York spat into the hay bale. “Didn’t mean nothin’ personal by it. Just protectin’ myself.”
“No grudge held.”
“What were you doin’ on Mossy Bank that day?” asked York.
“No value in tellin’ that,” said Tarleton. “It’s got nothin’ to do with us right now.”
“Did you shoot that man who died?”
Tarleton shrugged. “What’d you do with the money?”
“Did you know the man?”
“Not important.”
“What about Wallace Swanson? You know him?”
Tarleton shook his head. “None of this matters,” he said, his tone firmer. “What does matter is what you did with the money!”
“What money?”
Tarleton’s hand moved toward his side, and York tensed. “I had another man with me,” York said. “If somebody found money, I guess maybe he’s got it.”
Tarleton shook his head. “You shot me but not enough to kill me. I doubled back toward the creek; lay down close enough to hear you talkin’ with your friend, to watch you two diggin’ the grave. I saw you with the box.”
“What do you know about the box? What makes you think it contained money?”
A knife suddenly appeared in Tarleton’s hand. York wondered how he’d pulled it so fast. “You don’t need that. I’m not lookin’ for trouble.”
“Me neither,” said Tarleton. “Just tell me where you hid the money, and I’ll take it and go my way.”
York tried to steady his hands. Although he’d scrapped with a lot of men, fought in a war, and killed one man face to face in a duel a long time ago, he had no hankering to get into anything deadly. “It ain’t here,” he finally said, realizing that since Tarleton knew the truth he might as well stop lying about it.
“Is it at The Oak?”
“You’re a smart man. Knowin’ where I’m from.”
“I’ve done some checking,” Tarleton said. “You’re fairly easy to describe.”
York smiled thinly. “Reckon that’s true. So what you plan to do now?”
“I plan on you takin’ me to the money.”
“You expect in’ me to just hand it over, let you go off with it?”
“That’s what I expect.”
“But you got no more claim to it than I do.”
“Yes, don’t that beat all.”
York eyed the knife. If he took Tarleton to The Oak, who knew what might happen? No way would he just hand over the money. Why should he? Tarleton didn’t deserve it; he’d killed the man at Mossy Bank. But why? He didn’t know, and Tarleton surely didn’t plan on telling him.
York thought of the sheriff but knew he couldn’t go there. A sheriff wouldn’t know who to believe. York spat again.
Tarleton waved the knife at him. “You might as well tell me. That’s the only way you can leave here alive.”
“You really plannin’ on using that knife if I don’t take you to the money?”
“No choice.”
York shook his head but knew he had no choice either. Sometimes a man had to deal with matters, no matter how much he wanted to escape from them. He tensed, then spat tobacco juice into Tarleton’s eyes.
Tarleton growled and grabbed his eyes. York charged him. Tarleton jabbed the knife at him, but York grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. Tarleton kicked his knee, and York almost fell as the blow caught him hard. He staggered but pulled back up, pressing harder on Tarleton’s wrist. The knife fell from Tarleton’s hand.
York let Tarleton go and scrambled for the knife, but Tarleton grabbed his shoulders from behind and pulled him back.
York twisted toward Tarleton just in time to catch a fist in the side of the head. His eyes glazed from the blow, and he tumbled backward. As he fell, he spotted the knife by the hay bale and leaned toward it. Tarleton jumped him as his hand closed on the knife. He jerked the knife up and Tarleton fell on it, the blade slipping through his flesh just below his ribs.
His heart pounding, York quickly pulled out the knife, threw it down, and shoved a hand over the wound in Tarleton’s chest. Blood covered York’s hand within seconds. He grabbed the scarf from Tarleton’s throat and pressed it to the wound. Tarleton groaned.
“I’m … sorry,” York stammered. “Sorry this … happened this way.”
Tarleton lay on his back, his eyes already glassy in the glare of the lantern. As York stared at the man, he knew instantly that the knife had punctured his heart. Tarleton—no matter who he was—wouldn’t make it. A wave of guilt hit York, but he fought it off. He hadn’t gone looking for this, hadn’t wanted it to happen. Why couldn’t Tarleton have just left him alone? Why did he insist on making this so deadly?
