The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  In the doorway, two women wearing floppy hats and dusty coats surveyed the room while every man in the room surveyed them.

  Colonel McMillan hurried over and greeted them with a bow, then invited them to a private table, “where unescorted ladies might dine at their leisure.”

  But Mary Cousins gestured to the pair by the fireplace. Then she and Eve Corliss marched among the tables with all the confidence of women who had covered more than fifty miles on horseback in a single day and would let no taproom custom deter them.

  North whispered to Will, “I told Mary I loved her, too. Looks like they’ve both come to find out the truth.”

  Eve reached them first, stood over Will, put her hands on her hips. He was not happy to see her but he was glad she had come. He knew that she would slow them, but her face, even now, covered in grime and etched in anger, was more beautiful than the mountains.

  She said, “The Pretty Eve sailed into Portland last night. I thought you’d want to know. I won’t let Danton take me back to Newport.”

  “And pregnant women shouldn’t travel alone,” said Mary Cousins, “nor women who’ve been lied to.”

  “Pregnant, eh?” North glanced at Eve’s belly, then said, “Women who’ve been lied to need men who’ll tell them the truth.”

  “Men like that are hard to find.” Mary sat at the table, pulled off her hat, and shook out her hair. “Much easier to find men who lie to us and take our money.”

  Will looked at his brother. “Did you take her money?”

  “To buy the horses,” said North. “I planned to pay it back.”

  “Plannin’ and doin’ are two different things.” Mary pulled a flintlock from the folds of her skirt and pointed it at North’s midsection. “I’m plannin’ to shoot your balls off, but I won’t do it if you give me my money.”

  Without taking his eyes from hers, North reached into the pocket of his buckskin, withdrew a pouch of coins, and dropped it on the table. “It ain’t all there, but once we get where we’re goin’ and sell the gold watch Will’s carryin’—”

  “I’ll be goin’ with you, then.” Mary snatched the money. “I’ll get every penny owed me, what you took out of this pouch and what you put in my skin pouch. Fifty Spanish dollars. My freedom from Cochran and every other lyin’ man I ever met.”

  Will gestured to the gun. “Can you use that?”

  “She sure can,” said North. “And if those Newport boys come after us—”

  “They’ll come,” said Mary. “If they could find someone in Boston—”

  “Rabbit Annie,” said Eve, “the only whore in Boston you didn’t—”

  “—they’ll find Old Man Cochran in Portland.” Mary looked at Will. “And he knows plenty. When he’s not nappin’, he’s eavesdroppin’. And he don’t like your brother much, since I give him what Cochran wanted … what Cochran tried takin’ a few times.”

  “That’s why she keeps the gun,” said North.

  “I keep the gun to protect my money. I was plannin’ to go back and buy my father’s old gristmill in Millbridge. Your brother said he’d marry me and come with me.”

  “But plannin’ and doin’ are two different things,” said North.

  THE WOMEN SLEPT in the room that North had rented because, as Mary said, her money had paid for it. The Pike brothers slept in the barn, and not too well.

  Will rose before dawn, took a bucket, and went groggily down to the river.

  The air was cool and sweet and full of fresh dampness rising up off the water.

  A short distance downstream, at the base of a little bridge, a horse was drinking. Its rider, a man in a brown coat and good boots, stood under the bridge with his back to the world and pissed against a piling.

  Will was glad to be upstream. He knelt and dipped his bucket into a pool. The shadow of a trout shot away, and he thought idly that he should come back with a fishing pole some time.

  He brought the bucket up brimming, set it down on the stony bank, dipped his hands into the water. Whatever sleep remained in his head was gone in a cold splash.

  He went to dip his hands again and saw riding boots appear beside the bucket. Then he heard a flintlock cocking a few inches from his skull.

  “Bonjour, m’sieur.”

  Danton. But where were the others?

  “Stand,” said Danton.

  As he obeyed, Will grabbed the handle of the bucket and came up swinging. Danton pulled the trigger.

