by B. B. Oak
“So Peck must have been scalped as he lay on his stomach,” I said.“Why was he then turned over to lie on his back, I wonder?”
“The better for him to look upon his own head of hair waved in front of his eyes, I conjecture,” Henry said. “Last night’s quarter moon and bright stars offered more than enough light for the killer to perform his operation and for Peck to clearly see its grisly results.”
Hearing this, Beers groaned and leaned back over the railing. Finch burst out with several soldierly expletives of disgust.
We gently lay the body back down, and I pointed to the bloody wounds that had soaked through the shirtfront and waistcoat. “After Peck had been tormented to the murderer’s satisfaction, the murderer killed him with multiple thrusts through the chest and into the heart.”
Beers jolted toward us on unsteady feet, looking around through the pillars of the belvedere with round, frightened eyes. “Do you think the slayer remains in the vicinity?”
“Why linger?” I said.“This deed was done some time ago.” I pointed to the pool of blood. “See how the surface has congealed ? And the blood and tissue on the skull are still viscous but not fresh. That clearly indicates several hours have passed since exposure to the air.” I placed my hand on the neck of the corpse. “The body has not yet cooled to air temperature.” I moved the jaw open and closed. “Rigor has just begun to stiffen the joints there.” I stood and took out a handkerchief, wiped my hands, and checked my pocket timepiece. “I conclude he has been dead four to eight hours. It is coming on seven now. So say between midnight and three in the morning.”
“Lieutenant Finch,” Henry said, “when did you last see Captain Peck alive?”
“About nine o’clock last evening,” Finch said. “After we came back from town, we gathered in the parlor before retiring. Peck did not appear well. Mrs. Vail left us, and we men had a glass of port together. Mr. Vail alluded to the unpleasantness with the Indian, but Peck did not wish to discuss it. He told Vail they had more important matters to discuss concerning their business venture, and since I had no part in it, I retired to my room. I slept most soundly and arose early to take a ride in the morning cool. The rest you know.”
“Please observe, constable,” Henry told Beers. “There are two sets of bloody boot prints here. The lieutenant’s sharp-toed riding boots”—he pointed at them for Beers’s edification—“and these.” He indicated the more numerous round-toed boot prints around the body and leading away to the steps of the belvedere. Henry then looked at me. “No distinguishing marks in the right sole, unlike the boot prints we observed on the cliff.”
“Therefore Peck’s murderer was not Caleb’s murderer,” I said.
Henry shrugged. “Cannot a murderer have more than one pair of boots?”
Beers sat down on the bench below the rail where I had examined Peck less than a week ago and stared up at us defiantly. “Why waste time blathering about bloody footprints? Ain’t it plain as the hand in front of your face who did this? ’Twas that damn Injun. Half the town heard him threaten to kill and scalp Peck.”
“There is one problem with what you say,” Henry carefully stated, studying Peck’s body. “Dr. Walker has concluded that Peck was scalped before he was killed, not after.”
“There you go again, counting angels on a pinhead, Mr. Thoreau,” the constable said. “Before or after? After or before? What difference does it make?”
“Plenty, if you are an Indian.” Henry turned to Finch. “Lieutenant, are you familiar with the Native American scalping ritual?”
“I have seen more than I care to of such barbaric brutality on the frontier,” Finch replied. “Not only do those savages scalp their enemies, but they keep the scalps as hideous trophies. They paint the fleshy sides red, stretch them in hoops, attach them to poles, and present them to their sweethearts like you would give your best gal a bouquet of posies. Worse yet, the females wave ’em around like ladies’ fans whilst they dance.”
“God help us!” Beers cried. “How can wimmen be so wanton?”
“Never mind about that,” Henry said. “It is when the victim is scalped that is of primary importance. I have read that Indians believe scalping a foe before death will not affect his immortal spirit. However, if he is scalped after his body dies, his spirit is extinguished and can nevermore return. The entire purpose of scalping an enemy is to kill his soul.”
Finch nodded. “I have heard as much from our Indian scouts.”
