Thoreau at Devil's Perch (13 page)

“This is not a militia matter,” Henry said. “Plumford is not under attack.”

“It is under the attack of a wild Indian!” Phyfe shouted back at him. “He savagely killed one of our most respected citizens, and he may claim many more white victims if we do not stop him.”

“Such talk as that will only stir up fear and hate,” Henry cautioned him.

“Are you siding with the enemy, sir? If so, get out of my town.”

Henry did not bother to argue with him further. Instead, he urged me to leave posthaste with him. “We must find Trump before the mob does,” he said as we drove off in the gig. “Many men with many guns cannot bode well for him.”

“I agree, but what chance do we stand to find Trump before they do?”

“We stand a very good chance,” Henry assured me. “No man in the search party, I wager, is as good a tracker as I am. The hunting dogs, however, will have an advantage over me.” He tapped his nose. “Large though my scent organ may be, it is not superior to theirs. Fortunately, my intelligence is.”

He speculated that the search would commence at the crime site and proposed we begin ours back in town, on the path he had seen Trump take after he'd made his threat to Peck over twelve hours ago.

Cold though his trail was, we picked up on it almost immediately. It helped that the river path was soft and Trump was barefoot. He had left the house without his shoes and as far as Henry could discern, he had not been carrying a knife upon his person.

Henry led the way upriver, sometimes stopping to kneel and bend his face close to the ground to examine it better. In the distance we heard the cannon near the old Powder House go off, calling the town militiamen to service. Neither of us bothered to remark upon it, so intent were we on tracing Trump's progress. Henry found where he had veered off the path into the woods, and we followed, climbing up the steep bank along a rivulet that was shaded by thick ferns. Here we had to proceed slowly, Henry moving from a mud smear to a bent frond to a bit of moss pulled out of place by a passing foot. Then we found Trump's red head wrap hanging from a branch.

“He is going along haphazardly,” Henry said, “scarcely caring where each stride will take him. For that we are most fortunate. If he wished, I am sure he could pass along with nary a trace left behind, but he does not seem concerned about being followed.”

Trump had moved in a sinuous curve up the wooded hill and so did we, first along, then away from, and finally across the now scarcely visible creek. Less than an hour later we found him. He was seated on a jumble of mossy boulders and beneath him a spring that was the source of the rivulet softly bubbled out of the cleft at the rock base.

He looked up at the sound of our tread but did not move a muscle. Nor did he speak when we sat down beside him on the rocks. I observed that he was in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion.

“You do not seem surprised to see us, Trump,” I said.

“I heard you coming a good while ago.”

“Are you all right?” I tried to examine his head wound, but he jerked away.

“Leave me be,” he said. “I want some time alone. You shouldn't have come looking for me.”

“Be thankful we found you before others did,” Henry said. “There is a warrant out for your arrest, and you are being hunted down.”

“For what? Crumpling a white man's starched collar? I could have gone ahead and wrung Peck's neck, but I did not. I got better plans for him.”

“Peck is dead,” I told Trump.

His deep, dark eyes, blank a moment before, registered astonishment. “No!” he cried. “You mean he just up and died?”

“He was murdered,” Henry said.

Rage replaced astonishment. “Who killed him?”

“Most people think you did,” Henry said.

Trump shook his head violently and tore at his hair. “I should have when I had the chance. How was he done in?”

“First off he was scalped alive,” Henry said, “and then he was stabbed to death.”

Trump swore vehemently. “Damn fool killer did it ass-backwards.“

This seemed to confirm Henry's belief that if Trump had been the killer, he would have murdered his victim before scalping him. But it was more than such esoteric proof that convinced me of the young Indian's innocence. For one thing, he was not in possession of a bloody scalp. Nor was there a trace of blood on his person. And he was barefoot, yet there had been only bloody boot prints around Peck's body.

“But I am even a bigger fool,” Trump continued bitterly. “Whoever killed Peck fixed the deed on me, and now I will hang for something I got no satisfaction of doing.”

Henry jumped down from the rocks and began pacing the area, deep in thought. After a few minutes he beckoned to me. So deep was Trump's dejection that he did not even notice when I left him to join Henry a couple rods away.

“Trump is right. If he is caught, he is doomed,” Henry told me. “What chance does he stand of getting a fair trial with evidence and sentiment so strongly against him? The only way out for him is to escape to Canada on the Underground Railroad, and I will see to it that he does.”

His scheme surprised me. “You would break the law to help Trump?”

“Of course. I have done it in the past to help runaway slaves, and I will do it again.”

