Ruby hugged Stella once more, her body shaking with grief at all she was leaving.
“Go on now, child,” said Stella, stepping back. “You got things to make ready.”
Wiping her eyes, Ruby walked away. Although it cut her heart, she had to do it. Theo and Markus were waiting on her.
Chapter Twenty-three
Hampton York spent Thursday and Friday in Charleston at the stables near the racetrack just a short way out of town. He had a simple mission those days. Study every horse that would run in the two-mile heats on Monday over the loamy track that sat at the center of the racing arena. Size the animals up and down, see which ones seemed frisky, which ones tired, which ones hurt, which ones healthy.
The stables housed over sixty horses, but only eleven planned to run in the two-mile races. The others would take their places in either the four- or three-milers. All the races would end in front of a grandstand that seated close to a thousand people.
York walked and chewed tobacco as he made his way in and around the stables. The horses stomped and kicked and neighed all around him. The smell of manure, feed, straw, and liniment filled his nostrils. Although focused on the eleven who would run the race he knew the most about, he inspected all the horses, admiring their long legs, deep chests, muscled haunches. At times he wondered how they could do it—run three heats of races, the longest the four-milers, the shortest the twos. Only thirty minutes separated the heats, and only the strongest and most conditioned horses survived as champions.
Although a man with a sharp eye for a good horse, York didn’t put himself up as an expert on any of the races but the two-milers. The others were too long, too unpredictable for his taste. Even in the two-milers, the things that could go wrong were too many to list. But in the longer races, that list just lengthened.
York passed scores of other men as he went about his business. Some of them worked with the horses, their hands filled with buckets and brushes, their boots covered with mud and hay and manure. Others wore fine clothes, tall stovepipe hats, and cravats on their necks and studied the horses as closely as he. These were the wagering men, the wealthy who lived for the sport of the race, a time when they would, test their sense of a good horse against every other man with enough courage to drop down some dollars.
Although careful, York chatted with some of the men as the days passed, flattered them in the effort to get them to talk about the various horses, their strengths and weaknesses, how many races they had won, how many they’d lost. Nobody looked at him as if his questions were out of place because a lot of other men were doing the same thing. Men that planned on making big bets always did this. What smart man wouldn’t?
When he could, York found out who owned a horse and carefully watched the owner. Did he look clean or smell of the drink? Did he talk a lot with a lot of bragging, or did he keep his quiet, act almost humble? He’d learned a long time ago that the appearance and habits of a horse owner often gave some clues to the condition of the horse.
As the sun dropped on Friday, York left the stables and headed back to the inn he’d taken just outside of Charleston. He arrived back at his hotel room just after dark, took off his coat and the money belt where he kept his cash, and lay down for a long nap. When he awoke he washed up, slipped on his coat and the money belt, and headed back downstairs. On the street, he checked the moon and figured it close to ten o’clock. Hungry, he headed to an inn near the water where he knew he could get a good bite of tasty food.
He ate quickly and quietly, his appetite fueled by nervousness. All around him he heard bits and pieces of the talking, half of it about the races, the other half about politics. Now that six other states had joined South Carolina in pulling out of the Union, would war start soon? Most of the men figured it would.
Although he listened to the talk, York didn’t care much either way, so long as folks left him alone. If the Yankees tried to take on the South, the war wouldn’t last long—everybody knew that. So without adding to the conversation he finished his food, left the inn, and headed to a saloon just up the street. Twenty men crowded the saloon, and a thick cloud of smoke rose in the air as he walked in and headed to the bar. York searched each face in the crowd but saw nobody he knew. Out of nowhere a sense of loneliness hit him, a realization that, other than Josh Cain, he had nobody he really thought of as a friend. York ordered a scotch, put in a new chew of tobacco, and turned his back to the crowd.
