These Honored Dead (8 page)

“W
hat happened?” the doctor and I each demanded, more or less in unison.

“I collected him at the Globe, right where you left him, Mr. Speed. We headed for Torrey’s inn. As it was getting toward evening, I decided it made sense to lodge there overnight before riding home at sunrise.” Rebecca’s voice was much less steady than usual, and her hands worked against each other anxiously as she spoke.

“We were in the public room there, and Jesse said he’d like to go outside for some fresh breaths. After a while, I noticed he hadn’t come back. I went to look for him, but he was—” Her voice caught, and she gasped for breath—“nowhere. He’d . . . he’d vanished.”

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“The sun had just set when I went out looking for him.”

That was well over two hours ago, I thought. Why had it taken her so long to sound the alarm?

Rebecca had one hand to her forehead and with the other she tore at her black dress. “Oh—if only we’d ridden home to Menard tonight,” she wailed. “None of this would have happened. First Lilly and now . . . I cannot bear it.” She wobbled on her feet and reached out to the wall to steady herself.

“We don’t know anything’s happened, Widow Harriman,” Dr. Patterson said. “He’s probably hiding somewhere, the little devil. We’ll find him safe and sound, I’ve no doubt.”

“Let’s fan out at once,” I said. “He can’t have gone far. Doctor, perhaps you and the Widow Harriman should go to Torrey’s. Most likely he’s still in the vicinity.” I turned to Rebecca and asked, “Where else might he have run off to?”

She raised her arms helplessly.

“What about the stables?” came Martha’s voice from behind us. I swung around and saw Martha and Jane standing back in the hallway, clutching each other’s arms in worry. “This is the little boy who was in the loose room with Hickory when I arrived earlier, right, Joshua? Maybe he’s visiting the horses again.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll head to the Globe to look for him there.”

“I’m coming with you,” Martha said. “Jane and I both will help with the search.” Jane nodded resolutely.

We all hurried down the front steps of the house. At the bottom of the red-brick walk I turned to Rebecca and said, with as much confidence as I could muster, “We’ll find him.” She gave me a stricken look in response.

Patterson grabbed the lapel of my coat and hissed into my ear, “I haven’t yet finished with you, Speed.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned around, took Rebecca by one arm and Jane by the other, and hurried off in the direction of Torrey’s.

“Who’s Lilly and what’s happened to her?” asked Martha as soon as we were alone, striding swiftly in the direction of the stables.

“I should have told you earlier,” I said. “It’s the real reason I wrote the letter to Father to forestall your visit.” Quickly, I explained about Lilly’s death, as Martha’s face grew pale in the moonlight. “So stick close by me tonight,” I concluded. “Who knows who could be lurking about in the dark, especially if something’s happened to the boy now?”

“That’s a terrible tragedy, but I can take care of myself,” my sister said with assurance.

“I imagine Lilly thought the same.”

I prayed Patterson and Rebecca would find Jesse near the inn. Torrey’s Temperance Hotel was the oldest and shabbiest public
accommodation in Springfield, an odd place for Rebecca to have chosen to spend the night with her young nephew. The public room there was notably rough and the liquor its barkeep served notably harsh. That the self-proclaimed “temperance” hotel had become the quickest and cheapest place in town to get stinking drunk was a fact so accepted by the local populace that no one noticed the irony anymore.

Why was Rebecca lodging there? Was she so short on funds after having paid off the debts of her late brother-in-law that she could better afford the sixty cents Torrey’s charged for one night’s room and board rather than the seventy-five cents charged by the Globe? For that matter, why had she decided to spend the night in Springfield? She should have had plenty of time to ride back to Menard before nightfall.

Whatever her reasoning, I hoped her decision hadn’t been a fatal one. I would have said with a fair level of confidence there was no man in Springfield depraved enough to do harm to a small and defenseless ten-year-old boy; but if by horrible chance such a man did exist, I had even greater confidence he would have been drinking at Torrey’s tonight.