“I will help you,” I said.

“I thought as much. We must leave here with Trump immediately. When the searchers fail to find him in the vicinity of Peck's house, they will do as we have done and trail him from town.”

Even as Henry spoke there drifted up through the trees the sound of baying hounds and men shouting from downriver. Trump must have heard them as well for he jumped to his feet, leapt from the boulder, and took off uphill through the trees. He was gone from sight in a trice, and we dared not call after him for fear we would alert the searchers.

“He is weak and has little chance,” I said.“If he is caught in the excitement of the chase, he might be beaten or even killed.”

“Let us try to protect him,” Henry said.

We ran up the incline after Trump and came out of the woods to a freshly shorn hayfield. Just ahead Trump was running across the middle of the field toward a woodlot on a higher brow of hill. If he could reach the far woods, beyond which I knew was a swamp where he could find a place to hide, he might have a chance of escape from his pursuers.

But then a horseman came charging onto the field in pursuit of Trump, riding parallel to the group of men fast approaching from below on foot. He easily caught up to Trump and began slashing down at him with his whip. Trump dodged and weaved, confounding both horse and rider, but then he began to slow down. I guessed he must be near collapse.

As Henry and I ran toward them, I saw that the man on the horse was none other than Rufus Badger. When Trump stumbled to the ground, Badger dismounted and began striking him with his whip. Spent though Trump must have been, he managed to stand up again and grab the end of the whip. He nearly threw Badger over as he wrenched at it. But Badger kept his balance and gave Trump a powerful blow to the head that landed him hard down on his back. Badger then drew a coffin-handle bowie knife from his boot. The broad blade looked to be at least a foot in length, and it curved like a nasty smile along the top edge.

“Don't stab him!” Henry cried out, running between the two men.

“Stand away,” Badger told him. “That filthy redskin murdered my captain, and now I mean to murder him.”

Trump had not moved, and a glance showed me he was unconscious. “We cannot allow you to kill a helpless man,” I said, taking my place beside Henry.

Badger regarded me with mean little eyes that had not a flicker of humanity in them. “I will be most happy to cut you too, Doc. Along with your friend here.”

He waved his big knife in our direction, and the blade glistened in the sunlight. Henry and I stood our ground. I do not know if Badger would have made good his threat, but before he could, the men with the hounds reached us. Badger lowered his knife as the dogs surrounded the fallen Indian in a frenzy of growling and snapping. Trump opened his eyes to their teeth-baring fury but did not seem to notice them. Instead, he sat up and stared intently at Badger, then threw back his head and let out a howl of such chilling resonance and pain that the dogs all drew back. Badger, looking frightened, raised his weapon again.

But now the men from the search party were all upon Trump, binding him with rope enough to secure Goliath. He lay limp and passive as they did this, as though he had given up entirely. But when I looked into his eyes I saw a hot-burning spirit in them that made his black pupils glow like coals.

 

T
rump's Hearing was held at the Meetinghouse at nine this morning. Constable Beers, dressed in his best frock coat and highest collar, walked Trump down the aisle, keeping a hard grip on his arm. There being no jail in Plumford but for Beers's storeroom, where he confines a disorderly drunkard on occasion, Trump had spent the night locked up in the abandoned Powder House. He was dirty and disheveled, his shirt torn, his hair matted, his proud face smeared with grime. His hands were bound behind him. His bare feet were shackled. The chain between the ankle irons was short, hindering his stride, and he stumbled. Only one nitwit laughed, but nearly everyone in the packed pews glared at him as he passed. But when I glanced at Granny Tuttle, who was sitting beside me, I saw compassion rather than condemnation in her eyes.

“Shame on them that's responsible,” she said to me, “for not allowin' that poor young feller to wash up before comin' to court.”

“More shame on Justice Phyfe for incarcerating him in the Powder House,” I replied. “That is most inhumane.”

A man in the pew in front of us turned around and regarded me disdainfully. “Do not criticize your betters, missy. Justice Phyfe did right to have that wild animal securely caged.”

“Pray do not refer to a fellow human being as a wild animal, sir,” I told him.

“No Injun is a fellow of mine!” And with that, the man turned his back to me, which I much preferred to gaze upon instead of his ignorant face.

“He don't even belong to our congregation,” Granny told me in what I suppose she considered a low voice. “Lot of folks here I never seen before, or hain't seen for a month of Sundays anyways. But I reckon a murder trial is a sight more entertainin' than a sermon.”

