by Cameron Judd
She wished that Isaac Ford had picked some other lawyer to come jog his friend free of the jail tonight.
Clardy slept with the kind of dreamless, deep slumber that left him feeling tired when he awakened. He sat up, yawned, and finger-combed his hair. It needed a trimming, something he decided he would see to now that he was in a town. Tying it behind his head with a bit of twine, he rose and went out onto the open part of the flatboat.
Ford was standing on the dock, a bleary-eyed, hung-over McCracken at his side. They were talking to another man, whom Clardy had never seen before. Not being in the mood to converse, Clardy sat down and let the sun bathe over his face. The air was chilly today. He went back to his bed, retrieved and donned his coat, then reemerged in time to see Ford shaking the stranger’s hand.
The stranger left, and Ford came back onto the boat. McCracken came, too, pushing past Clardy and heading for his own bed. The two slaves busied themselves elsewhere on the boat, keeping their distance from their master.
Ford said, “’Morning, Clardy. You were still sleeping like the dead when I got up this morning.”
“I wish you’d have wakened me. I can’t get the sleep out of my head now. Who was that man?”
“His name is Carter. A buyer for our horses.”
“Did he take our asking price?”
“Indeed, though with one provision. We have to ship the horses on to New Orleans, as soon as we can do it.”
“New Orleans … but I need to stay here.”
“I know. Clardy, maybe I should have talked to you first, but I went ahead and made the bargain.”
“But you know that—”
“Hold up. I know you need to stay. So I propose that you do that, and that me and McCracken ship the horses on down the river. Does the notion of staying here on your own for a spell bother you?”
Clardy thought it over. “No … just have to shift my thinking about, that’s all. I’d figured you and me both would be here.”
“Clardy, let me tell you something further I been thinking on. I don’t want to go back to Nashville. I like it around here. I might want to buy me some land, maybe down about New Orleans. It’s going to be part of the United States by the end of the year, after all. I’d considered doing some looking thereabouts, and taking the horses there gives me a good excuse to do it:”
“When did you start thinking that way?”
“During the voyage. I like this river country. I’m getting old. Wouldn’t mind spending my last days here in a new place.”
“You ain’t old. You’re way too young to be talking about last days.”
“Oh, I ain’t curling up to die. But now’s the time to be making plans before them last days do come calling. Who knows? Maybe I’d find me a pretty Orleans belle and marry. I ain’t averse to the notion. If I like New Orleans, I’d be pleased to stay there the rest of my life. I have no desire to go back to Nashville, and the only way I want to be returned to Kentucky is in a box, to be buried by my wife and children. When my time comes, and if we’re still partners, you see that that’s done. Will you?”
Clardy scratched his stubbly face. This was a lot of serious subject matter to be taking in so early in the morning. “Aye, of course. Whatever you want. But what about right now? What will become of our Cumberland River land if you go moving off?”
“I’d sell it out, I reckon. To you. Or if you didn’t want it, to somebody else. Maybe you could sell your portion, too. Stay with me. Keep on being partners, like we have been.”
“Doing what?”
“Same thing. We can raise and sell horses here as well as there, can’t we? And we’d be right at the heart of trade. We could do well for ourselves.”
Clardy said, “This is going to take some thinking. Right now I’ve got a big enough bite to chew on, just figuring how to find Thias.”
“No hurry. Just something to be mulling. I’m feeling right serious about New Orleans. McCracken’s told me some about it. No other city like it to be found in the world. The last thing I want is to grow old somewhere where life is just the same old thing you’ve always knowed. New Orleans, that would be a different kind of life. Something’s always happening in New Orleans. And there’s money to be made there, if we don’t sit idle. ‘Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep, and an idle soul shall suffer hunger.’”
“More durn proverbs.”
“Can’t help it. It’s in my nature.”
“It’s in your nature to keep the cream forever stirred in the milk, too! I figured seeing some new country might get you out of all that brooding under the thinking tree you’d been doing so much of. But I didn’t figure it would make you want to shove your roots into a whole different hole.”