“You got any last words?” York whispered. “Anythin’ I can do?”
Tarleton stared at the ceiling, already unaware of his surroundings.
“Do you know Wallace Swanson?” whispered York. “Anybody named Ruth?”
Tarleton’s eyes widened. “Lyn … nette.”
York grabbed him by the lapels and lifted him up. “Lynette?” he whispered. “What is she to you?”
Tarleton didn’t respond.
York started to ask again but knew Tarleton was too far gone. He thought of praying but didn’t know how. At such moments he really needed Josh Cain.
Tarleton closed his eyes and took his last breath.
York watched the man for another few seconds to make sure he’d died. When he was certain, he spat and took a deep breath. What now? Not the sheriff. Too many questions he couldn’t answer. Should he leave Tarleton here? No, the clerk at the inn had seen them leave together. What, then?
He spat again and made a quick decision. Moving fast now, he rushed to his horse, threw on his saddle, and readied the horse to ride. After taking off Tarleton’s coat and wrapping his head and shoulders in it, he lifted the body and laid him across the horse. Wiping his hands, he looked around and found a shovel in a near corner. He wedged the shovel through a stirrup and grabbed the horse’s bridle.
“Come on, boy,” he whispered, leading the animal to the front of the stable. “Nice and easy.”
At the stable door he eased it open and checked up and down the street. To his relief, he didn’t see anybody. He led the horse out and turned right down the first alley he reached. The alley stretched about sixty feet to the end of the building, then opened up into a grove of pine trees. York led the horse deep into the trees, tied him securely, then rushed back to the alley and out onto the main street.
It didn’t take him long to reach the hotel. There he nodded at the clerk, walked as normally as possible up to his room, gathered his belongings, and went out the back way. A couple of men passed him as he headed back down the street. He tipped his hat and nodded but didn’t speak. Back at his horse, he adjusted Tarleton’s body and the shovel, untied the animal, climbed into the saddle, and headed out of town. To his relief, nobody noticed.
He rode for at least an hour, his trail taking him through the woods as close to parallel to the main road as he could manage in the dark, but far enough away not to run into anybody on the road. When he knew he’d left Beaufort far behind, he dismounted, unloaded Tarleton and the shovel, and eased the body off the horse.
He found a nice spot about forty steps away and laid the body down. Within minutes he had dug a hole adequate for a man’s body. The sweat pouring off his face, he hauled Tarleton into the hole, his coat still over his face, and stretched him out flat.
York lifted the shovel and threw in the dirt. When finished with the dirt, he picked up handfuls of sticks, pine straw, and leaves and spread them all over the grave. Then he stepped back and wiped his hands. He wished he could wipe the guilt off as easily. He’d messed up, but what could he have done? Tarleton had come at him with a knife. He had killed him in self-defense.
The moon gazed down with a sad face. York took off his hat and stared at Tarleton’s grave. He wondered if the young man had any family, anybody at home waiting on him
to show up in the morning.
Lifting his eyes to the moon, York offered the only words he could: “I ain’t no man of the Lord. Not like my brother, Josh. But I’m sorry I had to kill this fella. It wasn’t my plan to do it. I hope you can forgive what happened tonight. If I did any sin in this, I truly regret it.”
Not knowing what else to say, he put his hat back on, climbed on his horse, and headed back to The Oak.
Chapter Thirteen
Trenton Tessier returned home in the midafternoon of an early day in May, his roan stallion followed by a two-horse carriage and a mule-led wagon loaded down with his belongings. Camellia watched him from the window of the cookhouse as he rode up hurriedly, dismounted, and handed the reins of his horse to Leather Joe. The sun burned down on Trenton’s brown hair, and he seemed lit from heaven, like a returning king from a mighty victory in battle. Nodding to Leather Joe, he turned and headed up the steps to the manse.