“This isn't exactly a trial, ma'am,” I explained to her. “It is a Hearing to establish if there is reason to believe Trump killed Captain Peck. If Justice Phyfe decides there is, he will order him held on suspicion of murder until the State Attorney General arrives to preside over a grand jury investigation. And if the grand jury indicts him for murder, Trump will be transferred to the county jail in Concord till the Supreme Court meets there to try the case.”

“Well, ain't you sharp as a meat ax, Julia.” Granny gave me one of her squint-eyed appraisals. “How come you know so much?”

“Oh, I just ask a lot of questions.”

“You allus did. Whenever you came to the farm you would pester me and Mr. Tuttle with questions. If I told you once, I must've told you a dozen times that curiosity kilt the cat.”

“At least a dozen times, ma'am.”

Granny sniffed. “Lot good it did.”

We left off talking, along with everyone else, when Justice Phyfe made his grand entrance through the red-curtained side door at the front of the Meetinghouse. He was dressed in black like a minister, and I half expected him to conduct the Hearing from the pulpit. Instead, he took a seat at the table where the deacons sit during services. Each witness he called sat across from him to give his evidence.

Trump was not allowed to sit. He stood like a statue, his expression blank, as Mr. Vail, the Rev. Mr. Upson, and Henry Thoreau testified. Grandfather was excused from testifying because of his injury, and Justice Phyfe did not require Mrs. Vail or me to bear witness because of our gender. Mr. Vail attested that he and his wife had slept soundly the night of the murder and therefore heard nothing. But both he and Mr. Upson both stated they very clearly had heard Trump threaten to kill and scalp Capt. Peck earlier that evening. When Henry was called to testify, he attempted to explain why he did not think Peck's scalping had been done by an Indian, but Justice Phyfe interrupted him.

“You are not here to lecture us about arcane rituals, Mr. Thoreau,” he said. “Save that for your highfalutin Transcendentalist friends back in Concord.” A few of the spectators chuckled, although I doubt they even know what a Transcendentalist is.

Adam was the next to testify, and Phyfe listened to his medical opinions concerning cause and time of death, but he grew exceedingly impatient when Adam began explaining why he believed Peck had been killed after, not before, he was scalped.

“Enough hairsplitting over scalp-splitting!” Phyfe bellowed, and that got more guffaws. “You are dismissed, Dr. Walker.”

Adam looked disheartened, but when he left his seat he made his way to Trump and placed his hand on Trump's shoulder. Trump did not acknowledge this gesture of camaraderie, but I am glad Adam made it anyway.

The next witness was Lt. Finch, who described coming upon the captain's body at dawn. Then Rufus Badger's name was called. He stomped down the aisle in his heavy, scarred boots, leaving the stink of sweat and booze in his wake, yet people regarded him with admiration. He is now considered the Town Hero for capturing Trump.

He testified that he had been in Boston till the early morning hours of Sunday, imbibing at a place called Shark's Tavern, from whence he had ridden back to Plumford, arriving in town well after sunrise. “When I learned from Lieutenant Finch that Captain Peck was dead, I swallowed down my grief and went lookin' for his murderer. I weren't about to let that damn savage git away after what he done to my captain!”

“And he did not, thanks to your swift and courageous action, Sergeant,” Justice Phyfe said.

Henry stood up and cried out, “Objection, sir! The prisoner has not yet been found guilty of murder.” His pew neighbors told him to sit down.

Justice Phyfe gave Henry a curt nod and proceeded with his interrogation of Badger. “Did the prisoner say anything to you after you so bravely prevented his cowardly attempt to escape?”

“He said he done did it.”

“What were his exact words, Sergeant?”

“He said, ‘I done killed Captain Peck, and I am glad of it.' ”

A hum of disapproval wafted up from the crowd. Trump shouted over it.

“It is
you
I will kill, you pig of a man! I will cut off your snout and your ears and shove them down your lying throat. I will gut you and yank out your innards. And then I will slit your throat.”

Justice Phyfe slammed his fist on the table. “Take the prisoner back to the Powder House, Constable Beers. I have heard more than enough evidence to hold him on suspicion of murder.”

Beers needed the help of three men to drag Trump out of the Meetinghouse, still ranting. His speech was no longer comprehensible, and I believe he had reverted to his Native tongue.

Granny Tuttle shook her head as they hauled Trump past us. “He is going to need all our prayers, Julia,” she said. “And more than prayers, he is going to need a right slick lawyer to save him from the gallows.”

It will be no easy matter to find a lawyer willing to represent Trump, I fear, although Adam is determined to find him the best one he can. In the meantime I will follow Granny's advice for once and pray for Trump.