Scalpdancers (23 page)

“Dammit to hell,” he cursed as he darted beneath the roof and plopped down on a half-log bench resting against the log wall. He sheepishly avoided his daughter until he brought himself under control. “Uh … what I meant—”

“Just what you said,” Julia flatly stated, moving toward him. She removed her apron and passed it to him to use on his muddy foot.

“I suppose,” he conceded. Emerson dried his foot, grateful for the apron. His greatcoat dripped water on the wooden deck at his feet. A puddle quickly formed beneath the bench, but Emerson had his shoes on again and did not care. He brightened, remembering the good news he brought as a result of a visit to Fort George.

“Oh Lord,” the missionary exclaimed, discerning his daughter's thoughts as she returned her gaze to the settlement below. “You're looking for him, aren't you?”

“Yes, I admit it. And no doubt in vain if that makes you happy.” Julia saw no reason to hide anything from him. They had been together too long for that.

“I don't want to see you hurt, daughter.” Emerson leaned back and closed his eyes. He enjoyed the aroma of freshly baked bread that wafted through the shuttered windows to mingle with the scent of rain-washed pines and the ocean. “I have known such men before. Irresponsible men. Oh, they do not act out of meanness. But they are wanderers whose truth today is a lie tomorrow.”

“Morgan Penmerry is different,” the young woman protested. “Granted, he is no gentleman like Captain Black,” she added facetiously.

“Mockery is poor reward for the Englishman's generosity,” Emerson countered.

“He took the
Magdalene
!”

“But not the stores. I've just come from him and he will permit us to unload everything, all the goods. Everything we need to bring the word of God to the poor red children. The captain is a Christian and will not interfere. We can have our school; we can have the mission again.” Emerson approached his daughter and touched her arm. “It can be as it was.”

Julia closed her eyes and listened to the rain. It sounded like the voice of creation singing to the fertile earth. Why couldn't her father see the change and accept it, as she was learning to do?

“It can never be as it was,” she said without rancor.

Nothing can ever be as it was, but it can be better. In a way, Morgan had taught her such a lesson by his own example. He had endured his misfortune in Macao and come away with his eye upon tomorrow. Whatever despair he must be feeling would not last. She was certain he'd view his loss of the
Magdalene
as just another opportunity for his irrepressible spirit to rise to the occasion. Morgan Penmerry would make the best of the situation, of that she was certain. She was sure that things couldn't get any worse.

But at that precise moment they did.

13

He dodged a thrown stool, shot up, and head-butted his assailant. Another face appeared to his left. He swung out, then dodged, blocked a vicious inside jab, danced back. Someone pinned his legs; he lost his balance and crashed to the floor. Bodies piled on him. A fist caught him on the side of the head; a hand reached out to choke him. Morgan bit the outstretched fingers. Someone kicked him in the side and pain flashed the length of his body and lit up the inside of his skull
.

Morgan saw a nose and broke it. He struck out and buried his fist in someone's groin. He almost fought his way to freedom, and, laughing through his bloodied lips, he hurled insults at the English seamen and dared them to fight on
.

Blood and bone and battered breath … he saw the foot coming; like a lead ball shot out of a cannon, it filled his sight and there was no escaping. He squirmed and struggled right up until the foot cracked against his skull and an avalanche of bright blue rocks came tumbling down in his mind and buried him alive. Faces, out of focus now, leered at him. With the last of his fading strength he swung his hard fist
.

It cracked against the log wall and woke him up.

“Yeeow!” Morgan groaned and rolled over on his side, curled up, and cradled his bruised fist. He'd skinned the hide off his knuckles. “Good Christ,” he muttered and opened his eyes and saw Temp Rawlins squatting on the floor across from him. Temp had two black eyes and dried blood beneath his nose.

“You look like shit at low tide.” Morgan grimaced.

“You should see you,” Temp countered.

Morgan wondered if he looked as bad as he felt. Probably worse, he decided, gingerly probing the swollen lump on his scalp and his split lips. He glanced around at their confines, a tack room—he inhaled—off of a stable no doubt. The air was thick with the scent of hay and manure, horseflesh and leather.

