A boy of sixteen said to Morgan, "I am Barbary Allen's son, Noah Allen. A fortnight past I runned my blue hound Blue on a he-bear up Desolation Creek on Sharp Top Mountain. Along hobbled an old woman headed home to Broke Jug from Great Grandmother. She had been to a young doctor who flat cured her of the dropsy. He had brewed some kind of potion and told her how to concoct it herself. And he refused her metal coin. She said he was from the Northland. They call him Old Doctor Grandmother. But I misdoubt he was your kin, for the old woman said he was well wedded to a fair young wife."
"I would fain behold that young wife," Grandsire Allen cackled.
"I don't misdoubt but you would, grandfer," another man said.
"Grandsire worn out five wives with eight and thirty children," Barbary said proudly.
"And would willingly take another tomorrow," Grandsire said. "If one would have me."
"Ye are a regular old Abraham when it comes to getting children in your dotage, grandfer," a man said. "How many winters have ye?"
"Ninety and five. And eight sons shot by Sheltons and one shot last month by Oconaluftee. That would be my boy Quill. Barbary's man that was."
Morgan turned to Barbary. "Oconaluftee shot your husband?"
"Aye," she said. "Luftee and his devils cotched Quill up Fire Creek hunting ginseng. They tried to get him to peach on us'n and tell where we's laying out. Oh, they tormented him sore and sore, but Quill never said one word. So Luftee shot him."
Barbary stood up, her hair the color of the embers in the fire. "Get ye all and every one to your beds," she told the clan. "On the morrow some of ye must climb up Leather Breeches to Shelton Laurel and warn the Sheltons that Luftee is near."
"Why, Lady Barbary. The Sheltons be our sworn blood enemies."
"More the reason. If Oconaluftee kills their menfolks, there will be none left for us and our sons to kill. You will warn them. As for Luftee, I vouchsafe to you on the eternal soul of my beloved husbint Quill Allen that he shall be dealt with. Now to bed. You," she said to Morgan. "Bide here by the fire."
Some minutes later Barbary reappeared with two clean tow sacks and a rough bar of pearl-ash soap, a fresh white linen shirt, linen drawers, gray homespun trousers, also a pair of good wool stockings. She ordered him to strip off his tattered raiment and throw it on the wood coals. Morgan was mortified to disrobe before the beautiful Barbary, but she laughed and said in her throaty voice that as he very well knew she had a son his age and one older still and had had two more, as well as her man Quill, killed at the hands of Luftee, and he would shuck off his clothing instantly or she would lay ungentle hands on him and strip him herself. Aye, she would, and relish the task. So Morgan threw his old clothes on the fire and walked naked except for his boots to the cold stream in the mountain darkness. Barbary led him straight to a deep basin pool below a waterfall spilling over a trough of limestone, and without breaking her long-legged stride she tossed the clean clothing and tow sacks on the sand, and pulled her linsey-woolsey dress over her head, and walked into the pool up to her waist with her long hair floating out behind. She stood directly under the silvery shower of dropping water and beckoned to him with her eyes, silver as the falling water in the moonlight. Half mortified, half amused, more than half aroused by her womanly beauty, Morgan unlaced his boots for the first time since he had put them on at Little Mountain, though his old stockings were in rags and adhered to his feet like bits of sticking plaster. Barbary was soaping herself and laving water over her lovely shoulders and breasts and hair, then ducking under the falling curtain of water. As the icy jolt of the mountain water hit Morgan and he drew in his breath sharply, she grabbed his arm with a strength he'd never before felt in a woman and began to lather him well with the brick of soap, with no more regard for his modesty than as though she were scrubbing one of her own boys and they small again. Only the shock of the cold water from the falls drenching his head and back kept him from clasping her there in the pool, this tall, lovely songstress of the Blue Smoke Mountains. Soon she had soaped and cleaned him well, even washing away the remnants of cloth stuck to his feet and scouring his head and long hair, glinting like a cascade of dark gold in the mountain moonlight, then seizing his head and plunging it under the falls while, with her long musician's fingers, she routed away the dust and grease and sweat of weeks of walking. She led him to the dry sand beside the basin pool and flung at him first one of the tow sacks to use as a towel and then the embroidered cambric shirt and the drawers and stout linsey-woolsey trousers and strong stockings from her own roving sheep.
