In the Rogue Blood

by Blake, J

  “Mister, I wouldnt pay a dollar to have the Angel Gabriel fly me and my horse across.”

  The ferryman showed a black-yellow grin. “Thats all right. But you aint findin no ford upstream or down for miles, not with her runnin like she be.”

  Edward studied the swift river and the densely timbered shore of Texas on the other side. He drank from his canteen and sat the mare and watched the river pass by while the ferryman sat on the porch and watched him. He’d been hungry until he caught the stink of the ferryman’s stew.

  He heard a horse blow and he looked over toward the woods where a rider was emerging from the trees. The horse was a black of good size but seemed diminished by its rider, a huge blackbearded man holding a shortbarreled rifle across the pommel of a saddle with a horn as wide as a pie plate. He wore a flatbrimmed hat and an open frock coat under which a pair of pistols hung in simple sling holsters. As the rider drew nearer Edward recognized the pistols as revolvers, a type of firearm he’d heard described but never seen until now. Texas Colts they were called, though they were made in the distant land of New Jersey. They lacked trigger guards and carried five rounds and a man might fire them all before having to reload. He had heard tales of frontier rangers killing red savages by the quick dozen in an open country fight with such pistols.

  The big man reined up at the sign stating the cost of a ferry ride and appeared to consider it. He chucked his horse over to the cabin and there regarded Edward for a long moment without expression, his eyes touching on Edward’s empty hands, on the flintlock pistol and bowie in his belt, the Kentucky longarm in the makeshift saddle scabbard. He turned his attention to the house and looked hard at the dark door and window, then looked at last on the ferryman, who on spying him come out of the woods had picked up his rifle and laid it across his lap and now licked his lips nervously under the big man’s gaze.

  “Anybody inside?” the big man said. The ferryman shook his head and Edward could see he was too scared to be lying. The huge muzzle of the blackbeard’s rifle swiveled slightly and pointed squarely at the ferryman’s chest. “Toss it,” the big man said as offhandedly as one might tell another the hour of day.

  The ferryman pushed the rifle off his lap and it clattered to his feet. The big man looked at it and then back at the ferryman and his eyes narrowed and so the ferryman shoved the rifle hard with his foot and sent it skidding off the porch.

  Wielding the short heavy-looking rifle as easily as a pistol the blackbeard brought the barrel up to rest on his shoulder. He peered toward the cabin door and made a face of distaste. “Good Christ. You aiming to eat what’s making that smell?” The ferryman shrugged and seemed offended despite the circumstances.

  The blackbeard looked at Edward again, jutted his chin toward the sign and said, “A dollar for a damned ferry ride seems just about ninety cents too much, wouldn’t you say so, boy?”

  Edward said he believed the toll was just about a dollar too much and the big man laughed.

  “Well, they say generosity is balm for the soul,” the big man said. “I believe this feller’s greedy soul might be soothed by the generous act of giving us a free crossing.”

  And thus the ferryman did, politely requesting that the two men walk their horses to the outer end of the ferry in order to ease the weight of the inner end and let it float free. He hauled powerfully on the pulley rope stretching across to the opposite bank and the craft lurched into the river.

  It was a heady crossing. The swift current pressed against the ferry’s side and bowed the pulley line and the ferry bobbed on the rope like a toy. The horses were white-eyed and stamping and Edward and the blackbeard dismounted and strained against the reins with one hand as they clung tight to the rail with the other and gritted their teeth against the icy riverspray. The ferryman stood easy as a cat. He jabbed a long pole into the river bottom and pulled hard on it hand over hand and propelled the craft along on the pulley ropes. By this laborious process he carried them over the Sabine River and landed them in Texas.

  Once ashore and again in the saddle the blackbeard inquired of the ferryman if he didn’t feel somewhat atoned for his extortions of the past. The ferryman shrugged and said yes, he guessed he did. The blackbeard shook his head with a rueful sigh and said he didn’t believe the man’s repentance was sincere. “Maybe a little hardship will help you see the error of your ways. Get off there.” The ferryman disembarked warily. From under his coat the blackbeard withdrew a bowie even larger than Edward’s and leaned out in the saddle and slashed through the thick pulley rope. The ferryman sprang to the edge of the bank with a stricken look and watched the craft whirl away on the current. Now the big man put his horse forward and the animal forced the ferryman off the bank and into the rushing water and only a desperate grab of a root jutting from the muddy bankwall kept him from being swept downriver.