As we neared the town square, which we needed to cut across to reach the Globe, I heard the strains of an off-key mouth organ in the wind, interspersed with good-humored shouting. I led Martha toward the commotion.

“Is that you, Speed?” called Lincoln’s voice as we approached a group of shadowy forms sprawled in the tall grasses near the capitol cornerstone. He blew a comic fanfare into his organ. “Ah, it’s the both of you. I told the boys Miss Speed had arrived intent on marrying you off before harvesttime. So when’s the happy day to be?” He laughed loudly, and the forms around him shared his merriment.

“Speed and the doctor’s daughter—that’s an unlikely match,” called a voice, which I recognized as belonging to my store clerk and room-mate Herndon.

“Come now,” Lincoln returned. “Speed could do worse than Jane Patterson. Much worse.” A pause. “Though I’m not sure
she
could.” The fellows exploded with laughter again.

Along with Lincoln and Herndon, I could make out the bulky shadow of Simeon Francis and the much skinnier one of the court clerk Matheny. Several discarded bottles littered the grass around them.

Lincoln was the first to stop laughing as we came upon him and he saw the look on my face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

I explained our urgent errand. At once the fellows were on their feet, offering to help. Matheny and Herndon were soon trotting toward Torrey’s to join the doctor in his canvass, while Simeon lurched off in search of Sheriff Hutchason. Lincoln volunteered to accompany us to the Globe. We hurried in step across the green.

“Sorry if I spoke out of turn earlier, Miss Speed,” Lincoln said.

My sister waved her hand in the negative and said, “I know you had our interests at heart.”

“Martha’s got thick skin,” I added. “Growing up at Judge Speed’s dinner table will do that to anyone.”

It soon became clear news of Jesse’s disappearance was spreading through town like a prairie fire. Men in small groups began to materialize from the night, racing this way and that across our path, shouting out for the boy. Several of them carried blazing torches. The streets and alleyways thrummed with activity, while the distinctive fishy odor of burning whale oil swirled about.

But when we reached the entrance to the stables, just beyond the tavern itself, they were dark and abandoned. None of the other searchers had thought to come here yet, it seemed. Even more surprisingly, there were no stable lads at the gate awaiting a stage arrival.

“Wait a moment,” said Lincoln. He dashed into the tavern, knees and elbows flying, and a minute later returned, dragging along a reluctant Saunders.

“I’m enjoying a quiet supper with the missus,” the innkeeper protested, trying to wriggle out of Lincoln’s grasp. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Where’re your lads?” I demanded. “We need to question them, to learn if they’ve seen that young fellow I was here with earlier, name of Jesse. He’s gone missing.”

“I sent them home early,” Saunders said. He finally managed to break free of Lincoln, and he glared at both of us as he straightened the fraying collar of his frockcoat.

“Why’d you do that?” I demanded. “What if another stage arrives tonight?”

“There ain’t going to be another stage tonight,” Saunders said. When I opened my mouth to challenge him, he added, “I’ll be at the Ellis store at sunrise tomorrow, Speed, instructing you how to run your business. Or—tell you what—how about you let me govern my affairs and I’ll let you govern yours?” He spat on the ground not far from my feet.

Before I could rise further to the challenge, Lincoln put a restraining hand on my arm and said, “We need to search your stables for the missing boy. He was here earlier, as you know. He might have returned. Fetch us some lanterns.” When the innkeeper wavered, Lincoln added, in a shrill shout, “
Now
, if you please.”

Saunders gave me one more unfriendly look and slunk inside. He returned shortly with three lanterns, each a five-sided glass box containing a burning candle stub.

“Take good care with these,” Saunders said, handing the lanterns over. “With how long it’s been since we’ve last had rain, if a single blade of straw catches, the whole thing will go up in a blink. McWorter was left with a complete loss last spring when his stables fired. And you three’ll go up with it.”

