Long Hunt (9781101559208) (19 page)

“I'm not following you.”

“Let me just tell you the stories. The first one involved me, and happened during one of our typical housebreaks. The last break-in we ever did, in fact. I was thirteen years old and up to my full man's height by that point, though I'm not a tall man. I'd sneaked in through a cellar door into a house my father had picked out to rob . . . and I hid in a room in the upstairs. Well, that night somebody entered that room, a man and a girl, and the man commenced to doing things I've never been able to close out of my mind since. I saw it all out of the darkness where I was hiding, fearing all the while that I'd make a noise or otherwise show myself, and wind up getting caught. But I wished before long that I'd not been so cautious, for it just got worse and worse. Finally that man knelt over that poor girl he'd misused so sore, and, I swear to you, cut the tongue out of her mouth. It was dark, for the most part, so I couldn't see it clear, and I'm glad I couldn't. But I saw enough to bring me out of my hiding place. I lit into that devil and wouldn't let up. He'd hit the girl with a candlestick, and I put my hand on another just like it and struck him with it, hard. I killed that man, Titus. Your father has the blood of that man on his hands and his soul.”

Titus was astonished. “Pap, what you did was help a helpless girl. You did the work of the angels, Pap.”

Fain shook his head. “It was too late to help her as much as I should have. She'd already been hurt by him, and mutilated. Her tongue was gone from her head, son. And I'd let it happen, when if only I'd moved a little sooner . . .”

“Pap, I got to say, this tale sounds mighty familiar. It matches that story that's heard so often about . . . What was her name?”

“Molly Reese. Molly Reese who had her tongue cut out by her own father and whose life was saved by an ‘angel' from the shadows in a dark room. If it sounds like the same tale, son, it's because it is. I was that ‘angel' that came out of the dark and killed her attacker. And the girl was Molly herself, the
real
one. Not the false Molly Reese that Camp Meeting Bledsoe has foisted on the world for a good while now. I've known for a long time that Bledsoe's ‘Molly' wasn't the real one, because I'd known the real one when I was young.”

“I'm astonished, Pap.”

“There's yet more to the tale. After I struck down her pap and got Molly out of that house, I took her home with me. My father and mother, they took her in. For three years she was sheltered by your own grandparents and lived as my sister. She adored me for having saved her that night. It was me who taught her to read and write. And it was my mother—she had a talent with words—who helped Molly write out her narrative that became so famous, and gave old Bledsoe the grist for the mill of fraud he's had grinding away at his camp meetings with that woman pretending to be Molly.”

“It surely must be hard for you to know Bledsoe's been out making a false presentment about somebody you knew well.”

“It is. I had to listen to him going through all that bilge when he was preaching there at my fort a while back. And that woman was out there holding her mouth open like her wits were gone so folks could come by and see that ‘Molly Reese' really had got her tongue cut out. By the way, Titus, Houser the physician came nigh to prompting me that evening into telling him what I've just told you. But I didn't. You are the first I've ever told this to.”

“What happened with Houser?”

“At the close of the meeting, Houser looked into the mouth of Bledsoe's Molly and was able to see that her tongue had never been cut out, but just had never grown in, and from that he'd determined that this woman couldn't be the true Molly Reese. Since he figured that much out on his own, it was hard not to just tell him the full tale. But I've made such a habit of keeping all that part of life private that I just held my own tongue and didn't speak. When you get into the habit of silence about a certain thing, it's hard to change your practice.”

“Where is the real Molly Reese now?”

“Still in England, far as I know. I lost her trail long ago. She'd be nigh my age now, just a couple of years younger. My father moved your grandmother and me to the Colonies and by that time Molly had already left us and gone back to London. I don't know for sure how she lived, and maybe it's best I don't. I've heard that part of her living came through selling copies of her narrative. But once that became so commonly printed and familiar, I doubt she could find buyers for long, and after that there's no telling what she might have been forced to.” Fain shook his head. “You know, it's been so long now I'm not sure I'd know Molly if she walked up to this shelter right now and said hello.”