“Where are we?” He sat upright, using the wall for a backrest, his legs outstretched. Rolling up his pant leg, he spied a row of teeth marks about four inches below his knee.

“One of those damn sailors bit me,” he muttered.

“That or one of the marines. Seems I saw one of them latched onto your ankle before you went down.” Temp shook his head in disgust. “I knew trouble was brewing. You were primed and waiting for someone to pull the trigger. If it hadn't been Chadwell, it would have been someone else.” Temp ran a hand through the silvery remains of his hair. Big bushy eyebrows arched as he gingerly touched his left eye.

“Those are beauties,” Morgan observed.

“And you can take credit for this one,” Temp grumbled as he ran his fingers over his discolored cheek just beneath his lower eyelid. “It's your handiwork.”

“Me?”

“I pulled a roisterer off your back and this was my thanks.” Indignation transformed Temp's burned features into a mask of wrinkles that made him seem suddenly old and weary.

Morgan crawled to his feet. His knuckles were raw, his neck hurt, and it felt as if someone had put a live coal inside his rib cage. Dried blood matted his right sleeve; a similar stain darkened his trouser leg where a six-inch tear and a nasty wound showed someone had gotten careless with a carving knife during the tavern brawl. Morgan inspected the cut by the light of the single candle burning on an overturned nail barrel, the room's only furniture.

Morgan decided his leg would heal, but he'd walk stiffly for a while. He studied their humble surroundings. The space was barely large enough for the two of them. It had no windows and the only way out was through a solid-looking door bolted from the outside.

“Suppose they'll shoot us?” Temp wondered. “Striking an English soldier and all?”

“They only kill you for striking a gentleman,” Morgan said. He peered through a knothole in the tack room wall and glimpsed sunlight and the dappled rump of a brown mare and dancing dust motes swirling in the fragile light. While ruminating on his chances of kicking a hole in the wall without alerting any British sentries, Morgan heard the bolt slide back and the door scrape the earthen floor as it swung ajar.

A British corporal stood in the doorway. He was short and stocky with an air of complete distaste for the prisoners. Four marines waited behind him, their rifles cocked and primed. Unlike Sergeant Chadwell at his drunken worst, these men looked more than capable.

“Please come with me.” The corporal turned on his heels. “Try to escape and it will be my pleasant duty to shoot you outright.”

“Polite,” Temp muttered. “And with a sense of purpose.”

“Just as well. I'd hate to meet my maker at the hands of a rude man,” Morgan replied and limped through the doorway and out into the stable. Slanted beams of sunlight flooded through the gaps in the mud-chinked walls.

Dry yellow straw crackled underfoot. Flies swarmed the droppings, buzzing in ever-tightening circles. The barn sheltered a dozen horses and the animals whinnied and pawed the hard earth. Near the front of the stable stood the blacksmith's forge, its rock chimney rising through the roof. A couple of iron wheel-rims rested against an anvil. The forge itself was cold and from the look of things hadn't been worked for quite a spell.

“Where's Robinson?” Morgan asked.

The corporal glanced back at his prisoners, his round face registering surprise. “The smithy? Poor bloke crossed himself with one of Chief Comcomly's daughters. 'Twas me and some of me mates as found his body back in the hills. His head crushed in like an egg, it was.” The corporal hooked his thumbs in the cartridge belt around his waist and sighed forlornly. “Been a long time since I had an egg. Fancy them, I do. Used to snitch 'em as a lad, a regular fox I was.”

The stockade walls of Fort Astoria, now Fort George, were built of Douglas fir. Each side ran approximately two hundred feet in length. The walls stood ten feet tall, a little more in some places, less in others, depending on the cut of the timber. Barracks for the sixty British marines and thirty seamen ran the length of one wall. Another backed a long row of buildings that housed a hospital, a supply house, and quarters for the officers. The stable dominated the third wall, while the powder magazine had been dug underground in the center of the courtyard to avoid any nasty accidents and damage to the stockade proper.

