Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  They reached the boundary of the town. “Well, boy, we’re here,” Ford said.

  Clardy turned and faced him. “What will happen now?”

  “Well, seems to me the best thing you can do is saunter back the way we came. Find that horse of yours and head on.”

  “You’re letting me go?”

  “I am. I’ve plumb lost the mood for shooting bum-stumbles.”

  “You walked me all the way here just to set me free?”

  “You don’t like that notion?”

  “I like it, I like it. I don’t understand why you’re doing it, that’s all.”

  “Mercy, boy. Pure and simple mercy.”

  “Well … thank you. I’m grateful.”

  Ford’s demeanor became more solemn. “Mr. Tyler, there was a time when I was a bit like you myself. Poor, alone … and one time I done the very thing you tried to do today. And that one time a man showed me the same mercy I’m showing you now. After that I didn’t steal no more. Now you do the same.”

  “I will, sir. I’ll not try to steal another thing from now till the day I die.” Overwhelmed with gratitude, Clardy meant it.

  “That’s good.” Ford dumped the powder out of Clardy’s rifle pan. “Here’s your rifle. Off with you now.”

  Clardy headed back down the road on the run, realizing how close a call he had just experienced. For the moment he forgot his poverty and lack of prospects. All he cared about was that he was free.

  His horse was where he left it. Mounting, he rode back up the road toward Stanford. He felt humbled and small.

  By the time he reached the town again, snow was falling. He looked around for Ford but did not see him. He ate some of the food remaining in his saddlebags and went on through the town, wondering how much snow there would be.

  The farther he went, the harder the snow fell. It had piled up to seven inches by dusk, and the heavy clouds and continuing precipitation grew worrisome. He could find shelter in the woods somewhere and make it through the storm, but he despised such trials.

  Darkness came and the storm became a full-scale blizzard. Flakes struck hard against his face, smarting like a rain of flint. His coat was inadequate to keep him warm, and the driving wind made the brim of his hat flap. His ears grew cold, began to hurt, then lost all feeling.

  I should have stayed in Stanford. I’ll freeze out here.

  He began to look for shelter, natural or otherwise. But this stretch of road was lonely. He saw nothing. He was beginning to consider such desperate measures as killing his horse and huddling for warmth against its body when through the darkness he saw a flicker of light, very faint.

  He headed for it, praying it would be a cabin and that whoever was in it would be kind enough to let a poor suffering traveler in.

  It was a cabin! Clardy headed for it, huddling in his coat. When he dismounted, he discovered that his feet were numb and he could hardly stand. He staggered to the cabin, hammered on the door, then called through it.

  “Shelter! A traveler needing shelter …”

  He heard movement inside, then the sound of the latch bar being lifted. When the door swung open, Clardy found himself looking into one of the most lovely young female faces he had ever seen. There were others in the room behind her, but this beautiful visage was so distracting, even to a nearly frozen man, that he didn’t even glance at them.

  “I’m nigh froze,” he said through chattering teeth. “If you could spare some shelter, this traveler would be mighty grateful.”

  “Come in, come in before you fall down!” the young woman said, stepping aside. She turned to a boy of about twelve who stood just behind her. “John, you can see to the horse. Get it into the stable and feed it.”

  The boy threw on a coat and hat and obediently plunged out into the snow. Clardy hadn’t taken his eyes off the young woman. Couldn’t, it seemed. He was entranced.

  “She’s a fine young lady, eh, Mr. Tyler?”

  The man’s voice caused Clardy to turn on his frozen feet so quickly that he staggered. Across the room the speaker rose from a chair near the fire, grinning. Clardy’s expression did not change, but it was only because his face was too frozen to move. In fact he was quite shaken to see who the man was.

  “Still the bum-stumble, I see! Come over here by the blaze, Mr. Tyler. I’m glad to know that you found my company so pleasing that you’ve come for more of it. I didn’t figure to see you, but you’re welcome in my home. That’s right, young man, I’ll not turn you away. No man should have to be out in such fearsome weather. That’s my daughter Dulciana who let you in. The boy seeing to your beast is my boy John, and this here is my wife, Amy.”