The clothes were a little roomy for him though comfortably so, but she made him leave his boots to air out on the chestnut log stoop before her cabin while she brought him inside and lighted a swinging Betty lamp with a taper from the coals in the fireplace. She seated him at the trestle table where he'd eaten his oatmeal with molasses and set on the table before him a glass jar of cloudy liquid. "Sup it slow," she commanded. "It's grandfer's best corn."
Morgan shook his head. "I take no spirits. Lest doing so deflect me from my task."
"Your task tonight for a certainty is a very different task," she said. "Have ye a sup."
Morgan took a sip of the drink, and for a moment he could not speak or breathe or feel any sensation but a flaring flame in his throat and chest followed by a spreading and delicious warmth. He raised the jar again, and the very fumes rising off the corn made his head swim. He took another sup and gasped as he had when the frigid shower of mountain water had poured down his bare back. He could feel the numbing heat of the whiskey usurping the will of his arms and legs, even his fingers. For this one night, he did not care so much about his mission. Seated across the pine trestle from him, her still-damp hair a dark, dark red in the lamplight, Barbary fetched up a gourd fiddle with groundhog-gut strings and the sign inscribed on its neck, and in the same unearthly treble in which she had wailed out "Barbary Allen," she sang.
Now red-haired Barbary had a good man named Quill.
Oconaluftee came for him to kill.
She'd borned two boys named Ab and Lot
Whom Luftee shot.
And when the leaden shot passed through
Her husband and her sons, it kilt poor Barbary too.
Barbary Allen set down her fiddle, wiped away her tears, and stood up. She went to a cupboard and returned with a long carving knife. "Which is your gun hand?" she said.
Morgan pointed to his right hand.
"Then hold out t'other."
He did, and so swiftly that the entire operation could not have taken five seconds, she made a cut in the palm of his left hand and another in her own and pressed her bleeding palm against his. "Now," she said. "Swear. Swear on the soul of your beloved brother that you will kill Luftee."
When he hesitated, she said fiercely, "Do it now or I'll slit your throat like a hog. Swear!"
So Morgan did, whereupon she bound his hand and prepared a place for him to lie by the fireside, and in the small hours of the night she sang a new ballad of her own composition called "The Ballad of the Outlaw, Childe Morgan."
From the far Northlands came the outlaw, Childe Morgan,
To hunt the demon-men.
For that they killed black Jesse, the man who was his friend.
Childe Morgan came to widowed Barbary Allen
Who, for all her many failings,
Had vowed revenge on him who slew her men.
She took her blade and boldly made young Morgan Allen kin.
Now, outlaw childe, go forth, go forth
And kill Oconaluftee and those men
Who killed your Allen kin.
B ARBARY WAS SHAKING HIM ROUGHLY and repeating his name. He opened his eyes. It was coming on dawn, time for him to go forth as he had sworn to and kill this evil Luftee who had done Barbary Allen such a grievous hurt and to find Pilgrim, if Pilgrim was to be found. Then Morgan Kinneson's war would be over and he could return north, though whether to Slidell he could not foretell.
Barbary had been up and about for some time, preparing oatmeal with molasses treacle for him and for her son Noah, who had appeared with his long mountain gun. Barbary had softened his boots by rubbing them well with hog's lard and had cleaned Lady Justice with her dear dead Quill's wooden cleaning rods and a cloth soaked in oil made from camphor and, to assure its deadliness, the poisonous red berries of the nightshade plant. She had brushed Morgan's slouch hat, weathered as black as his boots, and sprinkled a little mountain rosewater inside the crown. The boy Noah was quiet and watchful as he cleaned his own long gun, and from time to time he gave Morgan a quick look that Morgan could not read.
Barbary's face looked haggard in the dawn light. "Noah."
"Yes, mother."