“Young master be home,” said Stella from behind Camellia. “Things likely to change around here now.”
Camellia tried to stay steady. “You think he’ll want to stay here and manage the place?”
“I hear that be his notion. ’Course, you know his mind better than me, I expect.”
Camellia blushed but kept on making biscuits. “He and I were friends a long time ago.”
“More than friends.”
Camellia dropped a biscuit in a skillet, then started shaping another. “You think people of such different stripes as us can ever be man and wife?”
Stella laid down the chicken she’d been cleaning and wiped her hands on her apron. Ruby entered through the open door, a bucket of water in each hand.
“It ain’t a matter of can,” said Stella. “Most anythin’ can happen. It’s more should. And you know what I think about that. Trenton Tessier ain’t got the niceness to marry such as you. He’s got a hard streak in him. I know you ain’t seen it, but it be there just the same.”
Camellia’s jaw tightened. “I know he gets haughty sometimes. But that’s just his upbringing. He don’t mean anythin’ by it.”
Stella gummed her lips. “I just sayin’ my mind. You and me tell each other the straight, don’t we?”
“I don’t feel worthy of him,” said Camellia, changing the conversation. “He’s so refined and I’m so coarse. ’Course, I didn’t worry about that when we were children; didn’t notice it.”
“Babies see the good in others better than grownups,” claimed Ruby, emptying the buckets into a large clay jar by the wash pots. “Don’t let so many things get between them.”
“Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a child,” Camellia sighed.
“Don’t we all?”
The afternoon passed, and after getting food to the servants and the people in the manse, Camellia hurried home to lay out supper for her pa and brothers. After everyone had eaten, Chester and Johnny moved out to the porch while Camellia cleaned up the table. Dishes in hand, she moved to the wash pot in the kitchen. Her pa followed her, a chew of tobacco in his jaw.
“You see Master Trenton yet?” he asked, a touch of anxiousness in his voice.
“No,” she said, her hands deep in dishwater. “I reckon he’s getting settled in.”
York sat down at the table and took off his hat. “I want to ask you some thin’, but I don’t know if I should. I know this year has gone hard on you. You’ve not eaten well, lost weight. I’ve wanted to talk to you about it but wasn’t sure how to start.”
Camellia tried to figure how to answer. Her pa hardly ever sought her out like this. So why now? She studied his face. The last few weeks he’d seemed softer somehow, as if something had shifted, at least a little, in his insides.
“You know what it is,” she began. “Mr. Tessier’s death … Anna Cain’s sickness … it all weighs on me, that’s all. I worry about things too much. The burdens push me down, make me grieve.”
“You can’t fix the past,” York offered. “Believe me, I know. Sometimes things happen that you don’t want—matters get out of hand and then slam, before you look up, it’s all past you. But nothin’ you did caused the troubles, and there’s nothin’ you can do to fix them when it’s over.”
“But you got to try, don’t you?”
York rubbed his beard. “Tryin’ to change the past don’t do much good. All we can do is keep movin’ ahead.”
Camellia dropped a cup into the water and faced him. He seemed almost sad, as if a burden weighted his heart. “What is it?” she asked, her curiosity high. “I can tell you got something on your mind.”
York sighed. “I’m not sure how to say what I got in my head.”
“Just say it,” she advised. “No reason to hide anything.”
“Okay. I’m worried about Master Trenton, what he might do … with the plantation, with me, and all of us.”
“But you run this place,” she said, confused. “He knows that; everybody does.”
“He may want his own man.”
Camellia brushed her hair from her eyes. “Who’s better than you?”
When York dropped his eyes, Camellia noted the fright that had showed up a couple of times in her pa’s face in the last few weeks. It looked strange on him; didn’t fit somehow. She wondered if his rough ways covered up more of this fright than he liked to let on; wondered if his insides sometimes hurt in ways he could never admit.
“Tessier can bring in a man from most anywhere,” he said. “Lots of people can do what I do.”