  “Pleased to meet you folks,” Clardy mumbled, staggered to realize that of all places fate might have led him, it had chosen the home of Isaac Ford. “I’m grateful for the shelter.”

  Isaac Ford came to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Folks tend to be kind, if a man just comes asking, as you did. When he comes demanding, or trying to steal, that’s when the trouble comes. But there’ll be no trouble tonight. Just a warm fire and good food. From the look of you, you’ll be getting both just in time. But I think you’ll be fine, if your toes ain’t so froze that they mortify.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Many miles behind his brother, Thias began building his shelter at the first sign the storm was going to develop into a blizzard. He knew woods and weather, how to read the signs. By the time the worst of the snowstorm hit, his horse was secured in a protective thicket and he himself was nearby, securely lodged inside a thick cocoon of leaves heaped onto a frame made with sticks he had laid up against a long, arching branch that thrust out from the trunk of a fallen tree. He left only enough space inside to accommodate his body, his rifle, and what little baggage he carried. The shelter was accessible by a single opening just big enough for him to wriggle into backward. Once inside, he covered the entrance hole with a plug door he had made by bending a flexible branch into a circle. He bound it so it held the shape, wove in sticks, wicker-style, and stuffed the frame with leaves.

  Thias performed the work sadly, thinking back on how his grandfather had taught him to build such shelters when he was just a boy and they had hunted together frequently. Hard to believe that Hiram Tyler was dead; Thias still couldn’t get a grasp on the fact of it. It still seemed, and probably would seem for a long time yet, that he should be able to go back home and find the old man busily cussing Clardy for whatever his latest offense of negligence was.

  Clardy. Thias wondered if he would be able to find him, wondered if it made sense to be going to all this trouble to fulfill a dying old man’s last request. Kentucky was a vast place, and Clardy had a good lead on him. Perhaps it would be more sensible to let Clardy go his way in the hope that one day he would come home to the farm and …

  But no. Once again Thias reminded himself that there was no farm left to come home to. He had sold it. Maybe that had been a mistake. It was too late to think about that now. His course was set. He had pledged to find Clardy, and could do nothing else. Clardy had to know that his grandfather was dead, that the Harpe brothers he feared were no longer about Knoxville. What was more, he had money coming to him from the sale of the farm, money nestled at the moment at Thias’s feet, inside one of his saddlebags. What could he do but go on?

  He nibbled on a biscuit from his packs and did his best to get comfortable inside his shelter. Here and there the wind managed to find its way through the three-foot-thick leaf covering, and he fidgeted about, rearranging leaves here and there to plug the holes until at last his shelter was as well-insulated as he could make it. Ideally, he would have built a fire outside, with a screen to throw back the heat toward the door, but the heavy snowfall would make the fire hard to keep going. His trapped body heat would have to be sufficient for tonight.

  He slept, and dreamed he was a boy again, out hunting with his grandfather.

  He opened his eyes abruptly, startled without knowing why. The muted little r
ays of light stabbing in here and there in the shelter told him that night had passed and the sun was up. He sat up as far as the low roof would let him and listened, trying to hear again whatever it was that had roused him.

  “Oh, lordy, lordy, oh help me, somebody.…”

  Thias gently pushed open the plug door; snow fell in. He peered out over a thickly blanketed white landscape. He heard the voice again—“Lordy, oh my lordy”—and felt very disturbed.

  He knew that voice; at the least, he had heard it before.

  He drew up his rifle and edged out a little bit so that his head poked out of the door. Looking around, he spotted a man running wildly through the snow, out on the road about a hundred feet away. The man stopped, looking about as if maybe he sensed another person nearby. “Help me!” he yelled. “Somebody help me—Jack’s under the tree, he’s caught bad!”

  Merciful heaven, Thias thought, that’s Billy French! He’s full-grown now, but that’s none other than old Billy himself, sure as the world!

  He pushed his way out of the shelter and came to his feet, bolstering his stiff, cold form up with his rifle. “Billy!” he shouted.

