The Wilderness Road

by James Reasoner

  "I’d say it's had a good start," Davis commented.

  Indeed, in the time since the tavern and inn had opened its doors, the establishment had done a brisk trade. Logan's Fort was growing steadily as the flow of settlers into the area grew as well.

  This settlement was more than the terminus of the Wilderness Road. It was actually the beginning of several other trails leading to the other settlements scattered around Kentucky. Practically all the immigrant traffic into the area passed through here. Davis and Emily hadn't lacked for customers. Men from the wagon trains stepped in for a drink before going on their way, and travelers on horseback often stopped to spend the night in one of the rooms on the second floor of the big building.

  "Come along inside," Emily said. "I have supper just about ready."

  Davis nodded and walked with her into the tavern. As they entered the building, they passed underneath the weapon that had given the place its name. The broken flintlock was hanging inside on pegs just above the door. The story of how Davis used it to kill one of the bandits who had kidnapped Emily was common knowledge around here. Davis was more than a little uncomfortable with the notoriety, and he supposed displaying the weapon like that only made things worse.

  He had not been able to bring himself to part with the gun, however, and he liked being able to look up and see it hanging there when he was behind the bar pouring drinks for the customers.

  At first the men had tried to get him to tell the story of the broken rifle every evening, but his reluctance to do so soon became as well known as the tale itself. The drinkers had to be content with spinning the yarn themselves, and it soon grew to truly epic proportions. Some of the tellers had Davis killing a dozen bandits and two dozen Indians with the broken gun. Davis just smiled wearily, shook his head, and said, "Not the way it happened."

  The first floor of the building consisted of one main room with a couple of small storerooms behind it. The bar, made of puncheons laid across empty whisky barrels, ran across the back of the main room. Rough-hewn tables and benches filled the floor. To the right was the staircase leading up to the second floor. There was nothing fancy about the place, but to Davis it had become home.

  Any place where Emily was would be home to him, he knew.

  The year of marriage to her had been better and happier than he'd had any right to expect. She was a sweet, loving wife, but she had opinions of her own and never hesitated to express them.

  When the nightmares still occasionally came to him, making him sit bolt upright in their bed with cold sweat bathing his face and great shudders wracking his body, she was always there to hold him and soothe him and remind him that he had come through the bad times in the past.

  She had taken to lovemaking with joyous abandon, too, and he felt a stirring of desire now as he watched her walk across the room. She always aroused those emotions in him, and he hoped fervently that she always would.

  Several men were standing at the bar drinking, although it was early yet. The crowd would be much larger later, and Davis would probably have to work the bar himself, instead of trusting it to his helper, a young man named Willy Malone who was tapping the kegs for the customers at the moment.

  In the meantime, Davis and Emily could have their supper in the small living quarters that were built onto the back of the tavern building.

  He followed her through the storeroom that connected with their quarters. Several dozen kegs of whiskey were stacked in the room. Trains of freight wagons arrived regularly now over the Wilderness Road, and as Davis watching the settlement expanding and trade booming, he took pride in the fact he had played a minor part in the growth, as one of the group that had widened the trail.

  Only a little pride, though, because he had never managed to forget completely that with the onrush of civilization came an increasing chance that someday his past would catch up with him.

  He would deal with that when and if it ever happened. Until then, he was going to enjoy the life he was building here with Emily.

  When they were settled down at the dinner table, Emily looked at her plate and blushed slightly as she said, "I want you to know, Davis . . . I'm not in the family way after all."

  "Oh," he said. He frowned and cast about for more words to say. "Well. That's all right. Perhaps one day . . ."

  She reached across the table and caught hold of his hand. "I'm sorry, Davis," she said. "I know how much you were hoping that this time—"

  "I said it's all right, and I meant it." His fingers tightened on hers. "I love you, Emily, and that love doesn't depend on whether or not we have children."

  "You must miss your little ones terribly, though."