"Morgan is kin now. He has both the right and the beholdenness to destroy Oconaluftee. Killing is a business he knows about, just as you know the ways of the wild faunas and wee bright floras and the secret paths over which you have guided many a poor dark running one up through these mounts. You will guide him to the laurel where Luftee is encamped and leave him there to do his work."
Noah pursed his lips and frowned.
"Now go," Barbary said. "May Our Savior bless and keep you and make His light to shine down upon you in this sacred enterprise, Morgan Kinneson. Leave none alive and remember this. If you hear the mountain horns, one blast means gather. Two means sickness or accident. Three means grave danger."
"What of my brother?" Morgan said.
"Go up Great Grandmother," Barbary said. "And inquire there of the One-legged Man of the Mountain. Mayhap he can help you. But to reach him you must first venture through the land of Oconaluftee and slay the monster. May all-forgiving Jesus walk with you and steady your gun hand."
"One question more," Morgan said. "Where did you come by the sign on your door? And on your fiddle?"
"Grandfer carved e there so the avenging angel would pass over," Barbary teased him.
"My sign is Nauthiz," Morgan said. He drew it with his finger on the trestle table.
Barbary looked at him. "Our sign, Isa, means, so I was tolt, ice. The withdrawal of warm weather. It signifies withdrawal from the wicked world. A dark man give it to my Quill ages past. Now go."
As Morgan and Noah headed up the steep slope behind the cabin, they heard the strains of the gourd fiddle and Barbary singing the song that would soon gain such currency that it would be sung from one end of the Blue Shaconage to another.
From the far cold North came the outlaw, Childe Morgan,
To hunt down demon-men....
"Tell again," Noah said as the song faded, "how it came to pass that you slew the wicked giant Ludi Too. I wish I had been there to help."
Morgan smiled at the boy's innocence. Noah reminded him of himself a few short months before. A boy-man, hunting a moose in the snowy Vermont bog. So young. So confident.
"Let's save our breath for climbing," Morgan suggested. "By nightfall there may well be more to tell."
"I'm for coming with you the whole of the way," Noah said. "I care not what Mother said. I intend to avenge my own people. I'd be honored for your help." Noah's eyes seemed to acquire a sly light as he added, "Now we're kin."
"Honor your father and mother," Morgan said.
"Aye," Noah said. "So I shall. I shall honor my father Quill Allen and my dead brothers by killing their murderer. In truth I need no more help than you do with your long walking."
"Well," Morgan laughed, "as for that, I do need help with my walking. These mountains of yours are a regular Chinese puzzle, Noah. Without a good man from this land to cipher the way for me, I'd likely turn myself around and be back in Gatlinburg by noon." Morgan got out the compass the general had given to him. "This instrument of mine is as useless here as a stopped watch."
Noah looked at the compass in Morgan's hand. "What o'clock be it?"
"It's a compass."
"What? A compass watch?"
Morgan showed him how the compass worked, and Noah jumped back when the needle swung north. "What does this writing say?"
"It says the good man's course is always true. It was given to me by a good man."
"Your father?"
"No, though my father is a good man and more." Morgan told Noah who had given him the compass. He showed him the general's initials on the back under the motto. Noah nodded, but it was clear that he had never heard the name before.
Together they climbed skyward toward the encampment of Oconaluftee, though just who or what this man might be Morgan had no idea. He could not imagine what the murderous Luftee's connection was to Dinwiddie or to Pilgrim or to him. It had occurred to him that Luftee, rather than Dinwiddie, might be the man who had set in motion the prison escape at Elmira, the murder of Jesse, and the search for the carved stone. It made no difference. If Morgan had his way, and he believed that he would, by sunset Oconaluftee's corpse would lie moldering on the forest floor and he would be climbing Great Grandmother Mountain to find Barbary's One-legged Man.
T HOUGH HE HAD BEEN BORN with a compass inside his head, like a wild goose, Morgan would have been hard put to retrace a mile of his trek that day with Noah Allen. Every cove and brook split into a dozen more coves and brooks in half an hour's time. One especially steep knob called Acony Bell Mountain required a full two hours to go out around. They stopped at noon by a spring in a high cold pass, through which the wind rushed steadily with a terrible blasting roar, but before they had finished quenching their thirst Noah grabbed Morgan's arm.
