Day after day it was to be the same for them as well. Up before first light to chew on the cold remains of last night’s supper as they rolled their blankets, tied their few belongings over their shoulders, then trudged on across the frosty bayous and skirted the great, stagnant pools encircling the base of each cypress tree, intent on covering as much ground as they could, what with the few hours of daylight the winter granted them.
Every morning the others let Titus lead off, followed closely by the runaway slave. Kingsbury would follow with the others after a few minutes, wanting to assure that they would not frighten off any of the game Bass might run across throughout the day. Most evenings Titus provided fresh game for Beulah to cook over their supper fire. But every now and then they failed to hear a gunshot as twilight came down and the temperature dropped. It was then they would have to content themselves with what they had saved of last’s night meal and hope that something would cross the youngster’s path come the morrow.
Far beyond the Natchez District they emerged from the interminable bayou, at the edge of which stood the Chickasaw Agency,* where the footpath grew worse. Below their feet the soil had become gravelly, eating away at their boots, chewing up Titus’s moccasins, requiring nightly repairs and patching.
“They call this part of the road ‘the Barrens,’” Ovatt declared that first night the landscape changed so drastically. “From here on out to Tennessee, the trail gets a mite rough.”
Bass poked at a blister on his heel with the point of his knife and asked, “Can’t imagine how it’s gonna get any worse.”
The following day they reached what most travelers considered the halfway point of the Natchez Trace: Mclntoshville, named for an early Scottish trader who had come to the Chickasaw to trade but stayed on to father his own dynasty. More commonly known as Tockshish Stand* to the tribe and travelers alike, the village lay some 310 miles from Natchez—the first such village a wayfarer passed in all that distance from the Mississippi. Not another sign of civilization, not one mail carrier, merchant, or party of traders.
From Tockshish the path did grow worse, threading in and out from open woods to sparse sections of inhospitable prairie as the ground rose, becoming more bushy and broken as they ascended the divide that would take them to the Tennessee River, still eighty miles beyond. Up, then down, the Trace led Titus through that unforgiving wilderness, as he listened through each short day only to the sound of his moccasins on the pounded earth, perhaps the haunting crackle of the dried cane as it shook, troubled by the winter wind.
There were times Titus stopped—not so much to rest his feet or to catch his breath—but for no other reason than to turn around and listen, hoping to catch the sound of Hezekiah coming up the trail behind him, or to turn around atop a hill and look back, hoping to spot the boatmen and Beulah, plodding along beneath the cold, gray, monotonous sky that each day offered them.
Already December was growing old. Just how old, he had no way of knowing for certain. The way things looked now, he might well be seeing in the new year still caught in this wilderness. A new year, and with it his seventeenth birthday. That afternoon he knocked a turkey cock out of its roost in the bare branches of a beechnut tree. While it wasn’t the finest feast he had provided them, the meal filled their bellies as the gloom of winter’s night closed its fist around them.
“We should be drawing close to the Tennessee,” Ovatt declared as he picked his teeth and wriggled his feet close by the fire’s warmth that night.
“Keep your eye peel’t tomorry,” Kingsbury said, turning to Bass. “The trail takes you down to the river crossing.”
Titus asked, “We gonna have to ford it?”
“Time was, a riverman had to ford it,” Kingsbury replied. “Not no longer. Years back a Scotch feller named Colbert come to trade among the Chickasaws and saw him the chance to make a nice living.”
“King of the roost, that one is now,” Root added.
Kingsbury nodded. “Married into the tribe, built him his ferry, and set himself up right nice.”
Ovatt rubbed his hands together, teeth gleaming in the firelight. “Got him a mess of handsome daughters too!”
“Half-breeds they are,” Root explained with a wink.
“Still as handsome a woman as you’re likely to meet along the trail,” Ovatt declared, then suddenly turned to Beulah. “Pardon me, ma’am. Not meaning that you ain’t a handsome woman … just, that—well, considering you and Kingsbury, see?”