  Davis took a deep breath. It was true that not a day went by when he failed to think about Laurel, Mary, and Theodore. He did miss them and still felt their loss as a sharp pain deep inside him.

  When he didn't say anything, Emily went on, "We might be able to send for them—"

  He shook his head sharply. "No! It's too late for that." She had made the same suggestion before, more than once, and each time he had refused. "By now they're lost to me. They're Jonas Kirby's children, and I hope he's raising them well. But they're sure to have been told how I went insane and murdered their mother, then escaped from jail and fled into the wilderness. They'll never want to have anything to do with me again, and I can't blame them for feeling that way."

  "You can't know that's what they believe," Emily insisted.

  Again Davis shook his head. "I'm sure enough of it. No, Emily, we'll just keep trying to have children of our own, and if we don't . . . well, at least we have each other."

  "Yes," she said softly, putting her other hand on his. "We'll always have each other."

  Davis just wished that cold fear would not ripple through him every time she said something like that.

  * * *

  Their second summer together turned into autumn. The leaves on the trees blazed brightly, swaying red and orange and gold on the branches before relinquishing their grip and falling to the earth as the wind grew colder. There was enough of a chill in the air each night so that the fires Davis lit in the tavern's big fireplace felt welcome indeed.

  Winter was coming, and unlike the previous year, when the snow had brought too many memories with it, Davis believed that this year would be different. His life was not perfect, but he was happy with it.

  Then, on a day full of bright sunshine and crisp, cool air, a ghost walked into the tavern.

  That was what Davis thought at first. He was alone behind the bar in the middle of the afternoon. There were no customers, and Emily was back in their quarters doing some mending. Davis was drowsy, and he thought about sitting down in the rocking chair next to the unlit fireplace for a short nap before men began drifting in during the late afternoon for a drink. Then he heard a step in the open doorway and looked up from where he was leaning his elbows on the bar.

  The man who stood there was difficult to distinguish at first because of the brilliant sunshine behind him. But after a moment, Davis could make out the lean figure and the long hair underneath a floppy-brimmed hat, the long-barreled rifle the man carried and the swaying fringe on the buckskins he wore. A shock of familiarity shivered through Davis as the man limped toward the bar.

  "Don't just stand there gawkin'," Conn Powell said. "Pour a man a drink, why don't you?"

  "You're alive," Davis said. It was all he could think of.

  "Any man with eyes in his head could see that. I'm told you serve the best whiskey in Kentucky. Care to prove it?"

  Automatically, Davis reached for a tin cup on the shelf behind the bar. He tapped one of the kegs and let the liquor splash out into the cup, then placed it on the bar. Powell picked it up, took a sip, nodded appreciatively, then tossed back the rest of the drink.

  "Looks like that part of the story was the truth, anyway," he said. "Not like the other things I've heard about you."

  "What have you heard?" Davis asked, suddenly wary. As startled
as he was to discover that Powell wasn't dead after all, he was still in the habit of being careful about revealing too much.

  "Oh, that you killed a hundred bandits to rescue that pretty Harding gal you up and married later. Or was it two hundred?" Powell said dryly. "I tend to disremember."

  "I never claimed that. I told the truth of what happened. It was other folks who made it into some sort of legend."

  Powell nodded. "I figured as much. You're a lot of things, I reckon, but I never had you pegged as a liar and a braggart." He reached across the bar and for a brief moment clasped Davis's arm with fingers that felt like iron. "You may not believe this, but it's good to see you again, Davis."

  Davis knew he ought to call out to Emily and let her know that Powell was here, but he was still too dumbfounded at this unexpected visit by the long hunter. "We thought you . . . we thought—"

  "You thought I was dead," Powell finished for him. "I reckon I damn near was. But after I sat there by that tree for a while, I got to feelin' a mite better. Decided I wouldn't wait for those bastards to find me and kill me." He laughed coldly. "So I went lookin' for them"

  Davis could believe that.