Camellia and Johnny loved him, he figured, but not because he much deserved it. He knew he’d not done well as a father; that he’d spent far too little time with them. But what could a man do without a good woman? Didn’t he have to do his labor first; manage his family second? Most men had wives to look after their family, to take care of hearth and home.
He ordered another shot of whiskey.
Lynette.
He saw her in his mind, her hair the same rich brown as Camellia’s, her eyes as blue, her skin the same color. Lynette had grown up in a Columbia church orphanage, her parents the victims of a fire that had burned down their house when she was only eight. He’d met her in June of 1842, in a place a lot like this, except it had been in Savannah, where he lived at the time, making his living for the most part at a poker table. She’d come to the bar with a card player named Wallace Swanson, a man who’d seen her obvious beauty and taken up with her soon after she left the orphanage the year she turned sixteen.
Although Swanson had a good eye for women, his card playing didn’t amount to much. When York won most of his money that night, Lynette had quickly shifted her affections to him and left Swanson broke of pocket and heart when the bar closed.
Now York swallowed the last of his drink and ordered another one. A poker game in the corner of the room broke up. Five men sat down and started another one. York rubbed his head and tried to put Lynette out of his mind but failed.
What a woman! It hadn’t taken him long to fall in love with her. How could he resist? Although rough in manner and speech, Lynette carried her wondrous body like a goddess, and her face melted a man’s knees. When she smiled, and she always smiled when she wanted something, the whole room lit up. Nobody could resist that smile.
He didn’t find out she had a two-year-old daughter until two weeks after they met. “A woman friend takes care of her most of the time,” Lynette had explained. “I give her money; she keeps my baby.”
“Whose is it?” he’d asked bluntly.
Lynette didn’t bat an eye. “Swanson’s.”
“You two married?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He never asked.”
York faced the bar crowd again. Lynette’s straightforward manner had surprised but not shocked him. He wasn’t a saint either.
“I’m with you now,” she’d said as she smiled and snuggled her head onto his shoulder. “You won’t throw me and my baby out because of my wanton ways, will you?”
York breathed deeply. Her smell made him drunk. She needed him! No woman had ever moved him so. “No. I won’t throw you out.”
Within the month they were married. A few weeks later he found out she had another child on the way—and it would be too soon for this baby to have been his. Anger boiled in him for a few days, but then Lynette favored him with a kiss that made him feel like a king, and his anger disappeared.
Later he asked her why she’d chosen him over Swanson, who was the father of her two children. Lynette had shrugged. “I’m almost twenty. Had another baby on the way and needed somebody to take care of us. Swanson loved me but didn’t do well when it came to making a living. You seemed better at it.”
The words had cut York as she spoke them. She’d not even pretended to love him. Of course that explained what happened later. But he’d not worried about that then. She’d love him someday, he figured. He’d treat her so well she’d come to that.
York took another drink and shook his head against the memory. Women were crazy. Men were crazier. He watched the pok
er game for a while, put in a fresh chew. A fight broke out in the corner of the bar but didn’t last long. A man staggered past with a trickle of blood running down his chin. York remembered more of his early days with Lynette.
His gambling luck had turned pretty sour within months after he met her, and he had started losing at the card table. By the time she’d given birth to her second baby, a boy she named Chester, he’d pretty much run out of money and knew he had to do something different. With a wife and two children to tend, he needed steadier work than the luck of the draw, the fall of a card.
“I know a man I’ve gambled some with,” he told her one night. “He owns one of the biggest rice plantations in the South; he told me once he needed a man like me to help him manage things. I know how to do that. There were rice plantations all over where I grew up near Georgetown. Man said if I wanted, he’d set me up to run his place.”
“I don’t see myself prospering too well in the middle of nowhere,” Lynette argued. “Not my idea of a fine living.”
“You think this is better?” He had waved his hands over the room he rented above a general store. “No spot of our own, no place for the children to grow up, no promise of a wage tomorrow.”
