The Crafters Book Two (36 page)

That night, as Lena and Joseph lay in their bed, he whispered to her, “Ain’t he a cracker?”

“Bowie? I suppose he is. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“A genuine hero, he is. Like one of the old Green Mountain Boys. It’s a privilege to know him. Why, if I didn’t have you to look after, I’d throw a saddle on the mule and ride off with him.”

No you wouldn’t, Lena thought. That’s just a dream, the way I dream about trees and grass. But it was somehow comforting to learn that Joseph did still dream. Once there had been something in him that drew her ... was it still there? Inside that leathery, dried-out man, was there still a young lad who dreamed bold dreams of taming the frontier and taking her with him?

Bowie was up before dawn, even before Lena, and went out hunting. She heard no gunshot, but he soon returned with a good-sized buck deer. He carried it out behind the sod hut and skinned it, swiftly and expertly, with the famous knife.

“Thought I’d contribute my share to the dinner,” he told Lena. He was only going to stay long enough to rest his horse, a day or two at the most, but while he was with them he made himself more than useful. While he was out helping Joseph dig a new well Lena had a chance to finish her eyeglasses. She carefully poked the old lenses out of their wire frames, warmed the frames just enough to make them malleable, and fitted the new lenses into them. As she worked she thought about dreams, and magic. And maple shade.

When the glasses were ready she slipped the wire curves over her ears and looked around the cabin. Everything seemed blurred. She went to the door and opened it, looking out. It took a moment for her eyes to refocus and adjust to the light, and then she saw ...

Maple shade.

Lena almost fainted. She tore the glasses from her eyes and looked again. In front of her was nothing but baked prairie, with heat mirages shimmering like lakes in the far distance.

She put her eyeglasses back on. Maple shade. Emerald grass, sparkling streams. No doubt about it, they were perfectly clear and perfectly real.

She took the eyeglasses off again and rubbed them, very slowly and carefully, with her apron.

A thing is what you think it is.

Had there been some other saying in her childhood, a corollary to that bit of Crafter wisdom that she had forgotten until now? She searched her mind. Then it came to her. She could almost hear her father saying, as he had once learned by rote, “You see what you think you see.”

Lena put the eyeglasses back on. Maple shade.

She walked out of the sod hut and stood under the trees.

The lush green trees. Their coolness enveloped her. The dappled light soothed her. The color nourished her hungry soul.

I made these while I was
needing,
she thought.

Was it possible she had a gift for magic after all? For magic suffused with science, or science with magic, a true blending of Crafter skills? How could such a thing be without her knowing?

Born silver, and with a caul. Born with obviously great gifts that had gone undiscovered. Her Talent for making lenses had been a small part of the whole, she saw now. The few tools she had brought with her, the small cache of equipment hidden away in her wooden chest, was only the lesser part of the ability to give vision.

To give vision.
She mouthed the words almost reverently. Jim and Joseph did not return until sundown. Both men were grimy and weary, and as they sat at table they talked of well-digging. Lena took no part in the conversation. She fed them venison—too fresh, but a blessed change from salt pork and jack rabbit—and busied herself beside the fire, thinking her own thoughts. Hugging her discovery to her as a child hugs a treasure.

Joseph went to bed, but Jim Bowie could not sleep. He had told them he planned to leave in the morning, and now he was pacing the cabin restlessly, like a tiger in a cage much too small for him. Lena sat close to the fire, with her glasses perched on her nose once she was sure Joseph was asleep. She was hunched over, mending the rips and tears in Bowie’s coat before he rode away. Sewing buttons back on.

He paused to look down at her. “I didn’t know you wore spectacles.”

“I have weak eyes,” she said, not looking up. “I’m ...”

“I know, it goes with albinism,” he replied easily.

“You know about such things?”

“I know a bit of this and that,” he said with disarming modesty. “But where do you get spectacles way out here? Or did you bring them with you?”

“I brought some, but they had to be replaced. So I made these.”

“You put the old lenses into new frames?”

“Oh no, the frames are fine. I made new lenses.”

Bowie took a step back and stared at her. “How in the world ... ?”

Consumed with shyness, Lena huddled in upon herself. “My little white rabbit,” her father had called her, long ago.