  But Will was gambling that the morning damp would wet the powder. And he was right. The flint in the hammer struck with a click and a fizzle.

  Before Danton could curse, the bucket slammed into his jaw.

  THE PIKES DRAGGED the Frenchman back to the barn, gagged him and trussed him, and hid him beneath a pile of hay.

  “It’ll be some time before he wakes up,” said North, “and some time longer before anyone finds him.”

  “Where could the others be?” asked Will.

  “Curly Bill and his boys? Back a few miles, too sore to ride just yet.”

  “Sore?”

  “A sailor on horseback … like a pig in the crow’s nest. He uses muscles he didn’t know he had.” North rubbed his backside.

  “And this Frenchman?”

  “Scoutin’. Too itchy to wait.” North took the Frenchman’s pistol and primed it from the little brass powder horn in his pocket.

  Will said, “What are you doing?”

  “Even if we truss Eve right beside him, Frenchy and the others’ll keep comin’.”

  “We’re not leaving Eve,” said Will.

  “ ’Course not”—North gave his brother a wink—”seein’ as you’re sweet on her.”

  “Seein’ as she’s carrying your child.”

  “If she’s carryin’, it ain’t mine. Eve’s for you, unless our Frog friend catches up to us. But there’s one way to make certain that won’t happen….” North aimed the pistol at the Frenchman’s head and pulled back the hammer.

  “Are you crazy?” Will snatched the pistol from his brother and blew out the prime. “McMillan would come after us with half the town.”

  “Suit yourself,” said North. “But the Frog’ll keep comin’, him and Curly Bill and the boys, too….

  Never been chased this far over a woman or a gamblin’ debt before.”

  THE NOTCH OF the Mountains was a twelve-mile-long valley running roughly southeast to northwest. On either side dropped walls of stubborn greenery or bare granite or slagged rock, in some places a mile or more apart, in others so close that if a man shouted in one direction, his voice would echo back to him, then past him, then echo again from the other side.

  And it was plain wilderness. They had seen not a single dwelling since entering the Notch, and few enough since leaving North Conway some twenty miles back.

  As the rough road rose and twisted through the trees and crossed again and again on teetering plank bridges over the Saco, Will remembered something from a soliloquy he had learned in school, something about “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.”

  But he planned to come back from this country, with the document, his reputation, and Eve Corliss at his side. So he put Hamlet out his head and breathed the perfume of those New Hampshire mountains—the sweet smell of balsam needles warmed by the sun and wafted on the summer breeze. And he watched a pair of hawks riding the updrafts.

  North led the way, followed by Mary, then Eve, with Will bringing up the rear.

  At each turn in the trail, Will stopped to give a look at the terrain sloping behind them. In four hours, he had not seen a rider, though from time to time, he had seen trail dust puff above the trees. The dust worried him some, but North seemed unconcerned and said the best thing to do was keep moving.

  So they had ridden on, most of the time in silence.

  Finally, Eve said, “Do these mountains have names?”

  Will liked hearing her talk again. Talk might break the tension.

  “They’re
called the White Mountains,” said North, “ ‘cause they’re covered in snow nine months of the year.”

  “But the individual mountains?” Eve said. “Mount Such-and-Such or So-and-So.”

  “I suppose the Indians have names for them,” said Mary.

  “Saco is an Injun name,” said North, “from the words Skog Kooe—‘snake-shaped stream runnin’ through pine trees.’ “

  “That says a lot in two words,” suggested Eve.

  “You’d need twenty-two to say the same thing,” answered Will.

  Eve threw a look over her shoulder and gave him a laugh.

  Will liked her looks and her laughs, because they seemed to let him in on her secrets. But he knew there were a few secrets she was keeping. He liked that, too.

  “The first white men to see this Notch were a pair of hunters,” said North. “About fifteen years ago. Royal governor promised ’em a land grant if they could cut a road … make a trade route. Took ’em five years.”