  The man on the road yelled in fright and turned with a jerk toward Thias.

  “Is that … it is! Thias Tyler, it is you, ain’t it?”

  “Aye, Billy, aye. What’s the matter?”

  “Thias, what are you doing out … never mind it—come quick, Thias! It’s right atop Jack, and he’s caught! Come quick—I can’t get him out from under it alone, and I’m afraid he’ll die!”

  Confused, cold, and still muddled with sleepiness, Thias plunged as fast as he could through the thick snow and joined Billy French on the road. “Billy, I’d heard you might be dead,” he said.

  “I ain’t dead, Thias, but Jack will be if we don’t pull him free. You’re a godsend, yes you are! Come with me, fast!”

  A godsend, French had called him. Ironic words. As he hurried along beside the thickly built, red-bearded man, Thias recalled the time when French had been no less than a godsend himself.

  The horrifying incident was yet perfectly vivid in Thias’s memory. Clardy and Thias had been twelve and thirteen years old, respectively. They had been swimming in a swimming hole they had created by damming part of Beaver Creek, and like typical boys, had been careless. Clardy dared Thias to dive into the hole from an overhanging limb, and Thias did it, barely missing smashing his skull on a submerged log in the process. Victorious, he had risen from the water and dared Clardy to do the same, and together he and Clardy climbed back out onto the limb, and Clardy had dived headlong. He did not miss the submerged log. His head smacked against it sharply, and his limp form floated out in the swimming hole facedown.…

  And Thias had frozen. Upon the branch, he stared in horror at his brother’s unmoving form. His mind told him to leap in and drag him out, but his body didn’t respond. He perched there, gaping like a fool.…

  Billy French, at that time a neighbor, had come along and seen Clardy in the water. He plunged in fully clothed and dragged him out. Clardy’s head was broken and bleeding. As Thias watched, French turned Clardy over, drained the water from his lungs, and pounded on his chest until the breathing started. The next thing Thias knew, French was dragging him out of the water, too. He had fainted up there on the branch and fallen deadweight into the swimming hole, fortunately missing for a second time the log that injured Clardy.

  He and Clardy had come through it alive and without permanent injury, thanks to Billy French. From that day until the time some years later when young French and his widower father moved away from Beaver Creek up to the valley of the Powell River, Thias had been Billy French’s staunchest defender. Billy had always been an odd fellow who behaved in bizarre ways, and he suffered many taunts from other boys in the region. Many was the time that Thias’s fists had intervened to punish those who dared torment Billy French in his presence. Billy had saved his and Clardy’s lives, and Thias considered him a hero.

  Billy led him to a little camp about a half mile from Thias’s own shelter. The situation at once became clear.

  Billy and a partner had camped in a grove of evergreens, taking refuge from the snow beneath the overhanging boughs. Their campfire still smoldered nearby. One of the older trees had become overladen with snow and fallen, and Billy’s partner had been caught beneath it. All that was visible of him at the moment was his left shoulder and head. The rest of him was firmly lodged beneath the heavy fallen tree.

  “I couldn’t lift it alone, Thias. I had to find help. We’d seen fresh tracks all along the road, so I knew somebody was ahead somewhere. I ran calling and looking—I’m mighty glad it was you, Thias. Help me now—we’ve got to get this tree off before it crushes the life from him.”

  Thias was surprised when the man under the tree spoke in a gruff tone. “I ain’t dying. Just stuck. That’s all.”

  “Well, sir, we’ll get you free,” Thias replied.

  It took a monumental effort, but with Thias and French pushing together, they managed to move the heavy tree far enough for the man to pull his legs free and then roll clear. They let the tree fall back into place, then stood catching their breath.

  The formerly trapped man stood, wincing, and moved his legs about carefully, then with more vigor. “Nothing busted,” he announced.

  “That’s good,” Thias said.

  “You saved his life, Thias,” French said. “Just like me saving you back at the swimming hole years ago. You remember that, don’t you?”

  “I surely do. I’m still as grateful to you today as ever.”