She had tossed her head, and he knew he hadn’t convinced her. But when she didn’t argue, he kept talking. “The man’s name is Marshall Tessier,” he said, hoping she’d like it that he had a plan to care for her and the children. “He’s got an old man as overseer, won’t last much longer. If I do good, he’ll give me the job when the old man passes. I can make over a thousand a year with Tessier. We’ll do fine there, you’ll see. You take care of the kids, I do the work. It’s better than depending on a card game.”
Although not happy, she’d finally relented, and they had moved to The Oak soon after and settled into their new life. Over a year passed. Lynette seemed to accept her situation; said little against it; did the things a man expected of a woman; bore him a son, Johnny.
York hit the bottle one more time. He didn’t want to remember all this. But how could he forget? If Lynette had only stayed with him, he might have turned out a better man, a man of good character. But she hadn’t. In April of 1844, when Camellia was almost four, York had awakened on a clear day and found Lynette gone without a word or a trace. Just like that. Vanished like a cloud off the ocean. He looked for her, of course, but knew in his bones what had happened. She’d run off, how or where he never knew.
Had she started scheming the day he told her of the job on The Oak? Had she gone back to the woman who had kept Camellia for her? Had she sent that woman out to search for Swanson and tell him that Lynette wanted him back? That’s all he could figure, especially since seeing the picture Hillard had shown him. She and Swanson had gotten together again. But how did either of them connect to Mossy Bank?
York grimaced. He wondered how long Lynette and Swanson had lived together before she’d written him the letter about her having typhus. Were they happy? Had she loved Swanson all along? Although he knew he shouldn’t, he felt almost glad the typhus had killed her. Why shouldn’t he? The woman had betrayed him, hurt him deeply. She deserved to die young. Why should she get any pleasure from life after what she did?
He remembered the picture, taken before she got sick. She sure looked pretty, he had to admit that. He chugged his scotch and remembered again how alone he was. How he had nobody to depend on but himself. Trenton Tessier had broken off marriage to his daughter. Chester lay under the dirt. And now it looked like his half brother, Josh Cain, was no longer on his side. From where York stood, life had handed him a sorry deal. True, he had some money. But what good did it do if he couldn’t spend it? Should he just take it and ride out and never come back? But what about Camellia and Johnny? He couldn’t just leave them. He’d sunk pretty low, but not that far yet. Then what? What could he do?
He finished his drink. He’d decided there was only one thing he could do: try to turn the money in his saddlebags into a whole lot more. Take one big gamble and see how much he could make. Either hit it big … or lose it all. Hit it big enough to truly make a difference, or let it go and stop torturing his head with visions of something grand.
He paid the bartender, then moved to the poker game and asked if he could sit in. The men nodded. He took a spot at the table and pulled out a few dollars. For the next couple of hours he stayed in the game, kept his winnings and losses about even, and drank some more. A couple of the men left the game, and after a few more hands, York followed them. He hadn’t come to Charleston to play poker, not this time anyway. Not enough money in a poker game to make much difference to him one way or the other.
Stretching, he stepped outside. The cool night air sobered him some. He checked the moon, figured it close to midnight. He spat and walked fast toward the stable where he’d put up his horse. A couple of men passed him, but he paid them no attention. At the stable, he saddled up, checked the equipment and supplies in his saddlebags, and led the horse outside. Once on the street he mounted and rode west. It didn’t take long to reach the stables at the racetrack. About a hundred yards away he dismounted and tied his horse to a tree in the woods.
After getting his saddlebags, he left his horse and slipped through the woods toward the back of the stables. To his relief he heard nobody talking. As he had expected, everybody had taken to their beds. A dog barked in the distance but not close enough to raise any alarm.
Outside the back of a barn York peered around. He knew the horse he planned to back tomorrow, a tall black animal named Blacksmith with a white band around his left forelock. One of the three favorites, the animal looked fit and ready. Early odds said he would run at about three to one.
