The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn (33 page)

“I don’t recollect which time, but I do mind
her
.” The woman’s gaze swept Charlie and fixed on Kincaid. “She’d a feller with her. I figured them for marrying, the way he was looking at her, all nervous-like.”

Even had he taken leave to doubt Parrish’s version of events, Charlie hadn’t gone so far as to imagine Miss Littlejohn walking tamely into matrimony with the villain who’d whisked her away before her mother’s blood was cold. Neither had Kincaid, judging by the color draining from his face.

“Don’t pay my wife no mind,” the man began, then jumped in his seat and scowled.

Kicked under the table, Charlie reckoned.

“Hush. Let a body
think
.” The woman squeezed shut her eyes, deepening their crinkles, till they popped wide again and she snapped her fingers. “The day Colonel Tipton raided the courthouse. That’s when we seen her. Long about the end of September, ’twas.”

The man stopped scowling and ogled the portrait, tongue working at the meat in his teeth. “Hang on; maybe I do recall. But the girl I seen weren’t all done up like that.”

“That’s right,” the woman said. “She was got up plain as a Quaker. Not with that fancy-dressed hair and silk and all. She’d moccasins on her feet.”

So he’d been right about that deerskin, Charlie thought. A small thing to take satisfaction in, but it weighed on him, his having led Kincaid and Parrish so far astray at first. And if the girl had married her kidnapper, willing or no, he supposed that was partly his blame. Miss Littlejohn might be lost to Kincaid—that’d depend on what sort of man he proved once they saw the feller who killed her ma strung up.

“If’n that was your girl we seen,” said the man at the table, “no telling where she and that feller went, or if they got their business seen to. Like my wife says, Tipton came with a passel of Carolina boys and raided the place, directly we left. If there was any papers signed, they’ll be long burnt to ash.”

“Nobody took lasting hurt,” the woman added, seeing Kincaid’s alarm. “Reckon her man got her out ’fore things turned ugly. We’d have heard tell otherwise.”

Parrish’s visit to the courthouse would be in vain.

Kincaid drew up straight, frustration chasing over his face. He took up the portrait and turned to speak to Charlie, then whipped his gaze to the tavern door, where a man had come in, pausing to shake the wet from his hat.

Raining again
was the thought at the back of Charlie’s mind. The front of it was fixed on the man—younger than Kincaid, sandy headed, blue eyed, lean. Naught to make a body stand at gaze or his face go chalky like Kincaid’s was doing.

The man looked up, locked eyes with Kincaid, and went every bit as white and still. Then he lunged for the door he’d just come through. Kincaid was steps behind him, shoving the portrait into his coat, leaving the couple at the table staring, mouths agape.

Charlie put his to better use. “That who ye seen with Miss Littlejohn, by chance?”

“No,” the man said. “That’s Dominic Trimble, from over Sycamore Shoals. Thought the other fellow hailed from Virginy. What’s he got against Trimble?”

Charlie plunked his cup on the bar and went to find that out.

It
was
raining again, a mizzle so fine it clung to the skin, drifting rather than falling, but Charlie ceased to notice once he spotted the grappling figures.

Trimble, caught midflight at the hitch-rail, broke free and sprinted ’round the side yard, Kincaid on his heels. The dogs rose up excited, ready to abandon the mules Charlie had set them to guard. He shot them a collective “Stay!” and hotfooted it ’round the building to see Kincaid snag Trimble in the rear yard. Paying no heed to dignity or mud, he wrestled Trimble down and pinned him, forearm across his neck.

“Where’s the other one—your brother?” A wheeze came from Trimble’s mashed throat. Kincaid eased up. “Where?”

Trimble’s face contorted as he sucked in air. “Don’t know—get off me, Brose!” The younger man twisted in the mud but couldn’t break Kincaid’s hold.