  “You just hang there awhile and let it wash some of that stink off you,” the blackbeard called down to him, and laughed. He winked at Edward and reined his horse about and into the woods.

  Edward hupped the sorrel mare forward through the trees and into a small clearing where the man sat his horse and said, “Look here, boy. At this sign here.” He gestured for Edward to come up alongside and pointed at the ground next his horse. “What you make of it?”

  As Edward drew up beside him and leaned out of the saddle to peer down, the big man’s horse sidled and in that instant Edward knew the blow was on its way but felt himself held fast in the moment and then light burst behind his eyes and he did not even feel himself fall.

  4

  He heard low chuckling and woke to cold darkness and the sensation of his skull being prized apart. He slowly came to perceive that he was on his back, that the moving shadows he looked upon were topmost tree branches rocking in the wind, that the steady chuckling was the run of the river through the reeds. He tried to sit up and heard himself groan at the shuddering blaze of pain in his head and he fell back. When next he opened his eyes the sky was gray above him and he knew he’d again been unconscious for a time. With moaning effort he managed to roll onto his belly and then raised himself on all fours and vomited. After a time he sat back on his heels and put his fingers to the back of his head and gingerly fingered the swelling under his hair and the thick coagulating blood. He felt a rank fool. The only reason he could think of why the man hadn’t simply shot him dead was he didn’t want to chance scaring off the mare.

  He made it to his feet and held tight and gasping to a tree until the quivering in his knees subsided. He was in his stocking feet. He looked about and spied a boot beside a tree trunk and a moment later the top of the other in the weeds. The man had pulled them off to search them. Son of a bitch for damn sure was not new to the trade. At least he’d left the boots. And his coat. Likely figured them too worn to be of worth to anybody with anything to trade. But he’d made off with the knives as well as the firearms and the Janey mare. Edward checked his shirt pocket and was surprised to find the daguerreotypes still there. The bastard must’ve been too busy checking hiding spots like his boots to search the obvious places. He wished he’d thought to keep his money in his shirt. He pulled on the boots and then spotted his hat askew on a bush. And close by was his extra shirt with the sleeve ripped to the shoulder. And there a spare sock. There the small frypan. But blankets and slicker were gone, the wad of scrip, even the box of matches. He took off his coat and put the torn shirt on over the one he was wearing and then put the coat back on, put the sock into his pocket and went to the bush and retrieved his hat.

  He stumbled through the brush to the riverbank and found a smooth slope where he could stretch out on his belly and duck his head in the river. The cold water’s first touch on the wound made him yell out in shock, but repeated duckings gradually eased the pain to a partially numbed and dully throbbing ache. He drank his fill and felt the better for it. He looked across the river at the ferryman’s cabin but saw no sign of anyone there and no smoke from the chimney. He wondered if the
man had been carried off by the current or managed to extricate himself.

  After a time he stood up and gently put on his hat, tilting it well forward and away from the wound. The morning was hazed and frosty cold and the high pines swayed and hissed in the breeze. He balled his hands in the side pockets of his coat and made his way through the trees and found the trail and set out with his head down against the wind.

  There followed now days of wandering through piney woodlands and cypress swamps, hungry, unarmed, horseless. Cold fireless nights of dozing with an ear cocked for footfall or approach of shuffling beast. Some days were warm enough he didn’t shiver in his bones. Somewhere early on he took a wrong fork and the trace grew wilder as he proceeded and he knew none had passed by here in a long time. Then he was in dense brush thickets, in grass to his thighs. He found a deer trail and followed it through shadowy forest of mossy oak and pine and stagnant bogs and sloughs. He bore north by west and came at last to a road that took him to an inn at a ford. He bartered one of the daguerreotypes for a full meal and then another for three mugs of beer. The proprietor kept glancing nervously over his shoulder while they bargained, keeping watch for approach of his wife.

