Long Hunt (9781101559208) (11 page)

“Andrew DeVault,” the man said in a deep, gruff voice. “These here men make up the Cumberland Scouts and we've come because we hear there's been an Indian attack here.” DeVault glanced down at the dead man. “I can see we were told aright.”

Titus nodded. “I've heard of the Cumberland Scouts, gentlemen. My name is Fain. Titus Fain.”

DeVault froze a moment as a murmur swept through the rank of mounted riflemen. “Fain,” he repeated. “Titus Fain . . . son of Edohi hisself?”

“I am.”

DeVault handed his rifle to another man and dismounted. He approached Titus with an outstretched hand, and as they shook, examined Titus's face. He nodded. “I can see it. I can see my friend Edohi in your looks, sir. It's an honor to meet you. How's your father?”

“His ankle bones hurt him a lot these days. All the miles, all the years, you know.”

“When you see him next, tell him Andy DeVault sent him greeting.”

“I'll see him soon, and do that. There's a little girl in there who survived this, and my partner and me will take her with us to Fort Edohi and find a new situation for her.”

Titus found himself the object of much attention from the scouts, who were quite familiar with the fame and reputation of his father. It was vaguely uncomfortable for Titus, who shunned attention when possible, but he realized that he provided distraction from the grim job that now fell to the Cumberland Scouts: burying the dead of what would thereafter be known as the Deveraux massacre.

The best trackers from the group set out to follow the Indians responsible. Titus was inclined to join them, but Mary had attached herself to him and Micah, her emotions boiling at any hint her two saviors might leave her.

Later, when Titus and Micah rode away from the Deveraux cabin in the late afternoon, a third horse accompanied them, Mary perched on its broad back and looking very small indeed.

T
he first night was spent in the home of a family named Colyer, seven miles from the site of the Deveraux slayings, a home surrounded by a small stockade. Little Mary was almost smothered with pity and gentleness by the mother of the family, a brood of five, all of the children older than Mary except for one boy of two, who toddled about the cabin providing some diversion from the general overcast of gloom and sorrow within the place.

Oddly, Mary was the least depressed of the group. She seemed to crave the distraction of being among friendly strangers, and found the toddler to be quite entertaining. Titus took pleasure in seeing Mary laugh at the child's babble and tendency to fall down. He himself could not so easily put behind him the horror of what he had seen at the Deveraux cabin. Nor could Micah, who excused himself regularly to go outside and pace about the cabin clearing, determined to make his body as active as his racing mind, which dwelled on thoughts of the massacre. Only when the hour grew late did he finally begin to settle, eager for sleep and the chance to put a difficult day behind him.

Titus noticed that Ben Colyer, father of the hosting family, was intensely withdrawn, sitting most of the evening in the corner of the room, leaning forward, staring at the floor with his chin in his hands.

When the others had headed off to their beds, Mary having been offered a place on the single large straw tick that was the sleeping place of the three girls in the family, Micah reentered the cabin and sat down near Colyer. Noting his host's obvious depression, he reached over and gently slapped his shoulder.

“Terrible thing to happen to a neighbor,” Micah said as an intended prelude to words of comfort that he hoped would come to him of their own accord. None did, and the thought hung alone in the room like a ghost.

Colyer, to the surprise of the other two men, began to weep softly. “My fault,” he said in a cracking, nearly silent voice. “My fault.”

“It was Indians who done it, Mr. Colyer. Not you. You can't take blame for something done by others, especially red men.”

“No, sir . . . but fault I can take for having seen early sign of those savages, yet saying nothing of it. I should have spoke up. Should have given warning.”

“Why didn't you?” asked Micah.

“I was unsure of what I was seeing,” Colyer said, looking earnestly at the other two. “I am a man of the city by birth. I'm no woodsman as you two are. But now that I reflect on it, I know that what I saw was Indian sign. A full day before the poor Deverauxs were slaughtered. If I had spoke up we could have stopped it from happening.”