“You and me both know what I’m doing, Clardy. I’m running from memories. They caught up with me in Tennessee and left me squatted ’neath my thinking tree, thinking about putting a gun to my head. Maybe they won’t catch up with me here, where everything is so different.”
Clardy nodded. “You go on to New Orleans. Sell the horses and look at land. When you settle on what you want to do, come back and tell me. I’ll still be here. I hope I’ll have Thias with me, too.”
“I hope so. And I hope there’s no trouble for him.” He looked away. “Though I don’t see how there couldn’t be.”
Clardy didn’t want to enter that discussion again. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Is there anyplace hereabouts a man can find a good breakfast?”
“How about you and me go look and see?”
“What about McCracken?”
“He’s abed. Got himself drunk as the still house cat last night, and now all he can do is absconderate to his blankets to sleep it off. Shameful. “The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’”
“That’s right,” Clardy said. “And then that man can move to Natchez-under-the-Hill and fit right in. Come on, Mr. Ford. Let’s go find that breakfast.”
CHAPTER 35
The flatboat, laden with horses, pulled out the next day with McCracken’s slaves manning the sweeps, and began its float toward New Orleans. Clardy stood at the waterfront, waving farewell to the beaming Isaac Ford. Ford was obviously happy to be beginning his new adventure in life, so Clardy gave him a broad grin of encouragement as long as his face could be seen. When Ford was out of sight, however, Clardy’s smile faded and he slipped off alone and struggled not to cry.
He would have been ashamed to cry like some child lost in the woods. Clardy felt like such a child at the moment. He and Ford had worked side by side now for years, seldom being parted by more than a few miles’ distance or a few days’ time. Having never had a real father, Clardy perceived himself now as a virtual son of Isaac Ford. But he didn’t fully realize until now just how much he had come to value Ford’s company.
Now Ford was gone and Clardy was left alone in a strange town, ready to embark on some very chancy work.
Ford had given Clardy extra money before he left—another indicator of the father-son relationship that had evolved between them—and cautioned him about how to proceed with his quest. Don’t ask too many questions too soon. If you err, err on the side of caution. If folks strike you as bad, trust your impression; if they strike you as good, mistrust it. Never flash money in a crowd. Don’t be lured off alone, even if someone tells you they have Thias waiting for you in an alley; the town is full of cutthroats and scoundrels.
Clardy found himself a room in the Under-the-Hill part of town. It was a low-ceilinged, attic loft with a window too small to get out of if the place should catch fire, which worried him, but the cost was low and nothing else was immediately available. Outside his room was a tiny corridor, and on the other side of that a door leading to a slightly larger second room, occupied by a woman whose trade was evident by her flashy and revealing mode of dress and the steady stream of men who came calling at the oddest hours. Clardy wondered why his own room had been available to rent instead of being put to s
imilar use by some other painted woman, until he learned in a saloon that such had been the case until the woman died, murdered in that very room by an unhappy drunk who had cut her throat so deeply that her head had been nearly severed. Then Clardy understood what had caused that blackened stain on the pine-board floor, and felt a little edgy in the place at night. But he put up with it. Nothing else to do.
He showed around Japheth Deerfield’s drawing of the outlaw Hiram and, remembering Ford’s caution about being too aggressively inquisitive, asked as subtly as he could if anyone might know where the fellow could be found. He was frustrated by receiving mostly predictable comments about how much the man in the picture looked like Clardy himself, or either misleading responses or no responses at all. Only when he had moved among the Natchez-under-the-Hill crowd long enough to become known did he begin to detect some softening of the resistance. A few people acknowledged having seen James Hiram before. Several of these told him that they never would have admitted having seen him had not Clardy so obviously been a brother. You’re the very image of the man. He heard that phrase more times than he could keep up with. Yet no one had any idea of what had become of James Hiram. He hadn’t been seen about Natchez for at least a year.