  Up ahead, it looked as if the wall of mountains closed altogether.

  “It narrows up there,” said North. “Just a path through the rubble-rock. Folks call it the Gateway of the Notch. Better goin’ on the other side.”

  “Is it hard to get through?” asked Eve.

  “It’s steep,” said North. “But if there’s no rock slides …”

  Will asked Eve if she needed a rest. “No restin’ now,” snapped North. “Not till we get through.”

  “This girl’s pregnant,” said Mary. “If she needs a rest, she gets a rest.”

  “No restin’,” repeated North, and he peered back down the Notch, toward a puff of trail dust rising a mile or so behind them.

  Eve asked North, “Are there places to stay up there?”

  “Five farms … families brought in to settle the land grant. I stayed with one of them once. But we don’t want places to stay, darlin’. We need places to hide.”

  “Hide?” said Eve. “You think we need to hide?”

  North did not answer. Instead, he said to Will, “Watch that dust. Road’s gettin’ steeper, but the dust’s comin’ closer.”

  “Men riding harder?” said Will.

  North nodded. “Men always ride harder when they smell their quarry.”

  “Us?” said Mary.

  “Don’t worry,” said North. “Just keep goin’.”

  UP AND UP they rode, with the horses gasping and straining at every turn.

  The roar of the river grew louder as the Notch grew narrower and concentrated the sound. The riverbed of boulders and tumbledown rocks to their left resembled a badly built staircase steepening toward the Gateway. And the mountains rose a thousand feet on either flank.

  They came to a waterfall on the right side of the road, a long silver cascade, dropping hundreds of feet down the rock face.

  The horses tried to stop and drink from the pool at its base, but if they watered now, they might founder and never make it through the Gateway.

  So North told them all to dismount and lead the horses, keep them moving, keep them climbing. “Plenty of water on the other side, a pond where the river rises.”

  They pushed themselves and pulled the tired horses, climbing until they heard the sound of another waterfall. It was spreading water across a smooth granite face and slithering under a little bridge to join the rock-strewn river.

  A few hundred feet beyond was the Gateway—a literal notch no more than twenty-five feet wide, a hundred feet long, already in afternoon shadow.

  “There it is.” North studied the terrain, looked back down the road, then said to Will, “You know … sooner or later, we have to face them.”

  Eve swung toward him. “You said once we’re through, we could hide.”

  “They’ll still be after us. Until we stop ’em.” North pulled his musket from his saddle. “And there won’t be a better spot to do it than here.”

  “I’ll stay,” said Will. “You have a baby on the way.”

  North looked at Eve, first at her belly, then into her eyes.

  Eve turned and looked up toward the Gateway. North said, “I owe you all somethin’. I’ll buy you time. Then I’ll be along.”

  Will said, “But North—”

  “I fought in Washington’s army. I know about delayin’ tactics. Hit and run. Stall and retreat. From this pass, I can hold up four riders all day.”

  “Not with one musket,” said Will.

  “That’s a lesson for you, Willie. Always carry a musket and a pistol. Would to God you carried either one.”

  Mary Cousins slipped her pistol from her skirt. “This has good range, maybe twenty-five feet.”

  “Darlin’ “—North took off his tricorne and wiped the sweat from his forehead—”if they get that close, I’ll use my knife.”

  A shot exploded from down the road. Eve’s horse screamed and reared and the bullet ricocheted off a rock above them.

  “Damn!” shouted Will. “They’re on us!”

  North took a pack from his horse and flipped it to Will. “The Frenchman’s pistol is in there. Load it.”

  Another shot cracked. This one hit Will’s horse in the ear, about eight inches to the right of Will’s face.

  The horse collapsed onto its own lifeless legs.

  Eve’s horse screamed again, but Eve held her down.

  At the same time, two more shots exploded from the rocks and trees below. One went high; another struck the road thirty feet in front of them.

  “Two muskets and two rifles,” said North, his voice growing calmer with each shot. “Four men. We have a minute before they reload the muskets. More with the rifles.”

