“Which is?” the preacher asked.
“Preach to us.”
* * * * *
Breck Stewart rocked back in the chair, pushed up the brim of his hat, and lowered the chair’s front legs onto the porch. After the words sunk in, he straightened, his head cocked at a curious angle, and said, “Preach to them?”
“Aye,” Monteith said.
“Parson,” Gouedy said, “what did you do?”
“Sir, I delivered a sermon full of fire and brimstone. I baptized two of the scoundrels. Then they fed us, blindfolded us, and led us through the depths of the forest until we were back on the Charlestown Road, just a mile or two from the intersection with the Cherokee Path.”
“On that mule,” Stewart said.
“Aye.”
Emily ground her teeth. Finnian Kilduff had decided that the marsh tacky dun wasn’t such a bad horse, after all.
“They stole my stallion?” Stewart said, staring at Emily.
“Yes, Da,” she whispered.
“A most brazen bunch of swine,” James Middleton snapped. “For while they held you hostage, they sent more of their own devils to kill Alroy O’Fionnagáin and his family.”
Sitting on the steps, Emily turned and gasped, the color draining from her face.
“Alroy O’Fionnagáin?” Douglas Monteith said as if numb. “Dead?”
“Yes,” Stewart answered. “Meacham is out with some men, trying to find their trail, but …” He sighed, and pushed his chair back, slowly rocking.
“Alroy’s wife was …” Gouedy began, than looked at Emily and let the words trail off.
“It was not those that held us.”
Emily had not realized she had spoken loud enough for anyone to hear, but every head had turned toward her, and she cringed. Donnan hissed something she could not understand, and her father slammed his chair down so hard the porch seemed to shake.
“By the grace of God …” Middleton began, but Monteith silenced him by raising his right hand.
“Emily is right,” the minister said. “These men who abducted us were a hard lot, but murderers is something I would not call them.”
“What would you call them?” Donnan’s voice crackled with anger.
Monteith shrugged. “Horse thieves. Cattle thieves. Twelve men and a woman …”
“A woman!” someone shouted.
Middleton’s echoing oath was shouted down by Stewart’s booming voice, “Let the parson finish, damn you all!”
After a moment, Monteith went on, “Yes, one woman. A loose strumpet, but a woman, nonetheless. I would not call this group a lot of mad killers. They were a pernicious lot who might propagate vice, theft, and beggary for certain.” He paused. “But murder … and as foul of a crime as what you say happened to that poor but fine Irishman and his family … no, not these men.”
“They are outlaws,” Middleton insisted.
Monteith’s head bobbed. “Aye. But thieves.” He turned to Emily with a placating smile, speaking softly. “But, Emily, though those men treated us kindly … I guess that might be as good a description as any … they are outlaws. Their leader … he is not Robin Hood, and the thieves that he commands is not a group of merry men.” He swung his head back to the men who had gathered at the tavern. “But horse thieves though they very well are, they did not have the look of killers.”
“You take a man’s horse, and,” Gouedy inserted, “in this country, it can mean death. You take away a man’s livelihood, and it can mean the same.”
“And that marsh tacky cost me a small fortune in sterling.” Stewart rammed a meaty fist into the palm of his other hand.
The preacher shrugged. “They let us keep the mule,” he said.
“Mule.” Stewart turned and spit into a cuspidor.
“And they tithed as well,” Emily said.
“Hush, Emily!” her father barked. “Go help your mother. This is no conversation for a girl not fourteen.”
Not fourteen? In a month, I will be seventeen. Girls my age … girls even as young as fourteen … are already married here in the district, some with one or more children. Emily would not argue with her father.
“So what shall we do?” Gouedy asked. “March is not half passed, and the marauders have already begun their treachery.”
“Emily.”
She stopped in the doorway, turned to see the Reverend Douglas Monteith standing, looking at her.
“They might not be killers,” Monteith told her, “but they must be punished.”
