut-up tenpenny nails and she don't miss, lay to that. Be ye a hoss thief?”

Already irritated by the pain in his side, Cannan snapped, “No, you crazy old coot. I'm here to get my bay.”

“This late?” the man said. “Then ye be a night rider and up to no good, I'll be bound.”

“Damn it, man, I'm a Texas Ranger and I need my horse.”

“The feller that rode into town all shot to pieces?”

“Yeah. That was me.”

“Hell, I heard you'd passed away recent, or were close to it.”

“Close enough,” Cannan said. “Now bring that light out here while I saddle my horse.”

The door opened wider, and a white-haired man wearing a naval coat with brass buttons stepped close to Cannan.

He held the lantern high and studied the Ranger from the top of his hat to the toes of his scuffed boots.

“Big cove, ain't ye now?” the old man said.

He laid the blunderbuss aside.

“What takes ye out at four bells, young feller?” He indicated with the lantern. “You got blood on your belly, plain to see.”

“My side,” Cannan said. “Old wound opened up. Where's my horse?”

The old sailor gave the Ranger a shrewd look.

“You on Ranger business, if you please, matey?”

“You could say that.”

“Your big stud is feisty. Penned up for too long.”

Another appraising glance, then, “Beggin' your pardon, cap'n, but you can't handle him tonight.”

“I'll make a trial of it,” Cannan said.

“Then I'll help ye saddle him. And God help you.”

As the old man fetched his saddle, Cannan said, “My name is—”

“Aye, I know who you be. And mine is Ephraim Slough, an old sailorman who lost his left pin to Moroccan pirate rogues off the coast o' Tangier in the summer of '68. I were master's mate aboard the
Sally Hudson
in them days. She were a fine sloop-of-war, was the old
Sally
, and fast as the wind.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” Cannan said. Suddenly he felt weak and dizzy, the stable floor shifting under his feet.

“You just set on the nail keg by you, cap'n, and I'll saddle your horse,” Slough said.

Cannan nodded and sank gratefully onto the keg. He felt like hell, and his apprehension grew when Slough led out his tall, rawboned bay.

The stud, fire in his eyes, was “up on his toes,” neck arched, raring to go.

Slough held tight onto the reins as the horse tried to rear and said, “Ranger, are you sure—”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Just hold him until I get up on his back.”

“Ranger, beggin' your pardon, but you got more sand than sense.”

“Right now I've got neither,” Cannan said.

He slid his Winchester into the boot, then, after a struggle that drained what little strength he had, mounted.

“Ephraim,” he said, “you see anything going on in this town you think is strange or even a little out of place, you tell me, huh?”

The old sailor knuckled his forehead. “I surely will, cap'n. You can depend on me.”

Hank Cannan let the bay have his head and left town at a hell-for-leather run.

He then swung north, as though headed for the Chisos Mountains, but after the bay ran himself out and slowed to a tired trot, then a walk, Cannan headed back toward the river.

He was physically drained from the ball-bouncing ride and from the newly opened wound in his side that pained him considerably and oozed blood like rust-red pus.

But Cannan forced himself to grit it out.

There was something wicked across the river that threatened Last Chance, and it was his duty as a Ranger to seek it out and destroy it.

Despite his misery, Cannan smiled, mocking himself.

It was big talk from a near-cripple who was only fair to middling with a gun and could barely sit his saddle.

Still, he had it to do. That was the Ranger way and he knew no other.

The moon-glow lighting his way, Cannan rode to the bank of the Rio Grande, just west of town, and drew rein.

Around him the brush desert was silent, empty; though dried dung told him that cattle had come this way.

He stared across to the opposite bank and saw only darkness.

Nothing moved. No sign of a threat.

Thanks to Roxie, he had the makings, and he took time to build and light a cigarette, thinking things through, even though his bodily pains clamored for attention and exhaustion weighed on him like a wet cloak.

After awhile, Cannan made a decision.

The threat, whatever it was, would not present itself here. A crossing would be difficult because at that spot the rippled water ran deep.

If an army of Mexican bandits chose to attack across the river, they'd opt for shallows where their horses would not be slowed.

Cannan flicked his cigarette butt into the sand, then rode north, away from Last Chance.

He found a couple of places that seemed shallow enough for an easy crossing, but they were so far west of town that any invaders would have to attack across a half mile of open ground, vulnerable to rifle fire all the way.

Cannan backtracked and then found what he was looking for.

Last Chance sat close to the river, and about fifty feet beyond a disused, tumbledown jetty stretched an elongated sandbank, about two acres in extent.

Water flowed sluggishly around the barrier with scarcely an eddy and whispered softly onto both banks, wide, half-moons of firm sand.