As days passed, Clardy became ever more sure that James Hiram was Thias, and less sure he was still to be found about Natchez.
Then, when Clardy was all but ready to give up and turn his sights toward New Orleans, a drunk boatman told him that just maybe he had seen a man who looked like James Hiram up about Greenville, a town some twenty miles to the northeast. Couldn’t swear to it, but it surely might have been. Clardy was so encouraged he pressed a coin into the man’s hand and bought him a fresh drink besides.
Ford had left him a horse and paid in advance for its stabling. His heart pounding with excitement, Clardy went straight from the tavern to the stable, roused the stableman from sleep, and obtained and saddled his horse. Then, with clouds spreading over a black sky and making it so dark that no sensible man would even think of trying to travel, Clardy set out from Natchez toward Greenville, so fall of hope of finding his brother that he gave no thought at all to the danger.
Two days later Clardy was riding north of Greenville, his heart heavy with yet another failure. He had searched Greenville thoroughly, questioned everyone he could find, and no trace of Thias had appeared. Just now he was returning to Greenville from a cabin belonging to an old man who several folks had told him “knows the dealings of everybody that had ever haunted these woods,” but that well had proved as dry as every other one he had dipped into. He believed now that the boatman had lied to him in hope of reward. He had fallen right into the snare.
From now on, he pledged to himself, he would be slower to believe anything he was told, especially by drunks, and much, much slower to pay for information until he knew it was valid.
Clardy was so distracted by his disappointment that he did not notice a rider slowly closing in behind him as he neared Greenville. Clardy happened to have a shining tin flash of whiskey with him, and pulled it out of his saddlebag for a drink. In the midst of turning up the bottle he noticed the rider reflected in the flask.
He tensed inwardly but did not show it. The man was a stranger, very rugged-looking and with a gritty ambience about him that put Clardy at caution. As close as the rider was, it was out of the question to ignore him or try to outdistance him. Remembering the words of a certain bald old peddler named Peyton—An act of kindness can be the best shield a man has—Clardy turned to face the man, grinned as he swallowed his mouthful of liquor, smacked his lips and shook his head in a show of pleasure, and cordially held out the bottle toward the newcomer.
“Howdy do, friend. Would you care to have yourself a swallow?”
“I’m beholden,” the man said, accepting the bottle. Now that he was close, Clardy could tell the man had been drinking on his own already. His eyes were red and looked unfocused; his face had a ruddy flush.
“My name’s Tyler, Clardy Tyler,” Clardy said. He was always quick to give his identity now, for he never knew what stranger he met might have had some bad experience with the outlaw Hiram and mistake him for his former victimizer.
“My name is May,” the other man said, helping himself without invitation to a second swallow of Clardy’s whiskey. “James May. Pleased to know you.”
“You live hereabouts, Mr. May?”
“Not too far. I travel a lot. Traveling into Greenville right now. Going to travel out again a rich man. I’ve kilt me an outlaw and I aim to collect the reward. Thousand dollars.”
Clardy felt a jolt. What if … But then he realized he had never heard of any reward being offered for James Hiram, much less one so lavish as this one.
“I can think of only one man who would have a reward that large on his head,” Clardy replied.
“If you’re thinking of Sam Mason, you’ve hit the nail square.”
“You’ve truly killed Mason of the Woods, no jest?” In all his time of inquiring after James Hiram, Clardy had heard endless references to Samuel Mason, “Mason of the Woods.” The man seemed to be cut from cloth almost as stained as that of the Harpe brothers. He robbed without mercy and had murdered many innocent travelers. At times he had disposed of them in the same manner sometimes employed by the Harpes: laying open and disembowling the bodies, filling the body cavity with stones, and tossing the whole bloody human package into the river.
“I’ve kilt him, yes indeed,” May said. “Me, a good and law-abiding man who’s been a victim of that scoundrel, have done him in.”
“You’ll be the man of the hour, then,” Clardy said. “Everyone despises and fears Mason.”
“They needn’t no more,” the man replied. “I have shot him in the head above the eye.”