To Captain William Black's credit Fort Astoria had been taken without firing a shot. The American Fur Company had allowed the post to become severely undermanned in recent years. Most of the garrison had abandoned their duties in favor of the lucrative trade in pelts. The woods were teeming with otter and beaver and prime fox. A fortune could be made. The Indians were for the most part friendly unless provoked. They seemed perfectly willing to trade with Reap McCorkle, the fur company's representative. What need had there been of heavily armed troops?

Morgan had learned that Black's contingent of marines had quickly rounded up the fort's command, thirteen men in all, and paroled them into the settlement after confiscating their weapons and ammunition. But all that was history—and Morgan's chief concern was the present.

Out in the open now Morgan slowed to breathe in the rain-washed air and to gaze northward in awe at the majestic ridges beyond the stockade walls. For a moment he paused, spellbound by a calling he'd only sensed upon the sea.

A marine behind him jabbed the butt of his rifle in the small of Morgan's back. Morgan spun about, his fists clenched. The marine, a fair-haired young man no older than Morgan, jumped back in alarm and raised his rifle as if to ward off an attack. Morgan laughed in the frightened man's face, winked at Temp, and rejoined the procession across the stockade grounds. The corporal shook his head in exasperation, his hand upon the pistol thrust in his belt.

“Do me a favor?” Temp moaned. “Don't go and get us shot before our time.” Lack of sleep and cramped quarters may have taken their toll on Temp's weathered limbs, but he still preferred discomfort over death.

Captain William Black sat stiffly in the chair behind the log table that served for a desk. He had not slept well. In fact, his nights had been filled with restlessness since coming to the Pacific coast. It didn't matter to him whether the Hudson Bay Company or the American Fur Company ran Astoria. England would survive the loss of a few shiploads of fur. It was the war he longed to be a part of. In war a man could win glory, a man could advance his station.

Black was a long-featured, clean-shaven, fair-skinned man painfully thin from a current bout of stomach troubles. Generations of his family had proved their mettle on the battlefield or the high seas. Now it was his turn, and all he could manage was loose bowels and the occupation of Astoria. The locals hadn't even put up a fight. Free trappers didn't care who bought their furs. Hudson Bay silver spent as good as American Eagles.

Black shifted uncomfortably behind the table. Across the confines of his office Emerson pretended not to notice the captain's discomfort and fixed his gaze on the floor before him. Emerson still could not believe the reason he had come to see the English captain. He ought to request that Black forget the whole arrangement. It had been a mad suggestion anyway. Then suddenly it was too late. An orderly appeared in the doorway and announced the arrival of the prisoners. A moment later Morgan Penmerry and Temp Rawlins were led into the room. Black dismissed the corporal. Morgan and Temp greeted Emerson, surprised by his presence.

“Come to read words over us?” Morgan growled. “Here I am, a Cornishman, fixing to be executed by my own kinsman. Now that's the luck for you. And what words have the angels for me?” He was in no mood to be cordial. The friction between the two men had only increased the closer Morgan and Julia became.

“Never underestimate the power of prayer,” Emerson replied, and he produced a timeworn Bible passed from father to son, generations of Emersons inscribed inside the cover. He patted the leather spine and eased back on the bench seat, a half log split flat-side-up and supported by four thick limbs stripped smooth of bark.

“Ahem!” The man behind the table cleared his throat.

Morgan and Temp turned toward the captain. Morgan calculated his chances and decided if worse came to worse, he'd make a try for the flintlock pistol Black had placed within his own easy reach.

“Gentlemen,” Black said. “You have placed me in an awkward position.”

“Awkward? You ought to try sleeping in that tack room, beggin' your pardon, sir,” Temp said.

“What Mr. Rawlins means is that we were forced to defend ourselves,” Morgan explained. He paused, unable to figure the captain.

Black chuckled softly, accurately reading Morgan's confusion.

“No, I am not the villain you take me to be,” Black replied. He eased back and folded his hands across his flattened stomach; his fingers toyed with the shiny brass buttons down the front of his waistcoat. “Or wish me to be,” he added. His eyes followed the flight of a bee that had intruded through an unshuttered window. The insect skimmed past the rafters and finally followed the sunlight to freedom.