We thanked him and hurried around the corner to the stables’ entrance. Once there, Lincoln used his lantern to light the long-fused torches positioned on either side of the entrance gate. The courtyard was instantly lit by the flickering torchlight.

“Jesse!” I called. “Jesse? Come out, boy, if you’re hiding. Your Auntie’s plenty worried.”

We could hear a few of the horses shifting in their stalls. Otherwise, there was no response.

The three of us exchanged grim nods and advanced through the rutted courtyard together, dodging loose paving stones where we could. On the left was the carriage shed. When the yard was full, the stable boys would park carriages inside the shed, but as there were only two coaches present tonight—my father’s black lacquered carriage and the large calèche coach whose arrival I had seen later in the afternoon—the boys had left them in front of the shed to save time on their departure. I walked up to the carriages.

“Jesse!” I called again. “Jesse?”

Silence.

“Back in the stables perhaps,” said Martha. I nodded. I was about to follow her when I looked again at one of the rear wheels of my father’s carriage. There was a small object balanced atop the hub.

“What’s this?” I exclaimed, swinging my lantern to have a look.

“What is it, Joshua?” called Martha.

“I just found a little cake,” I said, holding a small, half-eaten pastry. It crumbled in my palm. “The widow told me Jesse loved to eat these.” I paused. “I know other boys eat them too, of course, but I think he’s been here. Recently.”

A moment later, Lincoln called from the other side of the yard, “Quiet. What’s that noise?”

I listened intently. Nothing. Then, at the far reaches of my hearing, an insidious sound, a sort of crackling. I scanned the stable enclosure in front of us and there it was, off in a corner: a faint glow.

Fire
.

The glow got brighter and larger. I saw a tongue of flame flicker along a wooden wall and then retreat, like a deadly snake poised to strike.

“Fire! Get help at once! The stable’s on fire!”

“The horses!” shrieked Martha. She dropped her lantern, and before I could stop her, she raced into the burning barn.

“I
’m going after her,” I shouted to Lincoln, who was standing with his mouth agape on the other side of the courtyard. “You’ll have to sound the alarm.”

But as I sprinted toward the barn door, now swinging in Martha’s wake, I feared a general alarm would do little good. Springfield had no fire company. The town’s fire warden was Tilman Hornbuckle, but it was a certainty he was passed out in an alleyway near Torrey’s by this hour. Fire hooks, ladders, and buckets were supposed to be available at all hours in the market house. But I knew the implements had been liberated one or two at a time in recent months by cash-poor farmers in need of tools.

I threw the stables door open and immediately gagged. The acrid smoke inside the unventilated building was already thick. It was hard to breathe and even harder to see. The shrieking of the horses competed with the crackle and spit of the flames. Both sounds were awful.

“Martha?” I shouted. “Martha?”

“Over here, in the loose room.”

“You’ve got to get out. At once.”

“Not without the horses.”

“Now, Martha!”

“No!”

I propped open the door with a paving stone. Then I took a deep breath and raced toward Martha’s voice.

“Go! Get out!” I heard her yelling.

I reached the loose room and through my watering eyes saw the gate open and Martha inside the pen trying to urge the horses out. Six or eight horses snorted and stomped and screamed, milling all around us in a mass of fear and confusion. The heat blasting from the far side of the barn was like a giant smithy’s hearth. I saw a flash of a familiar white stripe next to me. Hickory.

“Come, girl,” I said, grabbing her mane. I breathed in smoke and gagged again.

Hickory resisted at first, twisting her head away from me. But I kept one fist clenched in her mane while I reached up with the other to her muzzle. “It’s all right,” I said, with a great deal more calm than I felt. “Come with me.”

Hickory swung her head back toward me and I felt her resistance faltering. “Have them follow us,” I shouted, choking, in the direction I hoped Martha was in. “And you too. We need to leave.”

My eyes all but closed now, trying not to breathe, my hand resting on the back of Hickory’s neck, I led her through the loose room gate and toward where the entrance door to the stables should be. I couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. And then—somehow—we were through the door and outside in the courtyard.