“I never said otherwise, Reverend,” she said as she closed the door behind her. But she did not cross the tavern for the winter kitchen to help her mother. She thought of Alroy O’Fionnagáin and his wife. She felt dread at the thought of seeing their faces in nightmares she would have that evening.
“What shall we do, Stewart?” Middleton yelled.
“Hear me,” the preacher said. “I will forgo preaching the Word of God this spring in the backcountry. I will travel to Charlestown and speak to Governor Montagu. I will make him understand what is happening here.”
“When?” It was Donnan’s voice. “As much snow as is melting, no one will be crossing the Saluda River without risking hide or hair for at least another week. And the Broad will be running even swifter and higher.”
“Besides,” said another almost too softly for Emily to hear, “we caught a gang of murdering rogues last summer on the Welsh Neck. These were sent to Charlestown for justice, and what justice did our new governor decide was appropriate? Five pardoned and sent back to torment us more.”
Donnan added, “‘For good order and harmony of the colony.’”
Chapter Thirteen
They would call themselves the Cane Creek Regulators, but only because, during a vote at Cormorant’s Rock, James Middleton had dismissed the suggestion of Long Canes Regulators as he thought people might think it meant a group led by Birmingham Long, and Jonathan Conley believed that Breck Stewart’s pitch for the Saluda River Regulators could well apply to another group of vigilantes as far south as the Congaree.
“Husband …” Machara Stewart stood on her tiptoes to kiss Breck’s check, “proud of you, I am.”
Blushing, Breck pulled on his cocked hat.
“You should call him captain,” Donnan said with a laugh as he jumped off the porch, and gathered the reins to his gray horse.
“Captain.” Machara nodded and smiled. “Aye. I like the sound of that. Now be safe, Captain Stewart. And you, too, Ensign.”
Already in the saddle, Ensign Donnan Stewart snapped a salute at his mother.
Emily stood near the door, one hand on Alan’s shoulder, the other gripping Elizabeth’s hand. Alan sucked on a piece of maple candy, but Elizabeth sniffed, tears streaming down her cheeks. Stewart kissed his wife’s cheek, and moved toward Emily, dropping to a knee, pulling out a handkerchief, and dabbing Elizabeth’s tears.
“No tears, Elizabeth,” he said. “I shall return before you know I am gone.” He brushed the child’s bangs off her forehead, then took Alan’s free hand, sticky from the candy, and shook. “You must be the man of the house, Alan.”
The boy’s head shook. “No, Da. That’s Emily’s job.”
Chuckling, Stewart looked up at Emily. “Aye. Mayhap you are right, Son, but do your best and help her when you can. Can you do that for me?”
Alan’s head nodded.
Stewart looked at his oldest daughter as he got to his feet. “We shan’t be gone long, Emily,” he said, then added softly, “You know where the blunderbuss is?”
“Yes, Da.”
“Keep an eye out,” he whispered. “There are spies in this community. Spies who betray us and those around us to help the swine who would lay this country to waste.”
Traitors in Ninety Six? Emily thought to herself, and then, as a chill r
an down her spine, blurted out, “Who?”
“When we find out, they shall rue their deceit.” He put his massive hand on Emily’s shoulder, squeezing it tightly. “Do you know what, child?”
Emily shook her head. She had to breathe in deeply, then hold her breath, to dam the tears that threatened to cascade down her face.
“There is a side of me that wishes you could ride with us,” he told her, then smiled before bending to kiss her forehead.
Damn, she thought as he turned away, how dashing he looked in the long red coat with its dark green stripes, pointed loops, and white lace. Even his cocked hat was trimmed with gold, and a brace of pistols had been stuck inside his green sash. The buckskin pants and buckle shoes might not look military, but he carried himself as a soldier.
She counted forty men in front of the tavern, most of them holding long rifles but some with lances, one gripping a pitchfork, and another with four hatchets hooked to some sort of canvas strap that stretched diagonally around his chest. A few brandished cutlasses, and at least two had bayonets affixed to their long guns. Others carried dirks, cut-down muskets, or fowling pieces. Fur-skin caps, blue bonnets, Holster caps, cocked hats, straw hats, broad-brimmed fur and felt hats, and several cockades of various colors. Tartan coats and Highland hose. Waistcoats, blue coats, and dirty smocks.
