“Edohi, I knew it was you as soon as I saw you ride by my window!” the man said. “How are you, you addle-headed old wanderer?”
“Still wandering, Dill. How are you?”
“Quite fine. Thank you. Not doing much wandering myself these days.”
“Glad to hear it. You were the sorriest excuse for a hunter I ever knew.”
“Ain't it the truth!” the man said. He glanced over toward Potts. “Who's your young friend here?”
“Dill Talbott, meet Langdon Potts, a friend of my son's. You knew I had a son, didn't you?”
“I didn't. It's been that many years now since you and I have stood on the same piece of ground, Fain.”
“Several more than twenty. Yeah, my son, Titus, was born about a year and a half past the time I saw you last, Dill. He's about the age of Potts here. And like Potts, he's a fine, strong young man who is as good a woodsman as I've ever been, or any I've rode and hunted with.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Talbott,” Potts said, leaning down to shake hands.
“Call me Dill,” said the ruddy man. “And both of you, get down from those mounts and put them up in my stable over there. You can just see the side of it over there beyond the trees. The inn itself you can't see at all from here.”
“Did you say âinn'?” asked Fain. “You an innkeeper now, Dill?”
“I am indeed. And you'll be among my first guests. What think you of that, Fain?”
Fain grinned. “Well, I think innkeeping is surely more what you're cut out for than hunting. Potts, Dill here couldn't hit the side of a mountain from twenty paces, much less a deer from thirty. He ran off a lot more deerskin than he ever collected. I'd be a rich man today if I had collected the hide of every deer this man here run off with the noise of a wild shot.”
Dill Talbott was laughing. “I can't deny it, Potts. I had no business trying my hand at that business, if you can make sense of that.”
“I can.” Potts grinned. Dill was one of those men it was impossible not to like.
“Yes, sir, the town life is the life for me,” Talbott said. “I'd rather have my fire blazing on the hearth of my own inn than in the middle of some freezing hollow like Edohi here always favored. Still that way, Edohi? Shunning the life of civilized men so you can live in the woods?”
“Not so much these days, Dill. Rheumatiz has 'bout done in my ankles. All that walking in rain and snow.”
“There's a price to be paid for any life we choose, I reckon,” said Talbott, patting his rather round belly. “Here's the price of the innkeeping life,” he said. “What Nelly cooks for the guests gets eat up by the host.”
“Nelly. Your wife?”
“She is. And she's a real wife, too, married up all legal, papers and everything. Not like that pretty little Cherokee gal you wintered up with that year in that cabin up near Cumberland Gap.”
Potts raised his brows. “I'm going to have to hear more about that.”
“Well, Potts, she was a pretty little red gal, sweet one, too, and even though she and old Edohi here weren't married in any white man's sense of the word, they acted just as married as can be. You following me?”
“I believe I am.”
Fain dismounted and Potts did the same, glad for it, because it indicated they were going to take up Talbott on his invitation. The joviality and friendliness of Dill Talbott roused an expectation that he would be a fine host and innkeeper. And clearly, judging from Dill's somewhat expansive girth, the food would be fine.
“Dill, I can do without you rehashing all my past sins and failures to my young friend here. I want to influence him toward the good, not the bad.”
“What you did, Edohi, was no different than what many others did. How many men did we know who had a white family east of the mountains, and an Indian family in the west? You recall Charles Floren? A wife and children back home, but also, on the sneak, a Negro âwife' who bore him two sons, and in the west, a Creek girl who bore him three daughters?”
“Charles was the worst I ever knew for that,” Fain said, nodding slowly.
“When his white wife in Carolina finally figured out what he was doing, she left him.”
“Can't blame her.”
“Then he up and married another woman to replace her, and took a mistress on the side as well. Charles is dead now, you know.”
“Not surprised. It would take a young rabbit to keep up such a level of carnal activity,” Fain said. “The heart would fail most men.”
“What killed him was some kind of an ailment he caught from a harlot in Virginia. One of them French pox afflictions, if you know what I'm talking of.”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” Fain said with a shrug.