“I have ... I have this ability ... well, I mean to say ... all my family are talented, you see. Very talented. I was the one who wasn’t, though they thought I should be. And I was almost blind into the bargain. My father finally took me into Boston and bought me spectacles, and that made things better. I spent a lot of time holding them, touching them. And then one day I just sort of ... knew. How they were made. I did some experimenting, and I found out what to do. Sort of. The knowledge seemed to come from my fingers, you see?”

He wrinkled his forehead, obviously not seeing at all.

Lena shrugged. This was something you could never explain to anyone who wasn’t a Crafter. “It’s a talent, that’s all. When my family discovered I was trying to make and polish glass, they got me the thing I needed and I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s nothing, really; anyone could do it.”

“Anyone could make a knife,” James Bowie said softly, staring past her now looking into the fire on the hearth.

Lena nodded. “I suppose.”

His laughter startled her. “You underestimate yourself, little lady. And you impress me.”

Lena began sewing very hard. “You mustn’t say that,” she murmured. “My husband used to say that once. But ...”

“But it’s been a long time, is that it?”

She nodded, wordless.

Bowie locked his thumbs and stretched his arms at full length in front of him. Lena could hear the joints crack in his mighty arms and shoulders. “At least you still have a husband,” he said. “My wife died. I miss her. Very much.”

“Is that why you want to go fight somebody?”

“You
do
impress me,” he said again. “And I suppose you’re right.”

“Were you happy together?”

Bowie considered the question. “Almost, I guess you’d say. That’s as good as anyone gets.”

Lena smiled then, a smile so sweet her plain face was nearly pretty in the firelight. “We were almost happy too, now that I think on it.”

“Then you should hold on to that, ma’am. It’s something to envy, like your talent.”

Lena felt her face flame. “My talent’s nothing special.” But even as she spoke she remembered seeing the trees and the grass through her new spectacles, and knew she wasn’t telling the exact truth.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Bowie said. “My eyes aren’t as young as they used to be, so how about giving me a look through those eyeglasses of yours?”

She stiffened. “I ... I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

She must choose her words carefully. “You can’t tell what you might see, that’s all. I said my family expected me to have a talent, but I didn’t tell you what sort. Where I come from, there are those who say, well, who say we are witches.”

“Witches! This is 1836, little lady, not the Dark Ages!”

“I know, and it is absurd. That doesn’t begin to describe the, ah, gifts my family have. But ... I’m just trying to tell you these aren’t the ordinary sort of eyeglasses, and I wouldn’t want you to draw the wrong conclusions.”

“I make my own judgments,” Bowie said briskly. Before she could stop him, he plucked the glasses from her nose.

“Please don’t!” Lena cried out as firmly as she could without waking Joseph.

“Tell me why not.” The big man folded his arms, with the eyeglasses firmly held in one hand, and looked down at her with a manner so strong, so compelling, she could not resist. It was like Joseph all over again.

“I’m just afraid you might see something that isn’t real,” Lena said. “Not real as folk think of real, anyway. Those glasses show you what you want to see.”

Bowie smiled. “I’d say that would be something pretty special. What do they show you, that you want to see?”

She was embarrassed again. “Trees,” she said in a low voice.

Jim Bowie told her, “I’ve seen trees. Where I come from there’s nothing but trees, it seems. What I need to see is the future.”

Lena drew in a sharp breath. “My great-grandfather ... I mean, I’ve always been told it’s not a good idea to try to see the future.”

“Maybe for me it is,” said Bowie. “My wife’s dead, the only life I cared about is behind me. Maybe I’d like to know what’s ahead. If I don’t like it, I could ride away from it.”

Lena shook her head vehemently. “That’s not right; you should never try to change the future.”

“Maybe,” said Bowie. Then he put on her eyeglasses. Helpless to interfere, she sat staring up at him, wondering what he saw. Perhaps the glasses only showed green trees and grass. But she didn’t think so, not from the way his expression changed. Even in the firelight she could see he had gone pale beneath his sunburn.

Without thinking, Lena jumped to her feet and snatched the glasses away. She would never know what instinct prompted her to look through them herself, but for just one moment she saw what he had seen before it faded.