Every face showed stern fortitude. Any bandit would dread meeting up with the likes of this militia, and as her father led those two score men out of the settlement toward the Cherokee Path, she thought about Finnian Kilduff, and she wondered if it was really worry she felt about that outlaw.
“Let us carry justice to the vermin who have forgotten God’s Commandments and the law of the King!” Stewart shouted above the sound of thundering hoofs. “Let us never forget Alroy O’Fionnagáin and his family.”
Then they were gone, leaving behind churned-up dirt, horse apples, and a feeling of vengeance that lay heavy on the dew.
* * * * *
Virgil Hickox’s wheelwright’s shop was empty. So was the barn where cooper Thomas Taylor worked. Machara said to Emily, “Ninety Six has not looked so deserted since the Cherokee War.”
The silence in the village left Emily feeling unnerved. Like a child, she dragged a tobacco stick in the dirt, before she finally heard a familiar sound. She headed straight to Benjamin Cooper’s shed, stopping at the entrance, and clearing her throat.
Years ago, when she had first arrived in Ninety Six, she remembered asking her mother how come Benji was a carpenter and not the settlement’s cooper. She grinned at the memory as she watched the big man work.
Already sweating, the freedman with a round face, close-cropped beard, and powerful arms, stood over a table, working a plane across a thick piece of wood. He wore linen breeches, sturdy shoes of black leather, and a heavy leather apron covered with sawdust. So intent was he on his job that Emily had to clear her throat again before he looked up.
“Why, Miss Emily.” He set the plane on the table and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his cotton smock. “What may I do for you, ma’am?”
What could she say? That she was bored? That she wished she were riding through the woods and hills with the Cane Creek Regulators. “Sure is quiet around here,” she said finally.
Smiling, he moved to a bucket, pulled out a ladle, and drank. “Yes, ma’am. How long has your father been gone?”
“Three days.”
“No word from them yet, I expect?”
“No, sir.”
Nodding, he dropped the ladle in the bucket, wiped his mouth, and returned to the table. “They shall be back soon. I would not fret.”
She told herself she was not worried. “Why did not you go with the regulators?” she asked, immediately regretting the question. Her mother often warned her to watch her tongue, to remember that she was a lady. Cooper did not appear to have taken offense, however, and pointed at the door. Emily turned, saw the long rifle leaning against a workbench, a powder horn, and leather sack lying on the edge of the bench, a Queen Anne’s pistol nearby. “Your father asked me to stay … in case. For protection.” Cooper grinned. “Not that a girl like you needs protection. Besides, I got a chore to do.”
The plane glided across the wood, and Emily tentatively approached the table. “What are you building?” she asked.
The wood was huge, thick, curved. Pieces were also stacked on the table, and she saw six wooden stands already built, lying on the floor on the far wall, with four-by-four square rods in the center of the stands, rising almost as tall as Emily.
“Stocks,” Cooper said.
“Stocks,” she repeated.
“Yes, Miss Emily. I suppose the regulators decided a ducking stool would not be a fitting punishment. You have seen stocks before, Miss Emily?”
Her mouth had turned dry, and she could only nod. She remembered the poor creatures in Charlestown, head and hands locked in the wooden structures. She recalled the young slave, so short, he was practically choking in the stocks.
“Yes,” she finally answered, and spotted something else across the room—heavy wood that resembled an inverted L, a brace connecting the two bars, with long leather straps dangling from iron rings at the end of the top bar.
Cooper’s eyes followed hers, and, without being asked, he said: “A whipping post, ma’am.”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded foreign.
“I like it no better than you, Miss Emily,” he said. “I have seen too many of my own kind put in the pillory. On the other hand, miss, there has been too much lawlessness in this district for too long a time. The law must come to the frontier. Eventually it must come.”