"Sheltons!" the boy said. "You be all right but they'll kill me on sight." He pointed up the trail. "I'll meet you up yonder in the huckabuck roughs. You warn they about Luftee."
No sooner had Noah vanished into the woods than half a dozen heavily armed men in dark slouch hats like Morgan's own appeared on the path. They walked single file, and the tallest, who led the way, had a white linen cloth wrapped around the end of his rifle barrel. Morgan had not heard them coming. He had no idea how Noah had been alerted to their presence. The man in the lead nodded to him, and Morgan nodded back. The other men regarded him from the sides of their eyes, taking his measure as, one by one, they drank from the spring, some from carved wooden cups, some from their hands. Morgan could see them admiring his slung rifle without appearing to.
When they finished drinking, Morgan told them his name and that he was looking for his brother. He told them Pilgrim's name. The tallest man, who was three or four inches taller than Morgan, said, "Why come ye girded up with arms amongst us? To kill yer brother? Did he snatch away yer sweetheart? Do you ruction with him?"
Morgan shook his head and briefly told the men why he was carrying Lady Justice and the twin scattershot. When he recounted the killing of Ludi Too, one man removed his hat and raised his hand heavenward. Another squatted on his heels and with a little stick traced something in the sand by the spring.
After he finished his story the men were silent. Then the tall man said, "He ain't no red-headed Allen, that's certain." He put out his hand. "My name is Keith Vance Shelton. Have ye seed those demons that calls themselves Allens? We's under a flag of truce to parlay with them."
"A flag of truce?"
The tall man nodded at the white strip of cloth around his gun barrel. "We knows Oconaluftee kilt Barbary Allen's man Quill and two of her growed boys. Luftee kilt my brother Driscoll Shelton and Driscoll's son, and they bigged with child my niece Rosa Shelton who is but twelve year old. We propose to join forces with the Allens. To wipe out Luftee. We will settle up with that redheaded she-wolf Barbary and her wolfish clan later."
"Where are Luftee and his gang?"
"We ain't determined. Two day ago they up Baldy Dome. They come upon Wade Pearly's womenfolk and babies and mistreated them most atrociously. Tormented them fiercely to get them to give out Wade's hidey-hole up Clowers Mountain. Slow-hanged Wade's woman till they more than half stifled her to get her to talk, but she never did. Kilt one or two of Wade's babies even. Wade's people never talked."
; "How many men does Luftee command?"
"Fifteen or twenty. The offcasts of mankind, tooken from prisons and madhouses, judged unfit even for the Home Guard. Some Union bummers as well. Satan's own crew and Luftee the worst of them. He stands six and a half foot tall and has dark whiskers and long dark side hair and is bald as a goose egg on top. He wears a stuffed rattler-snake necktie tied off in a bow. He carries a buffaler gun that shoots true as the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When he turns his withering black eyes on you, it is as good as a death warrant."
"You must have suffered grievously at the hands of this Oconaluftee to be ready to join in league with the Allens."
"His crew murdered sixteen of our kin in Waynesville a fortnight ago. Old grandsires who had seen eighty winters and boys who had not seen fifteen. They digged a shallow trench and pitched them in, some still twitching. Them they finished off with a mattock hoe or buried still quick. One man danced on they graves to 'Juba' and clapped his hands, and Oconaluftee played on a lap harp whilst the slaughter did proceed. They all mad as crazed Saul that slang his spear at young David."
"What will you and the Allens do after you drive these killers out of your mountains?"
"Why, we'll take up battling each other again. If I ever cotch that Barbary out on the sled paths I shall big her myself. She is a high-toned woman and I would like to do a cornshuck mattress jig with her. Wouldn't she squirm like a wildcat though!"
From the laurel above a shot rang out. A rose-red bloom appeared in the middle of Keith Vance Shelton's forehead. The wound spread out like an opening blossom, and the tall mountaineer fell over backward.
"Hit's an ambuscade!" one of the Sheltons hollered. "To the laurel!"
Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel Page 24