“And I heard as much from Trump himself,” Henry said. “He told Peck he deserved first a miserable death and then a scalping so that his spirit would also perish.”
“So there you are!” Beers said. “The Injun said he would do it, and he did it. We are right back to where we started, despite all your fancy talk.”
“But you are missing my point,” Henry said, almost out of patience. “Allow me to explain it to you again.”
“Do not bother,” Beers said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Such obscure knowledge as you are spouting holds no water for me, nor will it impress the jury.” He stood up at the sound of horse hooves and went forth to direct Justice Phyfe’s rockaway carriage, along with a buckwagon full of men, to the belvedere. The Coroner’s Jury had arrived.
The jurors concluded soon enough that murder most foul had been done, and they were sure to a man who had done it. Many had been on the Green last evening and heard with their own ears Trump threaten Peck. Henry might as well have been talking in a foreign language for all the attention they gave to his theory concerning scalping and souls. Justice Phyfe summarily announced a warrant for Trump’s arrest and gave authority to Beers to form a search party. Finch and most of the men on the jury immediately volunteered to take part in the search, and Phyfe volunteered his hunting dogs and guns. He also proposed sounding the cannon to muster the town militiamen, who had muskets at the ready.
“This is not a militia matter,” Henry said. “Plumford is not under attack.”
“It is under the attack of a wild Indian!” Phyfe shouted back at him. “He savagely killed one of our most respected citizens, and he may claim many more white victims if we do not stop him.”
“Such talk as that will only stir up fear and hate,” Henry cautioned him.
“Are you siding with the enemy, sir? If so, get out of my town.”
Henry did not bother to argue with him further. Instead, he urged me to leave posthaste with him. “We must find Trump before the mob does,” he said as we drove off in the gig. “Many men with many guns cannot bode well for him.”
“I agree, but what chance do we stand to find Trump before they do?”
“We stand a very good chance,” Henry assured me. “No man in the search party, I wager, is as good a tracker as I am. The hunting dogs, however, will have an advantage over me.” He tapped his nose. “Large though my scent organ may be, it is not superior to theirs. Fortunately, my intelligence is.”
He speculated that the search would commence at the crime site and proposed we begin ours back in town, on the path he had seen Trump take after he’d made his threat to Peck over twelve hours ago.
Cold though his trail was, we picked up on it almost immediately. It helped that the river path was soft and Trump was barefoot. He had left the house without his shoes and as far as Henry could discern, he had not been carrying a knife upon his person.
Henry led the way upriver, sometimes stopping to kneel and bend his face close to the ground to examine it better. In the distance we heard the cannon near the old Powder House go off, calling the town militiamen to service. Neither of us bothered to remark upon it, so intent were we on tracing Trump’s progress. Henry found where he had veered off the path into the woods, and we followed, climbing up the steep bank along a rivulet that was shaded by thick ferns. Here we had to proceed slowly, Henry moving from a mud smear to a bent frond to a bit of moss pulled out of place by a passing foot. Then we found Trump’s red head wrap hanging from a branch.
“He
is going along haphazardly,” Henry said, “scarcely caring where each stride will take him. For that we are most fortunate. If he wished, I am sure he could pass along with nary a trace left behind, but he does not seem concerned about being followed.”
Trump had moved in a sinuous curve up the wooded hill and so did we, first along, then away from, and finally across the now scarcely visible creek. Less than an hour later we found him. He was seated on a jumble of mossy boulders and beneath him a spring that was the source of the rivulet softly bubbled out of the cleft at the rock base.
He looked up at the sound of our tread but did not move a muscle. Nor did he speak when we sat down beside him on the rocks. I observed that he was in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion.
“You do not seem surprised to see us, Trump,” I said.
“I heard you coming a good while ago.”
“Are you all right?” I tried to examine his head wound, but he jerked away.
“Leave me be,” he said. “I want some time alone. You shouldn’t have come looking for me.”
“Be thankful we found you before others did,” Henry said. “There is a warrant out for your arrest, and you are being hunted down.”