Few were about in the dismal weather, but even in the rear yard, they were drawing more of an audience than Charlie. Kincaid lurched to his feet, dragging Trimble up with him. Both were mud-plastered, bristling like tomcats, hats on the ground. Trimble sported a freshly cut lip, but this wasn’t the first scrape he’d been in of late. Charlie hadn’t noticed inside the tavern, but now made out the bruise fading around one eye. A cut through an eyebrow looked to be inflamed.

Trimble spat a gob of blood, glaring at Kincaid. “What took you so long?”

Kincaid clutched the front of Trimble’s soiled coat, cold fury in his face. “My business here wasn’t to do with you—until now.”

“Dom!” Another man came pushing through the small ring of onlookers, brushing roughly past Charlie. He halted when Kincaid turned. Recognition washed the newcomer’s features, and the same urge to run that had come into Trimble’s eyes. This one didn’t scratch that itch.

“Hey, Brose,” he said, like one braced for a blow long feared. “How’s things back home? Your pa still looking to wring our necks?”

Parrish found them out back of the tavern in time to help detain the Trimbles, who Kincaid took no joy in making known to them.

“Horse thieves, the pair. I know several court justices who’d appreciate knowing where these hell-jacks have been hiding the past few years—after Alexander Kincaid is through taking out our loss on their hides.”

Flinching at that, the brown-haired one, Seth, said, “That’s your grandpa, ain’t it? What about your pa? It was his horse we—”

“Shut up!” Dominic growled, though he was kept from reaching his brother, who was held firm by Parrish.

Kincaid leveled his glare at them with equal loathing. “Collin Kincaid is dead. But your crime against my family is very much alive in my grandfather’s mind.”

Despite his bloodied lip, Dominic smirked. “He’s got to be eighty, if he’s a day. It was your pa scairt us out of Virginy, but now he’s gone, can’t you just—”

Kincaid backhanded him across his broken mouth. Seth made a garbled sound and struggled, but Parrish gripped him with surprising strength.

Dominic let the blood run down his chin. He’d quit his smirking, but his eyes mocked. “Seems you’ve inherited the family temper, much as you always claimed otherwise.”

Kincaid’s mouth thinned. Before he could speak, Parrish cut in. “What is it you plan to do with these two? We’ve precious little season left before winter and no leads on my stepdaughter’s whereabouts.”

Most of their audience had drifted away, gone back in out of the rain once the drama sputtered out. Charlie stepped forward from the few that were left, clearing his throat. “Well, now, looks like maybe we have.”

Parrish’s gaze sliced toward Charlie. “Are you telling me you’ve found Tamsen?” He shoved Seth Trimble away as if he was of no further consequence. “Why, then, are we wasting time with these ruffians?”

Kincaid related what they’d learned from the couple in the tavern. Charlie watched Parrish’s face work itself from surprise—he’d almost have called it alarm—to calculation, to something darker.

“Tamsen?” It was Seth Trimble who repeated the name.

Charlie caught a look of confusion in his eyes before his brother shot him a quelling glare.

Dominic turned to Kincaid, no longer fighting his hold or seeming concerned about his capture. “Look, Brose, tell us what it is you come all this way for. Must be a powerful reason to draw you off those precious acres of yours. Something about this man’s daughter gone missing?”

“My stepdaughter,” Parrish supplied. “She was abducted from Morganton in September—the very hour her mother was murdered.”

Lines Charlie had heard a hundred times from the man’s lips, delivered without feeling.

“You don’t say?” Dominic looked from one to the other. “Happens we been ’round these parts a good while now, me and Seth. Might be we know something could help you find the girl. But what’s she to do with you, Brose?”

Hesitation tightened Kincaid’s jaw, but the need to leave no stone
unturned in his hunt for Miss Littlejohn—no matter what might crawl out from under it—proved stronger. He told the tale in brief.

Dominic gave a low whistle. “And you been hounding her all these weeks since? She must be something, Brose. What’d you say was her name?”