  “It’s the rifles we have to worry about,” said Will.

  “ ’Twas a musket killed your horse,” said North. “Lucky shot, or one of them is close enough to make it count.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Mary.

  “Mount and ride.” North grabbed his shot pouch and powder horn. “Willie, get up to those rocks up in the Gateway. Hunker down. Fire at anything that moves. Keep ’em busy. Maybe they’ll think you have more than a hog-leg pistol in your hand. I’m goin’ higher. Some good ledges up higher.”

  Will tried to say something, but his brother was already scampering over the face of the waterfall, rising ten, twenty, thirty feet in the space of a few surefooted strides. Then he disappeared into the trees above.

  So Will turned and ran up the path, stumbling on rocks, leaping over boulders, following after the horses and the women until he reached the shadow of the Gateway.

  There he stopped and watched the women ride into the bright sunlight beyond.

  The road led through the Gateway, toward a marsh-limned pond. Then it crossed a meadow and disappeared into the distant woods. A true valley, thought Will, framed by mountains set miles apart, mountains that seemed to have been placed on the earth to express the benevolent majesty of nature, a distant country from which a traveler might wish never to return on an August afternoon.

  Then another shot struck the rocks just above him.

  Will dropped behind a boulder and peered back down the Notch. No more musing on the grandeur of God’s landscape. He was in a fight. From behind his boulder, he could see the road to his left, and if he moved, he could look down the slope of the narrow river to his right.

  He primed the pistol, rested it on the edge of the rock, listened to the sound of the water rushing down the river, and waited for a target.

  It did not take long.

  A shot rang out; then Curly Bill and one of the others emerged from opposite sides of the road, not ten feet from the rickety bridge where Will’s horse lay.

  One of them fired and both of them charged. A frontal assault, plain and simple.

  Will took aim. He knew he wouldn’t hit anything at this range, but he was following orders.

  His shot whined off the rocks twenty feet above Curly Bill, who stopped and pulled himself back out of sight.

  The sailor on the other side
of the road kept coming, as if he knew that Will was alone and reloading, and a quick charge could take him.

  But North was somewhere above, with good cover and a good angle. And he made a good shot. It hit the sailor in the side and send him tumbling onto the wet rocks.

  Now there were three.

  One of them, maybe the Frenchman, answered North’s shot with one of his own from cover down the road.

  Will thought he heard North grunt. Was it pain? Or was he stumbling to another ledge up among the greenery?

  Reload, thought Will. Whatever had happened up there, reload and quickly.

  Curly Bill took that moment to charge.

  Will poured powder down the barrel, rammed home ball and wadding, turned the gun over … primed it …

  He could see the bunghole features of Bill’s face and the rum-barrel body coming fast, musket held at his hip.

  Quickly. Quickly. Don’t misfire.

  Will pulled back the hammer. Then he heard the blast of a gun, not ten feet away. All in an instant, he cursed, ducked, and prepared to be struck.

  But someone else was shooting … at Bill.

  It was Mary. She had found a spot on the other side of the road, gotten behind a rock, and fired.

  The shot was enough to stop Bill and send him spinning back for cover, his face three ugly circles of shock.

  Mary was already reloading, while Eve stood a short distance away, holding the reins of both horses. Then North shouted from above. “Willie! On your right!”

  Will jumped to the other side of the boulder and saw the third sailor leaping from rock to rock, climbing in the riverbed. He was no more than twenty feet away, had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a musket in his hand.

  Will pulled the trigger.

  The big pistol kicked, and a fifty-caliber red hole appeared on the sailor’s chest.

  But there was no time for Will to consider what he had just done, because Eve was screaming his name, screaming for him to look out.

  Curly Bill was charging again.

  He came first at Mary. She leaped from behind her rock and swung at him with her pistol. He parried, then struck her a single quick blow in the forehead with the butt of his musket. Mary collapsed in the road, her skirt billowing around her.