She grinned and dropped her eyes. “I took me no offense, Heman.” Then turned to Bass. “You just watch yourself there at Colbert’s Ferry, Titus. Them half-breed girls got Injun blood in ’em, and there’s no telling what they’ll do when they see a likely young man such as you come round.”
“M-me?”
“Yes, you,” Beulah said. “Don’t you go and run off into the woods with none of ’em.”
“They’ll just as soon slit your throat as wet your honey-dauber,” Root grumbled. Then apologized: “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s me and my awful manners again.”
“What Reuben says is right,” the woman explained. “They’re the sort won’t think twice ’bout lifting a man’s purse or knocking him over the head for his money. They ain’t looking for your hand in marriage.”
“D-daughters,” Titus repeated, sensing that sudden animal urge cross his loins with a delicious electricity.
“Least seven or eight,” Kingsbury declared. “Less’n Papa Colbert’s married any of ’em off since’t last summer when we was through here.”
“Why would he go an’ do a fool thing like that?” Root demanded. “Them girls is the best he’s got to offer—’sides that river ferry.”
“Reuben’s right,” Ovatt agreed. “Men on the Trace allays look forrad to talking with them girls, dancing some with ’em, after hunnerds of miles of no womankind to speak of.”
“Wenches is what they are,” the woman said. “The devil’s own handmaidens.”
“Did you say dancing?” Titus asked, staring off into the distance.
Why, he had never been allowed to dance before. As much as music made his feet move, his folks had for all those years enforced a strong proscription against dancing during every visit to the Longhunters Fair, where he had always contented himself watching others jig and clog, reel and waltz to the merry music.
“Ah, hell,” Beulah groaned as she glanced over to find that faraway look in the youngster’s eyes. “Looks like we already lost this’un to that devil Colbert’s half-breed daughters!”
* Present-day site of Jackson, Mississippi.
* Present-day site of Houston, Mississippi.
* Present-day site of Tupelo, Mississippi.
16
The more Titus looked over those young half-breed Colbert women, the more he realized these dusky-skinned maidens of the wilderness appealed to him.
Something about the high, pronounced cheekbones not only seemed a deeper rose in contrast to the rest of their facial color, but also accented those big almond-shaped eyes. Dark as rain-polished chert, large and expressive, doelike in the way they took his measure. And every last one of those five daughters knew how to use those eyes on their male visitors to their advantage, every one of them—from the oldest at nineteen down to the youngest just turned twelve. None had taken after their mother, a squat, rotund woman; it seemed all had their father’s blood when it came to the matter of height: even the youngest already taller than her pear-shaped mama.
When Titus and the rest reached that point on the trail where the Natchez Trace emerged from the timber on the side of the hill overlooking the river crossing, they could see family patriarch George Colbert working with two of the girls beside their big cabin below.
“That’s Colbert’s Stand,” Heman Ovatt announced as the entire party came to a halt and looked down at the clearing, which extended to the river’s edge, that large cabin joined by a small barn and four huts all clustered around an open yard.
“Seems
he’s got two of ’em chopping wood for him,” Reuben Root declared, his flat hand shading his eyes. The afternoon sun was just then slipping out of the belly of the low clouds—its first appearance in more than three days.
“The man’s got the kind of help I could use,” Kingsbury said, then quickly glanced over to find Beulah glaring at him. “I mean to say—”
“I know damned well what you meant,” she growled in a huff.
“Let’s go get us some victuals,” Reuben suggested, going around Titus and Hezekiah on the worn trail, starting off down the last fifty yards of slope that would take them to the cleared, open ground where stood Colbert’s Ferry.
By the time the boatmen reached the packed earth of that great yard, George Colbert stood waiting to greet them—flanked by his wife and all their daughters, in addition to three young men, all in their early twenties.