“Where’s his corpse?”
“Ain’t here.”
“They’ll want you to prove he’s dead.”
“I’ll convince them.”
Clardy wondered how that would happen, but didn’t ask. For all he knew, May was a drunk with big, fantastic notions about himself and his achievements. To claim to have killed such a well-known outlaw as Samuel Mason, but to have no body to present in proof, was rather dubious.
Clardy would have rather continued on to Greenville alone, but with May traveling the same way, his company was inevitable. He decided to make the best of it, and asked May to share the story of how he had supposedly done in Mason.
By the time they reached Greenville, Clardy had decided that this James May was either a great liar or very self-deluded. May strained Clardy’s credulity beyond breaking when he said he had been “kidnapped” by Mason and forced to take part in his criminal activities. The story grew ever wilder, culminating in a description of how he shot Mason while the bandit was counting his money. He now had with him some of the money and various other items that had belonged to Mason. With these, he said, he would be able to prove that he had actually killed the outlaw, and the reward would be his.
“And I’ll tell you, Mr. Tyler, if I see you after I have that money, I’ll sure buy you ten drinks for that which you shared with me today. I will do it.”
A day later, when Clardy left Greenville after convincing himself once and for all that Thias would not be found there, he learned from the local gossip that May had not succeeded in making his case. May lacked sufficient evidence that Mason was dead, and though he was given a serious hearing by the various authorities, in the end he’d been sent on his way. Clardy was far from surprised, and promptly forgot about May, dismissing him as merely another of the strange characters who seemed to thrive in this portion of the world.
Back in Natchez, Clardy grew frustrated and increasingly hopeless. More than ever he feared he would not find Thias here, and wished he had gone on with Ford and McCracken to New Orleans. Remembering Japheth Deerfield’s invitation to join him next time he went to New Orleans, he headed into the upper part of the town and to Deerfield’s office. Deerfield was not there, so
Clardy headed farther on, toward the Deerfield house. He was within a hundred feet of the place when Celinda appeared, walking out of the front door with her child in her arms. Clardy stopped; she turned and saw him. The look in her face told him he was not welcome. But he tipped his hat to her, smiled, and came on.
“Good day, Mrs. Deerfield.”
“Mr. Tyler.” Her tone was formal and cold.
“I’ve come to see if your husband is here. I’d like a word with him.”
“You can see him in his office.”
“I tried, ma’am. He wasn’t there.”
“I see.” She stopped speaking and looked at him in a puzzlingly intense way. “Mr. Tyler,” she said softly, “I want to make a request, and please forgive me if it is rude. I request that you find yourself another attorney. Natchez is full of them.”
Her candor surprised him. He quirked his brows. “I don’t understand, ma’am. If it’s because I didn’t pay your husband before, it’s only because he refused to charge me a fee. I’ll pay for any other help he gives.”
“It isn’t the fee. I honestly don’t know why I would prefer you to stay away from my husband, Mr. Tyler.” She lowered her eyes as if embarrassed by her next words. “I have a fear that harm will come to him through you. It’s a conviction I can neither explain nor shake off.”
Clardy was confounded. “I would never harm your husband, Mrs. Deerfield. He was a benefactor to me.”
“Please, do not see my husband, Mr. Tyler. I ask you that as sincerely as I can. Please … go your way, and don’t call on him again.”
Clardy was hurt and mildly insulted. Then he remembered that Japheth had been victimized by James Hiram. That must be it, he guessed. She didn’t want her husband trying to help him roust out a man who robbed him.
It grated in his craw some to do it, but he tipped his hat and nodded. “Very well, ma’am. I was coming to ask again about going with your husband to New Orleans, but if it means so much to you that I not be around him, well, I’ll go along with that.”
Her look showed surprise; evidently she had expected him to argue with her. That in itself told him something about her apparent perceptions of him. “Thank you, Mr. Tyler. And I … apologize if I’ve been rude or … thank you, sir. Thank you.”