“I know,” she said.
“You must get used to this, Miss Emily. For your father has paid me to place them betwixt the tavern and Mister Taylor’s property. So everyone can see the culprits when they are brought to our community.”
“Yes.” She tried to think of something pleasant to say, but what came out of her mouth was, “At least you have not been hired to build a gallows.”
“No, Miss Emily.” His voice sounded raw, too. “We have the oak tree in Mister Hickox’s yard for that.”
* * * * *
On the fourth day, Emily helped her mother scrub the floors to keep her mind off the Cane Creek Regulators.
The fifth day was Sunday, which meant church at Cormorant’s Rock, but only a few settlers showed up to hear Douglas Monteith’s sermon and prayers. Afterward, they practiced their reading from the Bible, then spent the afternoon on the porch, looking down the empty trails, hoping to see the regulators return.
On the sixth day, the first morning after the full moon, they planted most of the garden. “Always plant your below-ground crops during the dark of the moon,” Breck Stewart would say. Superstition or science—Emily wasn’t certain which—she dug the holes with a hoe, Alan dropped in the bean seeds, then they covered the hole with dirt. On the row next to them, Machara dug the holes and Elizabeth dropped the pea seeds. Later, they sprinkled in the seeds for the carrots and radishes, and planted the onions, turnips, and potatoes. The corn, melons, cucumbers, and tomatoes would wait until the light of the moon.
The morning of the seventh day, Cooper began setting up the stocks and the whipping posts—he wound up building two—in the clearing behind the tavern and Thomas Taylor’s cabin. Robert Gouedy brought two slaves to help the carpenter, and practically everyone in the settlement came to watch the installation.
“They come to see this,” Monteith whispered angrily to Emily, “yet they miss church.”
She pretended she had not heard, doubting the parson had meant for anyone to hear his remark. As she stood there, she wondered how Benjamin Cooper, a freedman, felt as he worked alongside two slaves. And what did Mr. Gouedy’s slaves think of the carpenter? Then, when the first stock went up, she turned away, trying not to imagine Finnian Kilduff’s hea
d and hands sticking out of the holes.
“You young ’uns had best behave yourselves,” Mrs. Cochrane told her small children. “Or else you shall find yourselves in those stocks.”
Which made the children cry, and many of the adults to snicker. The comment made the blood rush to Emily’s head, and she walked away, feeling angry.
On the eighth day, on her way to split kindling, as she opened the door, she saw a figure sitting, cross-legged, on the porch, head bent, back leaning against the railing. She let out a shriek, and raised the ax.
The head lifted, and Emily lowered the ax. “Damn you, Go-la-nv Pinetree!” she snapped. “You frightened me out of three years of my life.”
“Osda sunalei,” he said, reaching up for the top rail, then pulling himself to his feet.
“Aye.” Arms suddenly weak, she lowered the ax. “Good morning, I guess.” Finally she managed a smile, and glanced around, making sure no one had heard her little yelp of terror, before looking back at the young Cherokee.
Her smile faded. He looked much thinner, his clothes were ragged, moccasins and leggings wet with water, and she noticed a crescent-shaped scar above his left eye. That was new. Beside him she spotted a bundle of pelts. The furs looked thick and rich, and would bring a fine price in Charlestown. It had been a hard winter.
“How have you been?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he stepped toward her and took the ax, then glanced around.
“Kindling,” she said. “to make breakfast.” She followed him to the woodpile, and stepped back as he split some pine into small strips to build a fire.
“Are the pelts for Mister Gouedy?” she asked, then felt like an idiot. Of course, they were for the trader, but then she thought again. Pinetree would have passed Gouedy’s post on his way to the settlement, so why had not he done his trading first?
Pinetree split the last piece, leaned the ax against the pile of wood, and dropped to his knees, reaching for the iron-bladed hatchet to trim the wood he had split into smaller pieces.
He said, “Your father … he asked.”
The Cane Creek Regulators Page 11