  At a crossroads one gray evening he was accosted by a pair of highwaymen not much older than himself. The taller one held a large-bored flintlock pistol on him while the other searched his person and found naught but the packet with the remaining three daguerreotypes. His mouth fell open when he saw them. He gave Edward a quick look and kept his back to his partner as he slipped the pictures out of the packet and into his shirt. The robber with the gun asked what he’d found and he said, “Nothin but this here empty paperholder,” and turned and showed it to his partner and tossed it aside. He squatted and looked close at Edward’s boots which were worn even worse than their own and he laughed and told his partner they’d been fools for calling for this one to stand and deliver. They shared with him the last of their meager ration of jerky and spared him a few matches. But when Edward asked if he might have a look at their pistol the taller one stepped back in quick suspicion and pointed the gun at him from his hip and said he could have all the look he wanted right from where he stood. Edward cursed himself for lack of guile. The highwaymen started down the south trace, warning him over their shoulder that if he tried to follow they’d lay for him and kill him.

  He pushed on. Found occasional work at farms in exchange for a meal and a warm place to sleep the night. Split wood, mended fences, dug privy holes. He shoveled manure and fired stumps. He was set on thieving the first gun he saw unattended but every farmer kept his rifle close to hand and there were no pistols to be seen.

  At a weed-grown farm where tools were rusting on a sagging cabin porch and there was no sign of any man about, a leanly strong and handsome Negro woman the color of caramel fed him a rabbit stew so savory he nearly moaned aloud on the porch steps where he ate. She stood at the door and watched him the while and her children gaped from behind her skirts. Even through the aroma of the stew he could smell the muskiness of her and he would have liked to put a hand to her to test her inclinations but the cool steadfastness of her eyes made him feel callow and unsure. As he headed back toward the trace he looked to the side of the house and spied a quilted blanket drying on a line strung between a pair of young pines and he trotted over and took it and raced away even though no one called after him.

  Wagons passed his quilt-shawled figure on the road in either direction but mostly to the west, travelers who sometimes fed him, sometimes warned him off at gunpoint, sometimes carried him a ways. A rotund Dutchman invited him to take supper with the family at their camp under a creekside oak. Midway through the meal this sharpeyed father caught the look between this tatterdemalion with feral eyes and a man’s hands and the thirteen-year-old daughter who was rarely other than sullen toward her daddy. He lunged and swiped her a backhand that unseated her off a stump and sent her supper plate twirling. The mother swooped to the bloodymouthed girl and the Dutchman’s longarm muzzle appeared in Edward’s face like a magic feat, so fast did the man move. His face brimmed with murder but the woman beseeched him not to shoot the boy as she held the daughter to her bosom. The man let a hissing breath through his teeth and told Edward he had to the count of ten to disappear. Which he did, nearly choking on his rage as he went, striding quickly but refusing to run, his clenched fists aching. He considered circling around and coming up behind the bastard and breaking his head open with a rock or a tree limb but chose not to widow the woman who’d saved his life. Without the Dutchman she and the girl might fare still worse.

  His anger writhed in his chest. Bedamn if he would anymore depend on Good Samaritans for his sustenance. He reconnoitered farms from a hidden distance, noted if there were dogs about or anyone with a gun, marked the nearest shrubbery to the chicken coops. He pilfered from cornfields and gardens. Stole a peach pie from the kitchen window where it cooled and gulped the entire thing in an oak grove and burned his mouth and suffered a bellyache for an hour after. Made off with a skinning knife left carelessly on a chopping block. Raced for cover of the woods with a clamorous hen in his grip flailing and shedding feathers as rifle report and curses echoed behind him from the violated coop. He was miles removed from the scene of the crime when he dressed the bird and roasted it on a stick and ate it to the bones.