A Spanish mission made of sunbaked adobe, with a bell set above the door. Men on the walls, firing long rifles; men in military uniforms, a few of them, but most of them in buckskins or rough frontier clothing. Some were already dead, lying tumbled half-over the wall with their blood running down to the parched earth below.

What seemed to be thousands of other men, all dressed in red coats, shouting in some foreign language—Mexican?—were charging the mission, obviously intent on killing the last defenders. It was a scene of carnage and horror, yet also of great heroism. Those few brave men on the wall ... with the flag of Texas, bullet-tattered, still flying ...

The image faded. Jim Bowie was looking at her. “What was that?” she asked breathlessly.

“Where I’m going,” he said. “A place called the Alamo.”

“But you’ll ... you’ll die! They were all being killed!”

“
Will
all be killed,” he corrected her calmly. He was no longer pale.

“Is that what you need’?”

Jim Bowie smiled, the sweetest, saddest, yet most hopeful smile Lena had ever seen. He reached out and touched her cheek with two fingers, then glanced toward the sleeping figure of Joseph on the bed.

“I think I’ll leave now,” he said. “I’m kind of anxious to get on down there.”

“But ...”

“It’ll be all right, little lady. And I thank you. Until now I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, but you’ve given me the vision I needed.” His smile widened as if he was enjoying the play on words.

“But you mustn’t go now!” Lena protested. “What about us? What will I tell Joseph?”

Bowie was already gathering his things, with the silent grace of the giant and, the strong. “Tell him you love him, when he wakes up,” Jim Bowie advised.

At the door he turned for one look back before he disappeared.

“Remember the almost,” he said.

Appomattox

Anno Domini 1865

The American Civil War was a great trauma to most Crafters. While the universally despised slavery, it pained them to watch so many brothers and cousins die fighting one another. Even to those who served in the armies of either side, the slaughter sickened them, for they could actually put themselves inside the opposition’s mind. A few of Amer’s descendants could not accept this and deserted, others still served with distinction. Many of those Crafters who lived on the frontier or deep in the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky chose not to fight for either side. This is not to say that they didn’t play a major role in the conflict or what followed.

Drake, Wellman, and Wagner weren’t brothers. That was obvious to the weakest of sight in the countryside. Drake was tall, lanky, and lean, and had not yet seen his thirtieth summer; Wellman was short and weathered and nigh unto sixty with a scalp as white as snow; and Wagner was a burly, bearish fellow, more akin to a Viking warship than the Appalachia countryside, of an indefinable age of masculine prime. The blood bond of brethren, however, could not be stronger than the bond of the road that these three shared. They had traveled together for the last four years, looting war’s plundered, selling their ill-gotten gain, and avoiding conscription by the armies of the North and South. They lived a dream existence; but of recent, those dreams were replaced by nightmares.

“No! No! Stay away, you red devils! Stay away!” cried Drake, obviously still in a deep sleep, despite his position on night watch.

“Wake up, ya durn fool ! You’ll wake up the whole countryside. Don’t you know there’s a war going on. We don’t need no damn Yankee or Johnny Reb on our backs,” said Wellman, shaking the young man back to consciousness.

“It was horrible! I was surrounded by Indians, and they were coming at me from all directions,” said Drake, now awake but still quite shaken.

“You were supposed to be on watch,” the older man admonished. “Where would we be if some no-good scalawag snook his way in here and helped himself to our loot? We couldn’t rightly call in the sheriff, you know.”

“The loot! Oh no! Let me check,” said the now fully awake younger man, who then scurried to undo the tarp from the buckboard.

“Calm down, young’un,” said the older man. “You’ll wake Wagner.”

“He already has,” said the bear like man, wiping the dust of sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Drake fell asleep on watch and had a nightmare,” said Wellman, realizing that they were all up for the duration.

“Nothing seems to be missing,” said Drake, returning to his companions. “Funny thing, though. Remember that writing desk we got from that burnt-out schoolhouse?”

“Yeah,” answered the older man, “we sold it to that widder woman yesterday.”

“That’s what I thought,” said the younger man, scratching his head, “but it seems to be back on the buckboard, or at least one that looks just like it, anyhow.”

“Ah, you’re still dreamin’,” said Wagner, not at all pleased to have been roused for no reason.