Titus smiled. “Not that she'd be able to say it.”

“She'd do better than you'd think. She learned to make sounds in such a way, even with no tongue, that you could tell what she was trying to say, just about every time.”

“Pap, why did your father bring the family to America? And how did you go from being a city boy in England to a woodsman on a whole different continent?”

“That, son, is a whole different tale, and I think I may hold on to it awhile longer. I'll get around to telling you, promise you. It ties in with what I've told you already.”

“Tell me now.”

“I'm talked out, son. Voice is weak. I think I may sleep for a spell. I'm not accustomed to sickness like this. I hope you don't catch it.”

“Me, too. Me, too. Thank you for talking to me, Pap.”

“I'm glad I've got you to talk to.”

 

When he had completed his mission and was traveling again, anticipating joining his prior companions at Jonesborough, Potts was glad to leave White's Fort and Eben Bledsoe behind. Bledsoe, in recovery from the brother-inflicted gunshot wound he was blaming on the outlaw Littleton, had been quite displeased with Fain's progress, believing him to be moving too slowly. He was, however, intrigued by the meager information Fain had uncovered, particularly that Deborah now went by the last name of Corey.

“Please let Fain know that I will expect much more from him the next time I see a messenger come riding in,” Bledsoe said. “In fact, I expect next time to see Fain himself, and Deborah with him.”

“I'll tell him that,” Potts said neutrally. “Hope you're all healed up soon, Reverend.” He rode away. Next time, he hoped Fain would ask Micah or Titus to play messenger. There was something about the overbearing Eben Bledsoe he instinctively didn't like.

 

Now that September had come, the heat of summer had given way at last. The days still could grow hot, but the heat faded earlier and evenings were sometimes actually cool. Humidity, the worst aspect of summer in the backcountry, was much diminished and the atmosphere had a clear, crystalline quality.

Jeremiah Littleton had always favored this time of year except for the fact that it led into the fall, when trees shed their leaves and it was harder for a highwayman to hide himself along the sides of trails and roads. It was much easier in the summer, when leaves were lush, to find the proper spot for an ambush.

Littleton, riding along slowly and going east for no particular reason other than random choice, had to smile to himself as he remembered a time he and his gang had gone to a particular spot to intercept and rob a band of immigrants coming to the Cumberland from the Watauga and had gotten themselves into position when they realized they were not alone. Across the trail, in the woods on the other side, was another gang of would-be highwaymen, already hidden, awaiting the same party of travelers. Littleton had come out and confronted the rivals, and then the others of both gangs had joined the gathering, the result being that the immigrants and would-be robbery victims had come up to find two bands of fist-fighting men pummeling one another for no obvious reason in the midst of the forest trail. The travelers, all on foot and with no animals other than packhorses and three milk cattle, simply withdrew into the woods and managed to hide as the bandits finished their fight. The bandits actually had a laugh at their own expense over the absurdity of the situation, and sat down together and drank themselves into a stupor like the oldest of friends. The immigrants, meanwhile, made a new route through the woods, behind a nearby ridge, and simply bypassed the men who would have robbed them had all gone according to plan.

“Don't matter no-how,” one of the rival gang had said. “They looked like a mighty poor band of people, anyway.”

Littleton chuckled at the memory, but a throb of pain from his foot made the chuckle die fast. The odd thing about it was that the pain came from a foot no longer there, a foot that was even yet wedged in a tight rock crevice in the base of a pit near Fort Edohi miles away, being eaten by insects and worms. He'd heard about such pains afflicting those with lost limbs, but he had never believed it. He believed it now, and it seemed the most unjust thing possible. A man is forced to cut off nearly half his own leg with his own belt knife, and even so is left to hurt in places where there is really nothing there to be hurting? Where was the sense and justice in that?