Bent over double, I tried to cough the smoke out of my lungs and then took several huge gulps of fresh air. I slapped Hickory on the rump and she galloped away across the yard. Turning, I saw a soot-blackened line of horses following Hickory through the door and away from the burning building.

Four . . . five . . . six. Then no more. Martha. Where was Martha?

“Martha!” I screamed.

I took a deep breath and then a step toward the door when I saw the head of another horse emerging from the conflagration. And miraculously, my sister at its flank, her dress torn and singed, her face sooty, a silk glove, no longer white, clutched in
front of her mouth and nose. She was falling forward as she burst through the door beside the horse and I leapt and caught her. I dragged her away, shaking with fear and relief.

Panting, we sat on the cobblestones about twenty feet back from the burning barn. My arms were still clutched around her waist.

After a few moments, Martha startled struggling to escape my grasp. “We’ve got to go back in for the others,” she cried, over the roar of the blaze. “The ones tied up to rings on the other side. They’ve got no chance without us.”

I squeezed her tighter and shouted, “No!”

At that same moment, I suddenly became aware Martha and I were not the only two persons in the courtyard. In fact, as my perceptions returned, I saw the stable complex had become a hive of activity.

Several dozen men jostled around us in the courtyard, carrying water toward the fire and moving anything flammable away from it. Looking up, I saw a line of men standing across the roof of the Globe Tavern to the point where it adjoined the stable building. They were passing buckets of varying shapes and sizes from hand to hand, and the men closest to the stable were pouring them out, keeping the roof and walls of the inn wet. As my eyes came into full focus, I perceived that the blaze was concentrated on the side of the stables opposite from the inn. The stable building was sure to be a complete loss, but it seemed possible the tavern itself would escape destruction.

“There you are!” called a voice from above us. Gratefully, I felt a familiar large hand rest on my shoulder.

“We got the horses out of the loose room,” Martha called up to Lincoln. “But we need to go back for the work horses. Joshua isn’t letting me go.”

“He’s right not to, Miss Speed,” Lincoln said. “But you can rest easy. I’ve been around back of the stables, looking for you two. A couple other fellows were back there already. They’d
untied the work horses and led them through the back door. They’re all out, I think.”

“What were they doing back there?” I asked. “For that matter, where’d everyone come from?” I gestured around the bustling yard and up toward the roof, where the bucket brigade continued to work with surprising efficiency.

“I wager the search for Jesse saved the Globe, and the horses, too,” said Lincoln. “There were so many men already out and about on the streets looking for him. As soon as I ran out to warn Saunders and spread the word, we had dozens of volunteers to fight the fire.”

“Has the boy been found yet?”

“I don’t think so.” Lincoln gave a glance toward the ruined stables.

Saunders bustled up at that moment. His face was ashen. “I warned you to be careful with those lanterns,” he said, his voice quaking, more with fright than anger.

“It wasn’t us,” I exclaimed.

“It wasn’t,” echoed Lincoln. “The flames broke out in front of us. We hadn’t even set foot in the stables when they began to fire.”

As Saunders wandered off, mumbling to himself in a daze, Patterson, Jane, and Rebecca all materialized out of the crowd, seemingly from three different directions. Patterson looked at Martha and me, still huddled next to each other on the ground, with a professional gaze. “What happened to the two of you?” he asked.

I explained. Looking over at Rebecca, I saw her face remained troubled. “Any sign of Jesse yet, Widow Harriman?” I asked.

“None.”

“Then he’s run off somewhere by himself,” I said. “With how many men joined in the search”—I gestured around—“if he was lying about somewhere . . . incapacitated . . . he would have been found.”

“Perhaps he was in there,” said Rebecca, pointing with a trembling hand toward the barn. Most of the flames had been extinguished by now, though one or two ravenous licks of orange still leapt about and great quantities of gray-black smoke poured out of the ruins. Half of the stables’ roof was missing.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “When Martha and I were in there helping the horses out, we didn’t see him, did we?” Martha shook her head. “He’ll turn up at daybreak, I’m certain of it.”