“All lives have their regrets,” Titus said. “My father says that often.”

“But you're right,” Micah added. “You should have spoke up.”

“And next time you will,” Titus added.

Colyer stood and paced in a small circle for a few moments. “There will be no ‘next time,' ” he said. “I am taking my family back to Fredericksburg. I came west only in hope of becoming a merchant when the country was settled and safe. I came too soon. This is a bloody land and I am not a man fit to stay here.”

“There are dangers everywhere, Mr. Colyer. Even in the cities.”

The man sighed deeply, slumped, and stared at his visitors. “It is hard for me to put in words the guilt I feel. If only I had been more quick and clever and sure of myself, I could have saved their lives. It all would have been different.”

Titus shook his head. “My father has also said to me, many times, ‘There is no place named “Would Have Been” where a man's foot can find ground to stand.' There is only what is. And all you can do is look square at it, find your trail through it, and trudge on, whether it is good land or bad.”

Colyer nodded. “Your father is a wise man as well as a famous one, then,” he said. “But there is no comfort in words for me now.”

Titus said, “Just let your sorrow flow through you until it's gone. Then move on.”

“If only I could have saved them . . .”

“The past is past. Leave it there.”

Micah, seeking to shift the conversation onto less somber ground, pointed toward the base of the door, where sat a yellow-hued stone about the size of a large man's foot. “Something about that stone there draws my eye,” he said. “Is it just a doorstop?”

Colyer lost a little of his gloom, clearly glad to have something mundane to which he could shift his focus. “It is a doorstop, but it isn't just a stone I happened to pick up for that purpose. It was given to me three years back by an uncle, who in turn had gotten it from a long hunter who'd come out of Carolina. He told me I should guard that stone because it is ‘something important.' What that meant, he never said.”

“But you've kept it anyway.”

“There is something about it that draws the eye, as you just said,” Colyer said. “And if it is viewed in certain lights . . .”

“May I take a better look at it?”

“Certainly.”

Micah rose and fetched the rock. Returning to his seat, he examined it by the flicker of candlelight, squinting hard. “I suppose this might be an ore of some kind,” he said. “A metal-bearing stone.”

“There is a certain shine to parts of the stone when the light hits it,” Colyer said. “You'll see it when the sun comes back round again.”

“Have you had anyone look at it to see what it is?”

“I don't know anyone who has knowledge about such things.”

“I think I'd want to carry it to a town somewhere and let a silversmith have a look,” Micah said. “A silversmith would know right off what it is—if it is anything.”

“You've roused my curiosity about it all over again, Mr. Tate.”

“If you're thinking of asking me to take a piece of it with me and have a silversmith look at it, I'll do it. We're heading east, and there will be opportunity.”

Colyer said, “If that stone proves to have any value to it, I know what I'll do with it. It'll go to help poor little Mary, since I failed to help her before.”

“You'll have to let that go, Mr. Colyer. You can't carry around worry over something you can no longer change.”

Colyer closed his mouth and said no more.

Micah and Titus spent the night on blankets spread in Colyer's log barn, and did not stir until morning.

Mary slept inside the house on a pallet. Her sleep was restless. In the morning Ben Colyer's wife, Gundred, reported quietly and out of Mary's hearing that she heard the girl whimpering and softly calling out in her sleep, reliving the terror and loss she had just experienced, and had once found her roaming silently through the cabin, staring fearfully at the dark windows. Gundred had spoken to her and quickly ascertained that the girl was not awake. When morning came, there was nothing to indicate Mary had any awareness of having been sleepwalking.

“What will become of her?” Gundred asked the men. “She has no kin to see her through such a hard time.”

“I have promised her that I will find her a home,” Titus said. “I shall.” He paused, gathered his boldness, then asked, “Might you take her in here?”

The Colyers looked at each other, wordless. Gundred spoke.

“We cannot do it,” she said. “We simply cannot.” No reasons were given and none were demanded by Titus and Micah. Micah, in fact, seemed relieved at the woman's words. Titus asked him about it later, in private.