A touch of shame hit York as he sat down, but he quickly pushed it away. So what if he wanted a little edge in tomorrow’s race? Who even knew if what he planned would make any difference? He couldn’t take care of every horse in the race, just the one. If the horse he planned to bet on didn’t run well or if another he hadn’t seen as a real rival suddenly took off like nobody expected, it wouldn’t even matter. The way he saw it, he wasn’t fixing the race, just tilting it a little. And it wouldn’t even hurt the horse he hoped to slow down, just maybe throw him off a little. He took a deep breath and held steady for close to an hour. The dog stopped barking. The moon dipped behind some high clouds.
York thought of Lynette again. After she’d left him, he found life dull and useless. He tried to do good by the children but had no heart for it. They belonged to Lynette, not him, why should he care for them? Stella had done most of their raising; he realized that now and felt a touch guilty for it. But what could he have done? The war with Mexico came not long after Lynette left, and he and Josh rode out to fight it. Mr. Tessier had let him go.
“A man who won’t fight for his country ain’t much of a man,” Tessier had said. “You’ve done well for me since you came. Come back when the war’s over. I’ll keep your job for you.” And that’s just what the plantation owner had done. The two years away had given York time to bury Lynette far down in his mind. But now her memory had risen again.
Checking the moon again, York figured it had to be around three in the morning. He decided he’d waited long enough. His heart smooth and slow, he stood and slipped through the shadows, around to the front of the barn, and opened the door. After easing inside and closing the door, he faced the horses. They stood motionless, their faces toward him, their backs to the rear of the stalls.
York rushed to the tallest horse among the eleven that would run the two-milers, a chestnut with wide haunches and clear eyes. Bob’s Bullet, they called him—undefeated in his last five races. He’d go off as the favorite tomorrow.
“He’s hands-down the best horse in the stable,” one man had told him earlier. “If he’s at the top of his form, he’ll run them all into the ground.” Grabbing a tall bucket, York filled it with oats. He took ten apples and a bag of sugar from his saddlebags, cut up the apples with his pocketknife, and threw them
on top of the oats. The sugar followed the apples. He produced two bottles of straight whiskey from his coat pocket and poured them into the bucket. Then he poured water from a nearby water trough over the mixture.
As the smell of the mash rose in the air, York stepped to the tall chestnut and hooked the bucket over his head so he could easily get at it. The horse sniffed it, then stuck his snout down and took a bite. York waited until the chestnut had eaten everything in the bucket, then filled it again with the same ingredients. Again the chestnut ate the mixture. York filled it one more time. This time the horse finished about half the bucket, snorted, lifted his head, and licked his lips. York again offered him the bucket, but the chestnut shook his head in refusal. York removed the bucket and stepped back; he’d done all he could.
Hurrying now, he quietly washed out the bucket, refilled it with water, and offered it to the horse. The chestnut drank from the water, then lifted his head.
Satisfied, York made sure the bucket was clean of any leftover evidence, then set it down and slipped out of the bam. Back at his own horse, York led the animal back into the woods, mounted, and headed back to Charleston. Only one thing left to do—put the nine thousand dollars on the stout black and hope for the best. One way or the other, tomorrow would change his life. At three to one odds, he’d either go home a rich man … or never go home at all.
To Ruby’s surprise, her escape to Robertson’s plantation brought no more trouble than a long walk in the woods. As planned, she moved only at night and slept during the day. Her nights moved swiftly, and she made better time than she expected. Although she ran up on some farm dogs every now and again, they didn’t bark for long, and she eased past them with little disturbance.
All through the first night she thought she heard horses pounding after her—heavy hooves racing to run her down and trample her into the earth. Her body shook with fear and chill, and she wondered why she’d ever thought she could get away with this. Then, however, when the first night ended and the sun came up, she knew that most of her fear had come from her own head. No horses rumbled after her, no dogs panted over her scent.
Secret Tides Page 28