Here, Cannan decided. The attack would come here.

He kneed the bay into the river and crossed to the Mexican side. At no point did the water rise higher than his stirrups.

The moon had dipped lower in the night sky, but there was enough light to reveal only empty desert before it faded into darkness and distance.

Cannan listened into the silence, but all he heard was the rising wind blowing shrouds of waist-high sand across the desert floor. Like an incoming tide washing footprints from the beach, the wind busily erased any tracks that might have been made in the past few days.

But of signs left by a Mexican force preparing to invade across the Rio Grande there were none.

Cannan arched his back, trying to work out kinks.

He was done. Used up. Sapped.

And for what?

The answer was... nothing.

He was no closer to discovering what danger threatened Last Chance than he did when he first got out of bed and dressed himself in the early hours of the morning.

Maybe it really was locusts coming up from the drought-stricken south.

And maybe it was nothing at all.

 

 

Hank Cannan built and lit a cigarette, but only to postpone for at least a few minutes the agonizing trip back to the livery stable. No sooner had the match flared than a sound reached him... a faint mewing, like a kitten in distress.

Cannan listened into the night... there it was again... somewhere ahead of him in the gloom.

As was his habit, the Ranger asked himself a question aloud.

“A kittlin out here?”

But a cry reached him that no animal could make, the weak wail of a human child.

Cannan tossed the cigarette away and urged his horse forward.

After a few yards he drew rein and listened.

But for the wind... silence.

Was that what he'd heard, the sound of the west wind that now pushed hard against him?

No, there it was again, and very close.

Definitely a child, and a baby at that.

The last thing in the world Cannan felt like doing was to climb down from the saddle, but he gritted his teeth and made the effort.

When his boots hit the sand, a wave of pain followed by a sudden weakness sucked the life out of him and left him wide-eyed and gasping. He leaned against the horse, and the left side of his washed-out blue shirt was black with blood.

It was a measure of his dead-on-his-feet distress that Cannan prayed he was dreaming and would soon wake up to Roxie forcing her vile gruel into his mouth as she chided him for smoking too much and overindulging in strong drink.

But this was not a dream.

It was real, and the Ranger knew it.

Cannan gathered up the reins and stepped... staggered... stumbled forward, leading the spooked bay.

The baby, if that's indeed what it was, had been silent for a while, but the Ranger had its whereabouts pretty much figured. Figured so well in fact that he nearly tripped over the child... and its mother.

The woman was lying on her right side, her baby pulled close as she shielded the child from the stinging sand. Cannan, a huge, looming presence in the darkness, leaned over her and said, “Howdy, ma'am.”

For a moment the woman didn't respond, but then she opened her eyes, saw the Ranger and shrieked, hugging the baby even closer. The child began to squeal like a baby pig caught under a gate, and its mother shrieked even louder.

Surprised, appalled, Cannan took a step back but tripped over his spurs and hit the ground hard on his butt.

The woman rose to her feet, the baby in her arms, but she seemed too weak or intimidated to run away. Instead, she shrank from Cannan, a look of horror on her ravaged but still beautiful face.

“My dear lady, I mean you no harm,” the Ranger said.

This brought no response from the woman, only a whimper of fear.

Cannan's fall had jolted pain through his entire body, but now, as his head cleared, he saw that the woman was Mexican. Her black hair, once waist length and glossy, hung stiffly over her shoulders, tangled with burrs and windblown sand.

“You've been through it, lady,” Cannan said.

Like most Texas Rangers he knew a little Spanish and he told the woman he was her friend and that she would come to no harm.

At least, that's what he hoped he'd told her.

“Agua,” the woman said. She pointed at the baby, then herself.

Cannan, whose home range was farther north, all the way into the New Mexico Territory, was not desert savvy enough to have brought along a canteen, and he silently cursed himself for a greenhorn.

But aloud, in his halting Mexican, he told the woman that the Rio Grande was close and he would take her there.

Then, patting the dusty flank of the bay, Cannan pointed at the woman and indicated that she and the baby should—he used the Spanish
“hagasé de a bordo”
—get onboard.

But the señora hesitated, a strange, hunted expression on her face. She turned her head slowly, looked behind her, and let out a gasp of fear.

Cannan saw what the woman saw. Two men rode through a curtain of blowing sand and tattered moonlight, rifles across their saddle horns, one of them leading a saddled horse.

Cannan had been a lawman long enough to recognize a pair of hard cases on the prod when he saw them.

He was half dead on his feet. His shoulders sagged, and his face settled into its habitual gloomy expression.

“I don't need this,” Hank Cannan said aloud. “I really don't need this.”