“Am not. The dream was horrible. I was riding at the head of a company of cavalry when we were cut off by a horde of painted savages, screaming for blood. Everybody was dyin’ and it was horrible.”

“Cut the bull crap,” said Wagner, getting hot under the collar. “Now I know you’re lyin’. That was the dream I had last night. I must have told you about it yesterday. What type of fool do you think I am?”

“Now calm down, Wagner,” interrupted Wellman. “I’m the one you told about your dream yesterday. Drake had gone into town for supplies, so he couldn’t have heard our conversation. You both just had similar dreams, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t wake up everyone with mine, and besides, I didn’t fall asleep when I was supposed to be on guard duty,” said Wagner, still ready for a fight.

“But what about the table? It’s still on the buckboard,” insisted Drake. “That widder woman is gonna be awful upset when she can’t find somethin’ she already paid for.”

“No more than that schoolmaster in the other town who we ‘helped’ sort through the ashes. Why don’t we just sell it to someone else? Twice the return on our investment,” suggested Wagner.

Wellman smacked his double-size companion across the face. “ ’Tain’t you learnt nothin’? How many times do I have to tell you? Never sell anything within a stone’s throw of where you stole it from.”

“But we didn’t steal it from the widder,” Drake insisted. “Who do you think the sheriff is gonna believe? A widder with two brats who saw her pay cash money for it, or a trio of scalawags in the slightly used furniture and supply business,” contended Wellman. “Besides, it’s bad luck to steal or sell the same piece more than once.”

“Well, what should we do, then? Move on?” asked Drake. “No sense in that after we handed out those leaflets sayin’ we’d be here all week. Wagner, you chop it up for kindlin’, and Drake, you get the coffee brewin’. Nothin’ like a breakfast fire to get rid of incriminatin’ evidence.”

“But how did it get back here?” asked Drake.

“Ah, git back to work before I wail you for sleepin’ on watch,” said Wagner, putting a close to the talk of the table and nightmares.

* * *

Round about noon, their campsite lot was visited by a stranger who was even older than Wellman. Ezekial Crafter wore a threadbare buckskin with a grizzly robe draped over his shoulders to hold back the spring mountain cold. His beard went through various phases of grey before settling on snowy white closest to his face, and on his shoulder rested the largest raven they’d ever seen.

Wellman adopted his best drummer persona and approached the old-timer.

“G’day, guvner. Can myself or my humble associates interest you in anything in particular. I am Wellman, proprietor of this humble roadside establishment, and these are my partners, Mr. Wagner and Mr. Drake.”

“G’ day, good sir,” said the stranger. “My name is Ezekial Crafter. I have a cabin not too far west of here, and I am looking for a certain of furniture for my, how shall I say, work.”

“Well, everything we have is up for sale, yours for the askin’ at the right price,” drummed Wellman. “Now, what exactly are you looking for?”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” said Ezekial. “Mind if I browse?”

“Not at all, not at all. Just be sure to let us know if there is anything we can help you with,” said the old thief, wondering if it might be worth their while to stop by his cabin on their way out of the county.

Ezekial returned a few moments later carrying the small pine table that had been the subject of conversation that morning. “This is the exact item I’ve been looking for.”

Can’t rely on those two to do anything right. I guess I’ll have to be the one to get rid of it, bad luck be damned,
thought the aging thief. “A wise choice. Come let us settle accounts.”

* * *

That night, Wellman, too, was visited by visions of death.

Rather than the mountainous countryside of Appalachia, he found himself in the plains of the west surrounded by a small contingent of Union soldiers. He then noticed that they were being attacked by Indians. From out of nowhere, a feathered savage appeared, ready to run the terrified Wellman through.

Now you of the flowing locks will die
, screamed the messenger of death.

* * *

Wellman was awakened from his slumber of terror by Drake and Wagner, whose sleep had been disturbed by his screams.

“The Indians were attacking. I could even feel the stab of the red devil’s lance. I felt like I was living through my last few moments of life,” cried the old thief, still shivering in terror.

“It sounds like the same dream I had two nights ago,” said Wagner.

“And mine too,” said Drake, who just noticed what was set upright by Wellman’s side, and cried, “Look!”

There was the pine table that had been sold twice, and chopped into kindling once, as new as the day they had stolen it.