Camellia sat by her pa, put a hand on his, and tried to assure him. “Trenton is my friend. He won’t put us off The Oak. I know he won’t.”
York licked his lips. “You think he might ask you to marry him?”
Camellia pulled back. “You ought not to ask that. No reason to air a question that hasn’t been asked.”
“But you think he might?”
Outside, through the window, Camellia could see that the last of the day’s shadows played on the ground. She didn’t know how to answer her pa, didn’t know what she’d say even if Trenton did propose marriage. How could she marry a man whose pa she’d killed? How could she do that without speaking out the truth about it?
“He won’t put us off The Oak either way. Marry or not. He’s not a mean man.”
“We don’t know that for certain.”
Camellia stared at her pa, and an unpleasant notion rose in her head. She tried to put it away, but it stayed steady; she knew she couldn’t deny it. Her pa wanted her to marry Trenton so he wouldn’t lose his place on The Oak. Yes, perhaps he wanted it for her too, wanted her to marry a rich man so she could live a fine life. But he wanted the marriage for his own selfish reasons even more. Mad at her pa, she hung her head. Any softness she’d seen in him came from this—his fear of losing his job. What a mean, selfish man. He ought to …
Camellia dropped her eyes even farther as she realized she had some fault too. Would she want Trenton as a husband if he owned nothing? Would she marry him if he came to her with empty pockets, if he had no education and fine manners?
“You’re hoping hard that I’ll marry him, ain’t you?” she asked.
“What man wouldn’t be? I get no blame for that, do I?” He stepped to her and put a hand on her back. “You’ll never again want for anything,” he said. “The boys neither. What pa wouldn’t want that for his offspring? That somebody could give them what he could never provide?”
“You’ve done just fine by us,” said Camellia, hoping to lift his spirits. “Best you could.”
“I’ve done okay. But it ain’t much.”
“You didn’t get the advantages some men got. Look at Master Trenton. Born into everything, all of it handed to him, never had to work. Then a man like you, or Josh Cain for that matter, men as good as any, smart and busy, but you got nothing. Had to start from scratch, lower than scratch. Don’t seem right that we live in that kind of world, that the Lord set it up that way.”
“You think the Lord should’ve starte
d us out all equal, is that it? Give us all the same amount of dollars when we come to the world? Somethin’ like that?”
She smiled at the thought. “It ain’t practical,” she admitted. “But maybe that would make it more fair.”
“What about the darkies?” asked York, playing out the notion. “They get the same start as a white man?”
Camellia rubbed her forehead. “We’re a ways afield from talking about me and Master Trenton.”
“Seems so, but it’s still a question to ponder, don’t you think?”
“I reckon so.”
“So you think the Lord played wrong with the darkies too?”
Camellia thought back to the day Marshall Tessier died, the day she noted the flour on her hands and Stella’s. Other than skin color, she and Stella were pretty much the same. They ate the same food, bathed in the same river, wore the same clothes, wanted the same things—a good home, somebody to love and be loved by, a little happiness along the way.
“I suppose I do,” she answered, voicing aloud what she’d thought for a long time. “The darkies are people too; they ought to have the same as we got.”
“You blamin’ a lot on the Lord, then.”
“Oh, I don’t blame it on the Lord so much as I do on menfolk. We’re the ones who put others under the yoke, set up the divisions that keep folks apart.”
“You got it all figured, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “Nope, that’s not it. But there’s so much sin in this world that it’s got to get the blame, not the Lord.”
York moved to the window, and Camellia followed him. “We don’t do as much talkin’ like this as we ought.”
He faced her, his eyes serious. “I’m not usually real free with my conversation. Stay too busy for it.”
“I hope we can change that some.”
York stuck his hands in his pockets. “What will you do if Trenton asks you?”
She brushed back her hair and sighed. Should she let what had happened between her and Marshall Tessier keep her from marrying Trenton? Like her pa said, the past was gone and she couldn’t fix it. Should she let the past tear apart her future?
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