Talbott's inn was a significantly better building than Potts had expected. It was one of those frontier rarities of the time: a frame building. At least, the front portion was frame, though that part adjoined a large, square log building that held the guest rooms.
At the dark oaken bar that Dill Talbott said he had built himself, the group imbibed in some rum and Talbott and Fain continued their reminiscences.
“Just so young Potts here will have a full picture of the actions of my youth, I want it said that I had only that one time of taking up, husband-style, with an Indian woman. And them were odd circumstances. Her father was a war chief and for some reason thought highly of me. He said that if I would take his daughter to wife, he would keep peace with the white men. I had to agree.”
“Of course, the fact that she was pretty as a sunrise made it a little easier to say yes,” Talbott threw in.
“I can't deny that . . . but I did what I had to do,” Fain said. “Same thing Indian agents have to do sometimesâjoin in with the people they're dealing with in order to keep peace and order with them.”
“Like Joe Martin,” said Talbott.
“Exactly. And his white wife knew all about the Cherokee one. And didn't mind it, they say,” Fain declared.
“Like you already said, a man does what he has to do,” said Talbott.
“What became of your Indian wife?” Potts asked Fain.
“She never really was my wife. And the times and our situations forced us apart, eventually. She wound up marrying another man. Whether red or white, I don't know.”
“I can tell you,” said Talbott. “It was a white man who threw in with the Cherokee, got himself adopted into the tribe. His name, I think, is Cecil. Cecil Watson.”
Fain's eyes lighted with revived memory. “Oh yes! I remember him. Met him the same year I built that stout little hunting shelter that became such a favorite of mine.” Fain paused. “He was the first man ever to call me Edohi.” Fain's look suddenly darkened a little. “I didn't know he wound up with my woman, though.”
“It was the times, Edohi. They was what they was, and we was what we was, too.”
“I wonder what became of Cecil,” Fain said.
“Last I knew, he was still living among the Cherokee,” Talbott replied.
Fain looked at Potts. “I got a favor I must seek of you, Potts.”
“Just ask it.”
“Titus don't know about that Indian gal I was with. I never talked of it to any of my kin. I'd as soon he never know about it. I'm not sure he'd understand his father doing such a thing, for it goes against the raising I gave him. Can you keep what you've heard today under your hat? Forever?”
“I can, and I will.” Potts paused and made a show of poking a finger into his ear and twisting it. “Hearing's getting bad these days, anyway. I don't know that I've actually heard a single word today that I could be sure I heard aright. And you should know that I make a practice of never repeating nothing I'm not sure I heard aright.”
Fain chuckled. “Thank you, lad.”
“My pleasure, Crawford Fain.”
Â
Fain had brought with him the rifle he had been presented by Houser back at the fort. As the day drew toward a close, he brought Talbott outside to let him take a look at the fine weapon. Talbott was suitably impressed. He held it to his shoulder and sighted down its long barrel.
“Fine balance of weight, Fain,” Talbott said. “Not so front-heavy as some rifles tend to be.”
“You're right,” said Fain. “It's something Houser has figured out how to do, balancing a rifle so well. I'm not sure what it is and he don't tell. Calls it a âcrafter's secret.' Makes it easy to shoot more accurate, that's for certain. Hell's bells, even
you
might be able to hit something besides the sky with
that
rifle, Dill!”
Talbott laughed. “Hang it all, Edohi, you know as well as I do that I can already shoot a squirrel out of a tree as clean as any man!”
Fain laughed, too, then said to Potts: “I'll explain that to you, son. I told you how Dill here has run off more deer than he ever shot, firing off wild shots like he tends to do. Well, one time we were hunting out near the Fish Creek in the Cumberland country, and old dead-eye Dill here took aim at a buck that had more points on him than a Baltimore beggar man has lice. Well, he leveled in, pulled that butt plate up tight against his shoulder, squinched up that eye, and squeezed off a good clean shot. Only problem was he shot higher than a high-standing chimney top and sent them deer running, as usual. Except that over way beyond them, a squirrel come tumbling down out of a tree, shot cleaner than if Dill had been aiming at him from ten feet away. Which is how close he would have had to be to have made that shot on purpose. And in his case, even then he probably couldn't have hit it.”