“Tamsen Littlejohn,” Parrish said.

Charlie saw the skin around Seth’s eyes tighten. Dominic pinned his brother with another look.

“Uncommon name. What’s she look like?”

Charlie and Parrish exchanged a glance while Kincaid reached into his coat and brought out the portrait. The Trimbles crowded close to look. Seth drew in a breath, but Dominic spoke first. “You know who it was took her off? To name him, I mean?”

“No,” Parrish said. “But he’s wanted for the murder of the girl’s mother, as well as her abduction. Spencer has seen him.”

“Murder?” Seth said, frowning.

“Murder,” Dominic said, as if musing on an interesting notion. He flashed a grin at Kincaid. “Well, Brose. You can count on us to keep an eye out for her.”

“You’ll do more than that.” Kincaid stowed the portrait out of the rain. “You pair are going to help us find Miss Littlejohn and see her safe, or it’s you I’m taking back to Long Meadows.”

“You sure it ain’t a case of her choosing this other feller over you?” Seth Trimble cut in. “Some sort of elopement?”

The suggestion didn’t ruffle Parrish’s countenance, but scarlet rose from Kincaid’s muddied neckcloth. “A woman of that quality would never throw her life over for some backwoodsman she barely knew. And never for the man who killed her mother in front of her eyes.”

Dominic’s bleeding mouth rose in a smirk. Maybe to give himself time to think—maybe just to goad Kincaid—he said, “How’s it any different, Brose, you chasing after a woman who don’t want you, and how
your pa was with your uncle’s wife, sniffing after her till they fled Virginy to be shed of him? Or that’s the story we heard. You come off so high and mighty, looking down your highbred nose at us, but the apple ain’t fallen far from—”

Charlie doubted the fool saw the blow coming till he was doubled over gasping, clutching his gut.

Kincaid lunged forward, but Seth got hold of his arm and hauled on it hard enough to throw him off balance, giving Dominic time to stagger for the front of the tavern. “No—Brose, we’ll help, all right? We’ll look out for Ta—for your girl. I promise we’ll help.”

Kincaid had lurched to a standstill, staring after Dominic as if he was the one gut-punched. “I am nothing like Collin Kincaid,” he said under his breath. “Nothing whatsoever.”

“Sure,” Seth hurried to agree. “You never touched a drop of the hard stuff. We all knew that. Dom was just tryin’ to get your goat.”

Kincaid eyed Trimble. “Is this where you live, Jonesborough?”

“Naw, we got us a cabin, up by Sycamore Shoals. Or we did.” Something like regret twisted Seth’s face. “I best git afore Dom leaves me behind. Can I go?”

Kincaid jerked his chin. “I’ve business here, but I’ll find you again.”

“Hold on now,” Parrish started to protest, but Seth was already sprinting across the rain-soaked yard.

The argument that erupted was loud and long and unsurprising. Charlie took no part in it, so he was looking when the Trimbles went racing their horses north out of town, in the direction of Sycamore Shoals, up on the Watauga.

The Watauga. That river came out of the mountains flowing west, its headwaters not too far from those of the eastbound Yadkin …

In that instant, he decided. Feeling his spirits take an upswing, he wasn’t overmuch concerned that Kincaid seemed set on sticking in Jonesborough to make a thorough search for Miss Littlejohn. There were
meeting houses, other men of note to question—that Colonel Tipton they’d heard tell of—and somewhere a North Carolina courthouse. Nor did he care that Parrish was for pressing on hotfoot after the Trimbles, though for once he suspected Parrish had the right idea.

He grabbed the first lull in the debate to speak his piece.

“Well, sirs. Ye got yourself a couple extra pair o’ eyes and a sighting o’ the girl. Reckon ye’ll find her hereabouts. I’ll be leaving ye now to tend my own concerns. I’ve decided I’m for going back east, up along the Watauga. So … good-bye and good luck.”