  "I jumped one of 'em," Powell went on, "and killed him with my knife. Once I had a rifle and plenty of powder and shot, the odds got even better. Thought about lyin' down and dyin' a time or two while we were all out there in the woods, but damned if I was goin' to give 'em the satisfaction. After I'd put two or three of 'em under, they was so spooked they started shootin' at each other. I figured then the time had come for me to get out of there, so I did."

  "I'm sorry," Davis said sincerely. "We should have stayed and helped you—"

  "Hell, no! You did what I asked of you. You got that gal back safely to her folks. Where is she?"

  "Out back, where we live. I'll get her." Davis started out from behind the bar.

  Powell stopped him by holding out a lean, deeply tanned hand. "Hold on a minute. The first time I saw you, Davis, I didn't trust you. Figured you were hidin' something."

  Davis hesitated, then said, "I was."

  "Whatever it is, it ain't none of my business. But does she know?"

  "I told her all about it before we were married."

  Powell nodded. "Good. Maybe you ain't such a bad sort after all. If you were, that gal wouldn't have married you."

  That approval from the man, grudging though it might have been, meant a lot to Davis. He couldn't stop himself from grinning as he went to the door of the storeroom and called through it, "Emily, can you come out here? We have a visitor."

  She walked into the tavern a moment later, saying, "Who is it, Davis?" Then she stopped short, and the shirt she had been mending slipped from her fingers and fell unnoticed to the floor. Still grinning, Davis picked up the shirt as Emily stared at Powell.

  "It can't be," she finally murmured. "It just can't."

  Powell smiled, one of the few times Davis had seen such an expression on the normally grim face of the long hunter. "I reckon it's me, all right," Powell said. "You look like marriage is agreein' with you, ma'am. You're as pretty as you were back there on that wagon train."

  "Thank you," Emily said distractedly. "How . . . how can you be here, Mr. Powell? We thought—"

  "We've been over that already, Emily," Davis told her. "It seems our friend here decided he wasn't ready to die just yet . . . so he didn't."

  Powell nodded. "Stubbornness'll carry a fella a long way sometimes. And I've always been mighty stubborn, 'specially about things like dyin'."

  Davis stepped over to one of the tables and pulled back a bench. "Sit down," he said. "You've got to tell us what you've been doing. It's been over a year since that day."

  "Sure," Powell said easily, "but bring a jug."

  Davis complied with that request, filling a jug from the keg and carrying it to the table along with Powell's cup and a cup for himself. Emily never drank anything harder than cider.

  Powell downed another cup of whiskey, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, "First thing I did after spookin' that bunch of highwaymen was to find me a place to hole up. There are caves all around that mountain that nobody knows anything about 'cept me and some Shawnees. I found one of 'em and crawled into it after I'd packed my wounds with moss again. Probably would've died in there if I hadn't been so blasted stubborn, like I said. There's a little spring inside the cave, so I had water. I just laid up there for three or four days—I ain't sure which—and fought off the fever that come over me. When it finally broke, I was mighty hungry, so I crawled back out and made a snare. Didn't want to do any shootin', since I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to call attention to myself, weak as I was. Caught a rabbit that night, and it tasted mighty good, even raw."

  Emily repressed a shudder, and Davis felt a little queasy himself. He had eaten rabbit plenty of times, but always roasted. He supposed that if he had been in the same situation as Powell, however, he might have torn into the animal just the same way.

  "That gave me a little strength," Powell went on. "Figured since I wasn't dead by then, it just wasn't my time. I headed for the Wilderness Road . . . leastways that was what I intended." He lifted a hand and pointed at Davis as he continued sternly, "If you ever let on to anybody about what I'm fixin' to tell you, I'll not only deny it, but I'll come back here and settle up with you."

  "Whatever it is, Mr. Powell, I won't say anything about it," Davis promised solemnly.

  "Call me Conn. Anyway . . ." Powell took a deep breath and looked uncomfortable. "I reckon I took a wrong turn. I got lost. And maybe I was still a little out of my head, too. Anyway, I wound up back in Virginia 'fore it was all over. By then I'd pretty much recovered from those rifle balls that ventilated me, so I went back to long huntin'. I've had enough of bein' a guide, and I don't ever want to work for the gov'ment again."