  On frosty nights he built large fires and sat beside them with the blanket over his shoulders and watched the wavering flames under the rising moon and thought about things. He supposed John had already arrived in Nacogdoches and was waiting for him. He smiled at the thought of how his brother would laugh on hearing of his travails. He was sure Johnny loved this country. Texas was everything they’d been told. The pines were tall and thick and plentiful beyond reckoning. Johnny would surely want to get a section of timberland hard by a river and waste no time settling into a life of hewing and sawing and selling. He would likely be quick about building a house and taking a wife and siring sons, Johnny would. Such was the natural yearning of a normal soul. His own lack of such inclination Edward had long accepted as a fault of restless character that might never be remedied. Each evening his gaze did fix on the wide sky to the west burning red as blood.

  5

  He entered the venerable town of Nacogdoches on a graying afternoon turning chill. Through this Texas gateway passed all manner of desperate men. Here had conspiracies and filibustering expeditions and rebellions been formed. Here had the Republic of Fredonia blazed brief and bright.

  He came a shambling specter of ill fortune, his clothes ragged and foul, his boots red with dried mud and coming undone at the soles. He was footsore. His hair hung in tangles under his tattered hat. He carried his blanket rolled under his arm and the skinning knife in his boot top. Yet his spirits were high in anticipation of finding John and his ample poke at Flora Bannion’s house and soon enough being clean and newly clothed and washing down a beefsteak with a mug of beer.

  He passed by an neat oak-shaded cemetery where a gravedigger left off his labor to regard him. Only his upper torso was visible aboveground and his eyes were hidden in the shadow of his hat. Edward tried to stare him down but the digger leaned on his spade and showed yellow teeth and continued to look after him till he was well down the road.

  La Calle del Norte was chock-a-block with wagon traffic and horsemen and people afoot. He was obliged to step nimbly. A dogfight broke out in the middle of the street and a frighted mule kicked at the combatants and sent one yowling away on three legs. A banjo twanged in the darkness of a saloon and a fiddle followed its lead. He stared longingly at the dark door and yearned for a drink. He spied a man reading a newspaper in a chair tilted back against the front of a dry goods store and went over and peered at the front page. The headline was of Mexico and President Polk, the date the seventeenth of January, 1846. He’d been afoot more than a month.

  Something about the date nagged at him a moment and then he recalled it as his birthday. He was seventeen years old this day.


  He inquired of a clerk sweeping the sidewalk the location of Flora Bannion’s house and was directed to turn right at the next street and look for the pink two-story building with a flower garden in front of the porch. “But that old cat can be awful damned particular who she lets in,” the clerk said, scanning Edward’s tattered aspect. “You’d be better welcome at Sally Longacre’s the next block over.”

  The western sky was afire now and gleamed redly along the rippled clouds. An orange lantern by Flora Bannion’s front door was already lighted when Edward arrived at the gate. A pair of laughing men in suits were being admitted and then the door closed behind them. He went up the walkway and onto the wide porch and worked the knocker, an iron cast of a cat in repose. A neatly aproned young Negress opened the door but slightly and looked him over and wrinkled her nose against the smell of him. She said if he was wanting something to eat he could go around to the kitchen door. He said he wanted to speak with John Little if he was on the premises. The black girl said the only man on the premises was Bruno the caretaker who could sure take care of any smelly tramp troublemaker. Edward wanted to slap the cheeky bitch. Well then, he said, he’d like to talk to Flora Bannion. The girl said Miss Flora didn’t talk to strangers, least of all tramps and she started to close the door on him and he quickly said he had a message for Flora from her sister Molly in Biloxi. The Negress looked at him suspiciously and then told him to go wait at the kitchen door.

  The woman who appeared there was fleshy and pouch-eyed and wore a shiny green dress. Her mouth turned down at the sight of him. She asked what message he’d brought from Molly and he said just that she hoped Flora was doing well and to let her know she was thinking of her. The woman’s lips tightened in irritation and she said, “Molly never said no such thing in her life. You’re just another damned liar looking to be given more than you deserve.” She made to shut the door and he hastened to say that he truly had been to Mrs. Clark’s house within sight of the beach at Biloxi. He quickly described it and said Mrs. Clark had recommended that he and his brother pay a visit to her sister Flora Bannion’s place in Nacogdoches and he had lied about the message because he thought she’d be pleased to hear it and be more likely to talk to him and answer him a question.