It had gotten worse since he'd started wearing the wooden leg. At first it had been fine, the stump of his limb fitting perfectly into the cup the wood-carver had hollowed out at the top of the peg leg. Over subsequent days, though, something had changed in the fit, causing pain that was making Littleton a miserable man.

Determined to tough it out at the moment, Littleton rode on, but eventually each jolt of the horse's motion made his pain unbearable. Littleton found himself actually crying from the pain. Like a child. It made him feel humiliated and angry and glad to be alone. Even when he'd been trapped in that pit with hellish pain radiating up through his body, he hadn't wept. But this was a continuous lower-grade suffering that wore him down physically, mentally, emotionally.

He determined to get control of himself, though, when he heard the sound of voices coming toward him through the woods. Though he was posing now as the fictional Lyle Kirk, he had spent too many years as Jeremiah Littleton, highwayman, to hide very effectively behind a mere false identity. Any group of people he met might include someone who would recognize him.

Littleton rode a little farther, the voices coming clearer. He stopped as a fiercer burst of pain shot up through his thigh and all but paralyzed him. He climbed down from his horse. Odd as it seemed, he had found he could sometimes gain some minor ease from his phantom pains by standing on his false leg. Something about the angle of the pressure on the remnant of his leg, he supposed . . . he really couldn't account for it. But in any case, he dismounted and led his horse on up the trail and around the edge of the stand of woods beside him.

A cluster of people stood gathered around an open hole, tears staining several faces, even as they stained Littleton's. Tears of physical pain in his case, emotional ones for these strangers. A woman was being buried, having died in the process of giving birth to a tiny boy, an infant now held in the trembling arms of the baby's weeping father. The bereaved man looked from the face of the sleeping child, down to the wooden box that held all that physically remained of the woman he loved, then around at the faces of the other mourners. He gazed then at Littleton, seeking to recognize this limping newcomer but failing to do so. But he did see the tears on Littleton's face and assumed them to be the marks of shared grief.

“You knew her, stranger. That much I can see, just from your tears. Come say your farewells.”

Littleton hadn't progressed in his criminal career as far as he had without having learned to roll with life's blows, to recognize and take opportunity. This group obviously assumed him to be someone who had known the deceased woman, even if they did not themselves know him in turn. As Littleton tied off his horse to a low-hanging branch, a woman came around the grave and extended her arms toward him, tears streaming and lip aquiver. Littleton stepped forward, held still, and let her embrace him.

“Poor thing! I can see you loved her, too.”

“I can't . . . believe she's gone . . . ,” Littleton croaked out in his best grieving voice.

“How did you know her, sir?” asked an older man in the group.

“I can't talk . . . about it right now.”

Nods of understanding all around, and more tears. It hit Littleton that later on, this bit of playacting would all seem quite funny.

L
ittleton realized that his leg hardly hurt at all now since he had gotten out of the saddle. The leather straps that attached to the wooden leg and, along with the cup that fit over the stump of remaining, held the prosthetic in attachment to his body, felt a little pinched and uncomfortable, however.

The burial service was completed with a prayer and the advance of two grubby men who were obviously ready to fill the grave. Littleton drifted back toward his horse. One of the men in the group, a fellow with a piercing, knowing look that made Littleton nervous, came to him. “Paul Hasker,” he said. “Sarah was my cousin, but close enough she was more like a sister.”

Littleton smiled through his whiskers and put out a hand. “Good to meet you, Paul. I'm Lyle Kirk. I heard Sarah speak of you.”

“How did you know her?”

Littleton was put on the spot by the question but didn't show a trace of panic. He was a practiced liar.

“From church,” he said. Churchgoing Lyle Kirk. That was him!

“Is that right? Which church?”

Still he wasn't thrown askew. “The old one,” the liar said with a quick flash of a smile, hoping his words happened to fit some scenario of the dead woman's life that would make sense.