  “You two know each other?” the third man said.

  Billy French told the story, giving a few details differently than Thias recalled them and emphasizing Thias’s fainting and inability to help his own brother a little more than Thias would have liked, but all in all he told the story correctly. Listening to French talk was interesting to Thias—he was the same old Billy French, eager, verbose, vaguely childish, still seeing the world in very simple terms.

  The other man introduced himself as Jack Waller, “man of the road.” Thias took that to mean he had no fixed place of residence. Shaking Waller’s hand, he said, “I’m Thias Tyler. I live … I did live in the Beaver Creek valley, near Knoxville. I reckon I’m a man of the road myself now.”

  “You’ve left Beaver Creek?” Billy French asked.

  “Yes. I sold the farm. My grandpap died just a few days back, Billy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. My daddy, he died, too. But he’s still with me.”

  Thias wasn’t sure what that latter comment meant. He didn’t ask.

  “Sold your farm, you say?” Waller asked.

  “Yes … sold it and put the money in the hands of an attorney to hold in trust for me and my brother.” He added the latter because he realized that it wouldn’t do to have a stranger knowing he was actually carrying money in his saddlebags—saddlebags even now unguarded back in his shelter, he realized.

  “I’ve had a bit of money in my own time,” Waller said. “I’ve never been good at keeping it, though.”

  “Aye, yes.” Thias wasn’t comfortable with this line of talk. Maybe “man of the road” meant more than he thought. He recalled Clardy’s ambitions about becoming a highwayman, and wondered if Waller was of that ilk himself.

  “I’m sorry to hear your father is gone,” Thias said to French to shift the subject. “He was a good man, and I know you were right close to him.” The latter was an understatement. Billy French had worshipped his father in his boyhood days. Brackston French had been no more than a poor dirt farmer, but the motherless Billy, in his simple devotion, had always talked about him like he was the bravest, wisest, greatest man who ever lived.

  “Billy carries his father’s skull around with him now,” Waller said.

  “What?”

  “His father’s skull—Billy carries it around with him. Keeps it in his saddlebag and sticks a pipeful of tobacco in its mouth after supper eve
ry night.”

  Thias was stunned, and wondered if Waller was joking.

  “That’s what I meant when I said he’s still with me,” French said happily. “Everywhere I go, there’s Daddy in the saddlebag.”

  “He’s foolish in the mind,” Waller explained. “No sense at all. I guess you already knowed that, though.”

  “Aye … well, I wouldn’t want to say that.…” Thias realized he was staring at French. His father’s skull in a saddlebag—that went well beyond Billy’s oddest boyhood behaviors. That was downright strange.

  “I reckon I’ll get back to my own camp,” Thias said.

  “Don’t go off, Thias,” French implored. “Stay with us. Eat some victuals.”

  “I’ve got traveling to do, Billy. I’m trying to find Clardy. He headed up this way sometime back, and I need to find him and tell him that Grandpap is dead.”

  “You’re traveling into Kentucky?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are, too! We’re going all the way to the Ohio River.”

  “Are you?”

  “Jack knows some people up there who he says we’ll be working with.”

  “That right? Well, good fortune to you both. But I’d still best be getting on my way …”

  “You can fetch your things and come on back, can’t you?” Waller said. “The fact is, Mr. Tyler, that it ain’t safe for a man to travel alone in this country.”

  “That’s right,” French chimed in. “There’s robbers and such.”

  “Well, I know there are, but—”

  “No need to talk more, Mr. Tyler. You’ll be riding with us. It’s the only sensible way.”

  Thias’s instincts were against this. Waller was a stranger, and something about him put Thias on warning, and Billy French, though familiar and seemingly harmless enough, wasn’t the traveling companion Thias would have chosen. Anyone who carried his dead father’s skull around in a saddlebag had to be firing with a loose flint. But even so, Waller was right about the dangers of traveling alone. It was common for folk to camp out around the Cumberland Gap just to await other travelers they could join up with for the journey through the dangerous, forested “desert” country between the gap and the first real settlements of Kentucky.