A gust of wind blew through the courtyard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a streak of light, like a shooting star.

“What will Saunders do with the—”

An urgent call cut through Jane’s question: “Fire! The carriage shed has caught!”

I scrambled to my feet and looked around. The thatched roof of the shed, some fifty feet distant from the stable building, was smoking violently. If the shed collapsed, it would fall on the two carriages parked in front of it. I saw my father’s driver, Genser, in his underclothes moving about frantically next to his carriage. Hickory was lingering nearby. With Lincoln by my side, I raced over to them.

“Let’s pull the carriage out of the way at once,” I shouted. “Hickory will do. Hitch her up and I’ll drive.”

Genser nodded and got to work expertly, fastening a harness around Hickory and coaxing her back toward the carriage so he could run its shafts through the loops of the saddle.

Meanwhile, Lincoln set about organizing a new line of water buckets to be passed toward the carriage shed. With his unsurpassed height, he positioned himself at the end of the line, ready to fling the water up onto the roof of the shed.

I climbed the mounting step and jumped into the body of my father’s carriage on my way to the driver’s box. The worn leather bench held a familiar smell, and at once I was struck by a vivid memory of my younger self sitting on the very same seat as we bounced along the rutted road toward Smith’s schoolhouse, bound for an examination in mathematics for which I was
ill-prepared as usual. I shook off the memory, hurled back to the present by the urgent task at hand.

Atop the box, I called down to Genser: “Ready when you are.”

“What about that one?” he said as he finished setting the shaft. He gestured toward the other carriage near the shed. The roof of the shed continued to smolder, although Lincoln’s human chain was working quickly, passing a line of buckets to my friend, who hurled their contents toward the roof one after the other. The fire fought back, crackling and hissing.

“Do you know who its owner is?” I called down. Genser shook his head. It seemed odd in the extreme the other owner hadn’t come to check on his grand carriage in the midst of the inferno.

Genser quickly walked around Hickory, making sure all the buckles were sound. He took her by the bridle and, whispering encouragingly into her ear, began leading her away from the shed. The horse strained against the weight of the carriage, usually pulled by two horses, and at first we did not budge. But eventually Hickory found purchase and the wheels began turning slowly. We clattered through the courtyard. For good measure, we drove the carriage completely out of the yard and onto the street, crowded with men and women gawking at the blaze.

I jumped down as Genser began unfastening Hickory from her load.

“Let’s move the other one as well,” I said.

Returning to the yard, I glanced up nervously at the roof of the carriage shed, which was simultaneously smoking and dripping from all the water that had been flung upon it. Judging I was safe enough, I climbed onto the upholstered driver’s seat. The ornate calèche carriage, ruby red with black trim and gold-painted wheels, was of the style the legendary French general Lafayette had made famous during his triumphal tour of all twenty-four states the previous decade. It had no roof but four side panels to keep out the dust and dirt of the trail.

What was taking Genser so long? I turned impatiently and looked over the compartment of the carriage to try to locate our man in the crowded courtyard. Then, sickeningly, I realized what I had just seen. I stood on the driver’s seat and looked down into the compartment itself.

A limp figure lay on the carpeted floor of the carriage, hidden from any angle of view but mine. Jesse’s face was frozen, his mouth half-open as if he had been trying to say something. His skull had been caved in above his left temple, and blood and gore covered his face and smock. Blades of straw stuck out at grotesque angles from each of the sticky surfaces. A paving stone, glistening a bright, sickly red, lay on the floor not far from his ruined head.

I shouted in horror and looked away, trying to fight a wave of nausea. Eventually my eyes fell on the corpse again. This time I saw that Jesse’s little fist was clenched impotently by his side. Clutched between his tiny, rigid fingers was a single ebony domino.