“For what? Crumpling a white man’s starched collar? I could have gone ahead and wrung Peck’s neck, but I did not. I got better plans for him.”
“Peck is dead,” I told Trump.
His deep, dark eyes, blank a moment before, registered astonishment. “No!” he cried. “You mean he just up and died?”
“He was murdered,” Henry said.
Rage replaced astonishment. “Who killed him?”
“Most people think you did,” Henry said.
Trump shook his head violently and tore at his hair. “I should have when I had the chance. How was he done in?”
“First off he was scalped alive,” Henry said, “and then he was stabbed to death.”
Trump swore vehemently. “Damn fool killer did it ass-backwards.“
This seemed to confirm Henry’s belief that if Trump had been the killer, he would have murdered his victim before scalping him. But it was more than such esoteric proof that convinced me of the young Indian’s innocence. For one thing, he was not in possession of a bloody scalp. Nor was there a trace of blood on his person. And he was barefoot, yet there had been only bloody boot prints around Peck’s body.
“But I am even a bigger fool,” Trump continued bitterly. “Whoever killed Peck fixed the deed on me, and now I will hang for something I got no satisfaction of doing.”
Henry jumped down from the rocks and began pacing the area, deep in thought. After a few minutes he beckoned to me. So deep was Trump’s dejection that he did not even notice when I left him to join Henry a couple rods away.
“Trump is right. If he is caught, he is doomed,” Henry told me. “What chance does he stand of getting a fair trial with evidence and sentiment so strongly against him? The only way out for him is to escape to Canada on the Underground Railroad, and I will see to it that he does.”
His scheme surprised me. “You would break the law to help Trump?”
“Of course. I have done it in the past to help runaway slaves, and I will do it again.”
“I will help you,” I said.
“I thought as much. We must leave here with Trump immediately. When the searchers fail to find him in the vicinity of Peck’s house, they will do as we have done and trail him from town.”
Even as Henry spoke there drifted up through the trees the sound of baying hounds and men shouting from downriver. Trump must have heard them as well for he jumped to his feet, leapt from the boulder, and took off uphill through the trees. He was gone from sight in a trice, and we dared not call after him for fear we would alert the searchers.
“He is weak and has little chance,” I said.“If he is caught in the excitement of the chase, he might be beaten or even killed.”
“Let us try to protect him,” Henry said.
We ran up the incline after Trump and came out of the woods to a freshly shorn hayfield. Just ahead Trump was running across the middle of the field toward a woodlot on a higher brow of hill. If he could reach the far woods, beyond which I knew was a swamp where he could find a place to hide, he might have a chance of escape from his pursuers.
But then a horseman came charging onto the field in pursuit of Trump, riding parallel to the group of men fast approaching from below on foot. He easily caught up to Trump and began slashing down at him with his whip. Trump dodged and weaved, confounding both horse and rider, but then he began to slow down. I guessed he must be near collapse.
As Henry and I ran toward them, I saw that the man on the horse was none other than Rufus Badger. When Trump stumbled to the ground, Badger dismounted and began striking him with his whip. Spent though Trump must have been, he managed to stand up again and grab the end of the whip. He nearly threw Badger over as he wrenched at it. But Badger kept his balance and gave Trump a powerful blow to the head that landed him hard down on his back. Badger then drew a coffin-handle bowie knife from his boot. The broad blade looked to be at least a foot in length, and it curved like a nasty smile along the top edge.
“Don’t stab him!” Henry cried out, running between the two men.
“Stand away,” Badger told him. “That filthy redskin murdered my captain, and now I mean to murder him.”
Trump had not moved, and a glance showed me he was unconscious. “We cannot allow you to kill a helpless man,” I said, taking my place beside Henry.
Badger regarded me with mean little eyes that had not a flicker of humanity in them. “I will be most happy to cut you too, Doc. Along with your friend here.”