* * *

“Why are we going to him? Shouldn’t someone stay behind to guard the camp?” inquired Drake, who was more than a little uneasy about this night journey, the old stranger, and the persistent table.

“We’ve all had the same dream, and we’re all in this together. That old coot seemed to recognize the table, and probably knows more about it than we do. He said his place wasn’t too far. In fact, that’s probably it over there,” said the thief, pointing to a shack that was in the clearing they had just reached.

“Well, he better have a few answers,” growled Wagner. “I’m sick and tired of lugging this table around.”

“And the curse that goes with it,” said a voice from the dark.

“And the curse that, hey, wait a minute! What curse?”

“Step inside fellows,” said Ezekial, who was now visible by their torchlight. “I’m afraid that you’ve all bitten off a bit more than you can chew.”

* * *

The three thieves took places around Ezekial’s fire and listened as he screed the history of the table that was set before him.

“Many years ago, there was a woodworker named Wilkes who made the finest furniture in the country, until an unscrupulous landowner discredited him with stories of black magic and debauchery. Almost overnight the town’s perception of him changed from an honest craftsman to an unwanted pariah. His goods were confiscated, and he was sent off to prison, but before he left, he cursed the thief who stole his good name, and cursed the goods that he stole.

“The landowner furnished his mansion with Wilkes’s furniture. Wilkes died en route to the prison when the party he was in was attacked by a group of renegades. Not too long after the landowner went crazy, claiming that his nights were filled with dreams of torture that wouldn’t stop. He died in a madhouse.

“The curse was passed on to all further plunderers of the Wilkes furniture, invading their dreams with visions of the death of the plunderer.”

“So why can’t we just get rid of it?” asked Wagner.

“It follows the trail of dishonesty. It can’t be bought, sold or destroyed,” concluded Ezekial. “Probably until death do you part.”

“So what can we do about it?” asked Drake.

“Pray and repent,” said the old stranger.

The three thieves left the pine table at Ezekial’s, even though he warned them that they would be seeing it again. None of them were looking forward to the many sleepless nights ahead, nor to meeting death at the hands of savages.

When they arrived back at the camp, dawn had long come and gone. They were greeted by a sheriff’s posse, and the widder woman who claimed they had stolen back the table they had sold her. The pine table was discovered among the pieces on the buckboard, along with several other items stolen from a neighboring county.

The three thieves were put in chains, and with their ill-gotten booty, were escorted to the jailhouse at nearby Appomattox Court House.

“Well, at least it will be hard for those Indians to kill us in jail,” said Drake, trying to look on the bright side of things from their cramped cell.

“Hey, jailer. What’s all the fussing outside?” called Wagner, always afraid of missing out on a party or a brawl.

The jailer leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Looks like you boys are in luck,” he said. “The judge will probably be in a good mood. The war’s over. Lee’s across the way at the McClean house as we speak, signing the surrender papers with Grant.”

Wellman had taken up a place at the window, watching a young Union general wrestling with two Confederate generals, rolling around on the ground in front of the McClean house, laughing like schoolboys.

The jailer offered Wagner a cup of coffee. “You boys should be right proud. Looks like that table of yourn is being used by those two generals to sign them papers. You may be going to prison, but you’re also part of history in the making.”

The Union general had disappeared inside of the house, so Wellman returned to his friends. “If this surrender is true,” he said, “we should be out of here in no time, whether by amnesty, or just plain opportunity.”

Suddenly, they heard a commotion outside. The young Union general was bounding down the steps of the front porch, then onto his horse, yelling, “Got me a souvenir! Got me a souvenir!” He took off down the road, still yelling and whooping, the cursed pine table balanced on his head.

The jailer returned to his seat and chuckled. “Looks like that boy Custer just stole your piece of history.”

The three thieves looked at each other and laughed.

“What did you say his name was?” asked Wellman. “General George Armstrong Custer,” the jailer replied. “He’s Major General Sheridan’s right-hand man, and a bit of a hothead too. I wouldn’t be surprised if that boy didn’t stir up a peck of trouble, now that he doesn’t have a war to fight. Maybe he’ll go to Washington, or maybe the western frontier.”

“Maybe he’ll go fight Indians,” suggested a relieved Wellman.

“Not a bad idea,” replied the jailer.