Potts made a wry comment, but it went unheard, covered by the laughter of the two older men.
That evening, smoking pipes outside Talbott's inn, Fain brought up the matter that had drawn him to this settlement. “Dill, have you happened to see a yellow-haired woman around here who has a brown eye with a gray streak in it?”
Talbott screwed up his brow in thought. “I don't think I have, but I couldn't say for sure. People pass through here a good deal these days.”
Nelly Talbott, Dill's plump wife, walked up to the group, having overheard the question and answer. “Dill,” she said sternly, “even if you had talked with that woman, you'd not recollect it.” She looked at Fain. “He's worse than I've ever seen for hearing but not hearing and seeing but not seeing. Know what I mean?”
Fain didn't speak but subtly nodded at the woman while flashing a quick grin.
Nelly surprised him then. “There was such a woman here,” she said. “I noticed her because her hair was so lovely. When I was a little girl I always wanted to have golden hair, and I suppose a part of that is still inside me, because I still notice such hair when I see it.”
“But her eye . . .”
“I didn't notice that right away. But when I spoke to her and brought her a trencher of food, I saw it. Her left eye. Her eyes were brown, which is something you don't see much in a yellow-haired person, but that left eye had a lighter streak in the brown that was as gray as it could be. I fear I may have stared at it more than I should have. I worried later that I might have caused her offense. Then I considered that she was probably accustomed to people staring.”
“Do you know her name?”
Nelly frowned, hesitated. “Now it's my turn to appear as the one who can't remember much. I did hear her name, but I don't recall it now. I'm sorry.”
Dill grinned. “She's worse than I've ever seen for hearing but not hearing, and seeing but not seeing. Know what I mean?”
“Leave her be, Dill. Nelly, was her name Deborah?”
“IâI just can't remember. I can't . . . Wait a moment. Wait! Her last name was Corey. The first name I can't recall, but the last name was Corey.”
“You're looking for a Bledsoe, though, ain't you?” Potts said.
“I don't know. If she married, her name might have changed. Or even if she didn't marry, she might have been raised by a family whose name she took for her own.”
“Who is this woman, and why are you looking for her, if I might ask?” Nelly said.
Fain saw no reason to be secretive. “You've heard of the preaching Bledsoe brothers, maybe? One of them a fire-breathing camp meeting preacher, the other a book-learning kind of fellow starting up a college near White's Fort? Well, the latter one, Eben Bledsoe, had a daughter who was took from their home years ago, when she was little, seemingly by Indians. The girl had yellow hair and a gray-streaked brown eye. Seems that Eben has heard of such a female, grown up, being seen in the backcountry. He hired me to try to find her. Her name used to be Deborah Bledsoe, but what it is now, we can't know. If the woman he's heard of is even his daughter. It could be somebody else entirely, though the rarity of yellow hair and brown eyes, combined with the extra rarity of one of those brown eyes having a gray streak, well, it does seem likely the missing little Deborah and the woman might be one and the same.”
“What a quest!” Nelly said, struck by the romance of it all. “A father seeking his long-lost daughter. . . . Why, a good poet could make quite the epic out of such a tale!”
“Nelly tries her hand at poetry sometimes,” Dill said without enthusiasm.
“Well, if this all goes well, I'll give you the details and you can just poetize the very devil out of it,” Fain said. “But let me ask something, Miz Nelly. Did this Corey woman happen to say where she might be living, or if she was traveling, where she was going to? And was she with others, or alone?”
“I didn't talk to her much, and nothing was said about where she was going. And she was alone. . . . But a day after she left, a man came asking after her, looking for her. I didn't like the look of him, or his manner. He seemed to me to be a man with something wrong about him. It was very hard to put my finger on, and I didn't dwell on him much. He told me his name was Taylor. I could tell he was just making it up. False name. He seemed a small and unimportant mouse of a man. I'd forgotten about him until just now.” Nelly paused. “I'm sorry I haven't been much help to you. If I had known it would matter, I would have talked to her more.”