Down there Titus finally saw the large main cabin was in fact two smaller cabins that stood some fifteen feet apart. Each had its own door facing the yard, as well as a door that fed into a covered hallway or dog run, which joined the two. Both roofs sprouted an unusually large chimney, although a trail of gray smoke billowed from only one at this hour. It was plain to see that in places the logs fit tightly together; in others there was as much as four inches in gap where they had been chinked with wood chips held in place with dried clay. Like most cabins on the frontier, Colbert’s had planed oak doors—hung without a single piece of hardware in evidence. Instead, they were held together with pegged cross braces and swung on wooden hinges.
Even as cold as it was, three of the girls stood in the damp breeze that afternoon without benefit of jerkin or coat. One by one Titus quickly appraised each one from the corner of his eye as Kingsbury and Colbert discussed the terms of their lodging for the night—finding that it excited him to see how those cold, hardened nipples pressed against their blouses. Three of the five wore long skirts gathered at the waist beneath wide, colorful sashes. But the two who most captured Titus’s admiring attention preferred men’s britches. Never before had he seen a woman wear a man’s clothing.
“What ye want done with your Negra for the night?” asked Scottish-born George Colbert, his brogue heavy with the mist of the moors.
Kingsbury turned and regarded Hezekiah for a moment, seeming to cogitate on it until Bass grabbed the bald man’s arm and declared, “He stays with us.”
“That right?” Colbert turned from the youngster to gaze at Kingsbury. “The Negra staying with ye?”
“I s’pose—”
Colbert suggested, “I can have my boys see to him: lock him in one of the cabins, or we can tie him up outside.”
“L-like he was no more’n a dog?” Titus demanded.
Appearing taken aback by the brassy youngster, Colbert rocked on his heels, saying, “Why, lad—he’s barely more’n a animal himself. An’ ye don’t want him running off while the bunch of you’re sleeping, now—do ye?”
“He’ll stay with me,” Titus protested, glaring at the Scotsman.
Kingsbury nodded with a shrug. “The Negra stays with us.”
“Suit yourself,” Colbert replied with a raise of one disapproving eyebrow. He turned to point at the two huts directly across the yard from the cabins. “Them two. C’mon—I’ll show ye where the woman can stay. And the men can stay in the cabin aside her.”
“I’ll sleep in with them,” Beulah said, glancing at Hames.
“Now, that’s up to the bunch of ye. I only be offering the woman a private place of her own.”
“We’ll take the two cabins,” Kingsbury said firmly, glancing quickly at Beulah. “The rest can bunk in together, and I can allays bunk in with the woman here—making sure she feels safe, having someone around at night.”
“Like I said before: suit yourself. Them two the best cabins we got. Bear robes and grass pallets to lay your wee bodies down tonight. Won’t find nothing softer, all the way down to Natchez.” Colbert turned to wave away his eight offspring, saying to them, “Ye children know what needs doing—now, be off and do it. Look yonder,” and he pointed. “Seems we got folks coming down to the landing on t’other side.”
With the rest Titus peered across the Tennessee River to the north shore where a half-dozen mounted men appeared from the timber and came to a halt by the water’s edge where Colbert had cleared away the brush and graded the bank to form a landing for his ferry.
“I’ll be off to see these fellows across,” he explained. “Ye make yourselves at home in those first two cabins.”
“They’re brazen women,” Beulah murmured a moment later when Colbert had turned away to march down to join his sons poling the ferry across the river toward the waiting horsemen. Ovatt, Root, and Titus ducked inside the first of the two small huts, while Hezekiah stood outside and waited dutifully. Kingsbury and Beulah went to inspect the other. Each structure stood some ten feet square, and like the main cabins were constructed of chinked logs.
“Least there’s a fire pit in the corner, and a hole up over it in them shakes on the roof,” Kingsbury commented minutes later as he emerged into the fading sunlight to find Titus waiting beside Hezekiah, with that two-cornered cap of black silk twill perched upon the slave’s bald head. The pilot turned to the woman, asking, “What you mean they’re brazen women?”
“Them Colbert girls: they get more daring with their eyes every time I come through here,” Beulah clucked. “Did you see the way they held themselves for all you men to gander?”