“Why did you look so pleased that they turned away from that idea?” Titus queried. “It would have solved the problem straightaway.”

Micah shook his head. “It might have provided an answer, but it would not have been the right one. There's a better place for that child, and we'll take her to it.”

“Where? What place?”

“We don't know yet,” Micah said with cheerfulness. “Our duty is to find it.”

Titus chuckled. “I never heard you talk about duty before, Micah. You've always shunned such a grim subject in the past.”

“Don't mock this, Titus. We saw a child's world destroyed all around her, like the ground had dropped away under her feet and left her with nothing, not even a place to stand. And it was into our hands she was placed, so it's our duty to provide for her welfare. I figure the good Lord has put this girl into our care, and he's going to whisper in our ears to let us know the right things to do for her. I got one of those whispers while we were talking to the Colyers. It told me they are not the ones who little Mary needs to stay with. Besides, they turned her down and took the matter out of our hands. Maybe they got the same whisper I did.”

Titus marveled at his friend. This was not the Micah he had known since boyhood. “Well, brother, far be it from me to speak against the very whisper of God in your ear. But be aware that it won't be easy, traveling with a child, particularly a maiden child. Two men and a half-grown girl . . .”

“Ah, folks travel together all the time,” said Micah. “They bundle together at night, stand guard for each other when they go for a squat in the woods—ain't nothing. It's just life in the backcountry.”

“I wish she could just stay here.”

“They said no.”

“I heard them, Micah. I was there, too.”

 

If Mary Deveraux herself had any qualms about traveling with the two men whom she barely knew, she did not reveal them. After the trio departed the Colyer cabin and began their eastward journey, the girl presented a much brighter demeanor and was clearly glad to be leaving the area of her family's slaughter. As the hours and miles fell away behind them, there was virtually none of the awkwardness Titus had feared.

Titus found himself beginning to admire his partner Micah in ways he never would have anticipated. The man possessed a natural ability to relate to the orphaned girl, speaking to her in ways both frankly honest about her tragedy but also gentle. Though Mary possessed some residual shakiness and startled easily at any unexpected sound or shadow-shift in the forest, she was calmed by Micah's presence and voice, and Titus pondered that it was too bad that Micah's young wife, Rachel, had died before they had produced any children. Micah would have been an excellent father.

Long travel was not required before the settlements of the Cumberland country gave way to a wilderness virtually untouched by white hands. Settlement of the over-mountain Carolina/Franklin west was following a broken rather than steady progression. The first settlements had occurred just west of the mountains, along the Holston, the Nolichucky, the Watauga, and then leapfrogged farther west to the Cumberland region with a riverborne settlement voyage from the Holston to the so-called French Lick of the Cumberland, and a parallel immigration overland to the same end point. Between the areas of settlement was a broad wilderness of woodlands, mountains, and valleys. Traveling that wilderness was a dangerous venture. Titus did not undertake it lightly, particularly with a child to be guarded.

Two hundred miles of untamed country to be crossed before they reached Fort Edohi. Not until they were there would Titus begin seriously to look for a solution to the question of where, and with whom, the orphaned girl could begin a new life. Such considerations were too distracting during wilderness travel, when a man needed his wits and full attention working for him. Solve one problem at a time, Crawford Fain had always advised his son. One at a time.

“I need to stop,” Mary said after having ridden for two hours in silence.

Titus twisted in the saddle and looked at her. She was riding to his side and slightly behind him, with Micah in the rear.

“Are you well?” Titus asked.

“I need to . . . I need to visit the woods for a minute or two.”

Titus nodded. Just as he'd predicted: clumsy. But not very. Frontier folk grew accustomed to doing without much privacy for even the basest functions of life. Plenty of cabins had no more than an elevated horizontal rail somewhere nearby to serve as a privy. One simply sat on the railing, hindquarters extended, and did what had to be done.