  "So you've just been . . . wandering?" Emily asked.

  "That's how a man like me is the most satisfied, never stayin' in one place for too long."

  Davis said, "Why haven't you come to see us before now?"

  "Didn't know you were here," Powell said. "Oh, I admit I was a mite curious whether or not you got back safe to that wagon train, but I figured you did. Then, later on, I heard the stories about you, heard how the two of you got married and built this tavern. Figured I'd come through these parts sooner or later." He shrugged. "And here I am, so I reckon I was right."

  "It's good to see you, Conn, it really is." Davis shook his head in wonderment. "I still can't get over it. We really thought you were dead."

  "You know," Powell said dryly, "a fella could get tired of hearin' that."

  "You'll stay with us, of course," Emily said, "for as long as you like."

  "Never sleep as well with a roof over my head as I do with sky . . . but I'll bide here a day or two. Say, you ever hear any more about those bandits?"

  Davis shook his head. "I suppose after all the trouble they had when they raided the wagon train, they gave up and moved on. They haven't been seen around here in the past year."

  "Well, maybe so," Powell said. "But if that's what happened, they ran out of easy pickin's elsewhere and decided to try their luck in these parts again. They hit a train of freight wagons day before yesterday."

  Davis's eyes widened in surprise, and Emily said, "Oh, no."

  Powell nodded. "Yep. Saw it with my own eyes."

  "We haven't heard anything about it," Davis said.

  "That's because the freighters—what's left of 'em—ain't limped into the settlement yet. They ought to be here tomorrow. I can move faster by myself, so I come on ahead."

  "You say you saw the attack?"

  "That's right. I was on a hill about a quarter of a mile away. Wasn't much I could do to help. Time I got there, it was almost over."

  "How do you know it was the same group of bandits?" Emily asked.

  "I got a look at some of 'em ridin' off just as I came hustlin' up. I recognized 'em . . . 'cept for one yo
ung fella I guess joined up with 'em since that time a year and a half ago. Heard one of the others call him Paxton."

  Davis couldn't stop his hands from clenching into fists. "What?" he said, his voice taut with surprise.

  "Paxton," Powell repeated. He looked shrewdly at Davis. "Why? That name mean somethin' to you, Davis?"

  Davis glanced at Emily, saw how her face had gone pale. Powell was too keen an observer to have missed the reaction of either one of them. The long hunter had to know he had stumbled onto something.

  But Davis shook his head anyway and said, "No. The name means nothing to me."

  "Whatever you say. I took a shot at him and damn near knocked him out of the saddle. Would've if he hadn't ducked. That's when one of the other fellas yelled at him to come on."

  "Well, I certainly don't know who he was," Davis said, knowing that he was professing his ignorance too vigorously but unable to stop himself.

  For a moment, a strained silence hung over the table, then Powell said, "I reckon that gang's liable to stay around here for a while. Lots of traffic on the Wilderness Road these days. You ought to know that, though, since you see most of it comin' through here."

  "Yes." Davis nodded, still stunned by what Powell had said. "Lots of traffic."

  He was aware of Emily's gaze on him, but he couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes. The news that Andrew was not only in the area but running with the same bandits who had raided the wagon train was just as unexpected as Powell's return from the dead. Davis had to take it all in, decide what it meant to him.

  Powell pushed himself to his feet. "I've walked a far piece today. You got a bunk where a fella can lie down?"

  "Of course," Emily said hurriedly as she stood. "There are rooms upstairs. I'll show you."

  "Do you have a horse?" Davis asked. "I'll take care of—no, that's right, you said you're afoot. I'm in the habit of asking."

  Powell hefted his flintlock. "This old girl and some powder and shot and a good knife are all I really need."

  Davis knew that to be true. And when it came right down to it, Powell could survive with even less. His presence here today was proof of that.