“One thing I’m sure of—Titus here saw all he wanted to,” Kingsbury said with a grin and a wink in Bass’s direction.
They peered down the low bank to the ferry, which was just then reaching the far side. One of the young men on board leaped onto the bank as the flatboat came close enough, carrying a long hawser over his shoulder, which he looped round and round a tree stump, tying up to take on passengers.
Kingsbury laid an arm over Beulah’s shoulder without a complaint from her.
Heman Ovatt said, “What daughters Colbert ain’t married off likely make him a good living—sold out by the night to keep travelers warm.”
“Just like a livery owner,” the woman said under her breath.
“He do that?” Titus asked innocently.
“Shit,” Kingsbury grumbled. “There you two go, giving this youngster the wrong ideas. No, Titus—I don’t think his girls are whores.”
“They’re just as brazen as them poxy trollops what work that gunboat you boys raided at Natchez,” Beulah replied.
The pilot scoffed at that. “Now, you all been by here enough to know Colbert makes a good ’nough living on that ferry of his ’thout putting his own daughters out like common lay-down women.”
“Damned pretty, ain’t they, Titus?” Root strode up from the other dirt-floored hut.
“Glass windows and a glass pane in every door,” Beulah clucked, turning to regard the cabins again. “I should say this family’s making a fine living off travelers like us.”
“I’d rather pay my fifty cents and ride over on his goddamned ferry,” Kingsbury retorted, “than ever again have to ford the Tennessee on foot in the winter.”
“Or summer,” Heman agreed.
“For the devil!” Root exclaimed. “With the money I’m carrying, sure as hell I’d sink like a rock.”
“The man’s due what he’s got, Beulah,” Kingsbury tried soothing her. “He come out here to the wilderness many a year ago to trade with the Chickasaws in these parts—an’ he’s worked hard for everything he’s got him today.”
“Looks like the man married smart, though,” the woman said sourly.
“Who put the goddamned bee under your bonnet?” Hames said, wagging his head. “The tribes got ’em a treaty says if full-bloods don’t run the stands, then only half-breeds and squaw men like Colbert can make their living on Injun land.” Kingsbury turned away to regard the last of the six riders urging his skittish horse onto the ferry. Hames quickly patted the waistband of his ca
nvas britches, saying, “Can’t ever blame a man for wanting to get enough money ahead to make life easier for hisself, now—can you, Beulah?”
“See there,” Root said. “He’s just made himself six dollars, bringing over them riders and their horses.”
Beulah squinted at the landing in the fading light. “Who you s’pose pushing south on the Trace this time of year?”
They all turned their attention to the ferry heaving away from the north bank beneath the thick rope strung from shore to shore, each end attached to a great tree on either bank, while the ferry itself was hooked to that rope with another that slid along it, which prevented the flat, unwieldy craft from being swept downriver by the force of the Tennessee’s current.
“Maybe just some folks looking to find some warmer weather,” Kingsbury commented with a shudder as a biting wind came up. “C’mon, fellas. Let’s get us some of that wood took inside afore they call us all to supper.”
While most stands along the Natchez Trace offered both bed and board for the night, which included a supper of such questionable taste that it was guaranteed to deaden even the hungriest man’s appetite, Colbert’s Stand was a different matter altogether. Over time the old man’s squaw had learned something about the proper feeding of a white man from her Scottish husband, combining that knowledge with her native Chickasaw recipes. Although the family patriarch had gone so far as to nail down a rough-hewn puncheon floor in the family’s sleeping cabin, the floor in the combination kitchen-dining room was in no way fancier than the floors of those sleeping huts provided their guests: bare earth pounded as smooth and solid as any clay tile beneath thousands of feet across the years.
“I’ll pay you good money for that Negra of yours,” one of the horsemen offered over a dinner of white beans and corn cakes, some slabs of salted pork simmered in the beans for a hearty flavor.
“Not selling,” Kingsbury replied around a mouthful of the savory beans.
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