He waved his big knife in our direction, and the blade glistened in the sunlight. Henry and I stood our ground. I do not know if Badger would have made good his threat, but before he could, the men with the hounds reached us. Badger lowered his knife as the dogs surrounded the fallen Indian in a frenzy of growling and snapping. Trump opened his eyes to their teeth-baring fury but did not seem to notice them. Instead, he sat up and stared intently at Badger, then threw back his head and let out a howl of such chilling resonance and pain that the dogs all drew back. Badger, looking frightened, raised his weapon again.
But now the men from the search party were all upon Trump, binding him with rope enough to secure Goliath. He lay limp and passive as they did this, as though he had given up entirely. But when I looked into his eyes I saw a hot-burning spirit in them that made his black pupils glow like coals.
JULIA’S NOTEBOOK
Monday, 17 August
Trump’s Hearing was held at the Meetinghouse at nine this morning. Constable Beers, dressed in his best frock coat and highest collar, walked Trump down the aisle, keeping a hard grip on his arm. There being no jail in Plumford but for Beers’s storeroom, where he confines a disorderly drunkard on occasion, Trump had spent the night locked up in the abandoned Powder House. He was dirty and disheveled, his shirt torn, his hair matted, his proud face smeared with grime. His hands were bound behind him. His bare feet were shackled. The chain between the ankle irons was short, hindering his stride, and he stumbled. Only one nitwit laughed, but nearly everyone in the packed pews glared at him as he passed. But when I glanced at Granny Tuttle, who was sitting beside me, I saw compassion rather than condemnation in her eyes.
“Shame on them that’s responsible,” she said to me, “for not allowin’ that poor young feller to wash up before comin’ to court.”
“More shame on Justice Phyfe for incarcerating him in the Powder House,” I replied. “That is most inhumane.”
A man in the pew in front of us turned around and regarded me disdainfully. “Do not criticize your betters, missy. Justice Phyfe did right to have that wild animal securely caged.”
“Pray do not refer to a fellow human being as a wild animal, sir,” I told him.
“No Injun is a fellow of mine!” And with that, the man turned his back to me, which I much pr
eferred to gaze upon instead of his ignorant face.
“He don’t even belong to our congregation,” Granny told me in what I suppose she considered a low voice. “Lot of folks here I never seen before, or hain’t seen for a month of Sundays anyways. But I reckon a murder trial is a sight more entertainin’ than a sermon.”
“This isn’t exactly a trial, ma’am,” I explained to her. “It is a Hearing to establish if there is reason to believe Trump killed Captain Peck. If Justice Phyfe decides there is, he will order him held on suspicion of murder until the State Attorney General arrives to preside over a grand jury investigation. And if the grand jury indicts him for murder, Trump will be transferred to the county jail in Concord till the Supreme Court meets there to try the case.”
“Well, ain’t you sharp as a meat ax, Julia.” Granny gave me one of her squint-eyed appraisals. “How come you know so much?”
“Oh, I just ask a lot of questions.”
“You allus did. Whenever you came to the farm you would pester me and Mr. Tuttle with questions. If I told you once, I must’ve told you a dozen times that curiosity kilt the cat.”
“At least a dozen times, ma’am.”
Granny sniffed. “Lot good it did.”
We left off talking, along with everyone else, when Justice Phyfe made his grand entrance through the red-curtained side door at the front of the Meetinghouse. He was dressed in black like a minister, and I half expected him to conduct the Hearing from the pulpit. Instead, he took a seat at the table where the deacons sit during services. Each witness he called sat across from him to give his evidence.
Trump was not allowed to sit. He stood like a statue, his expression blank, as Mr. Vail, the Rev. Mr. Upson, and Henry Thoreau testified. Grandfather was excused from testifying because of his injury, and Justice Phyfe did not require Mrs. Vail or me to bear witness because of our gender. Mr. Vail attested that he and his wife had slept soundly the night of the murder and therefore heard nothing. But both he and Mr. Upson both stated they very clearly had heard Trump threaten to kill and scalp Capt. Peck earlier that evening. When Henry was called to testify, he attempted to explain why he did not think Peck’s scalping had been done by an Indian, but Justice Phyfe interrupted him.