by Rod Miller
He stopped for a breather before attempting the narrow gap between the bank and the barber shop where no support was offered, leaning against the stone building and scrubbing his unfeeling face with the palms of his hands.
“Uncle Ben? That you?”
Sobered considerably by the surprise of the question, he shouldered his way upright and thought he felt his brain slosh around inside as he jerked his head back and forth to locate the source of the voice in the darkness.
He found it, a few steps away. A shadow-shape of a man, standing on the dusty street in front of the barber shop.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Uncle Ben. Abel Pate.”
Ben’s awareness came rushing back with a sharp intake of breath.
“What the hell you doing here? Didn’t I already send you and your brothers packing? More than once, as I recollect.”
Abel walked a few steps closer. “I estimate you know why I’m here.”
“I told you you ain’t gettin’ those books.”
Abel stepped up onto the sidewalk and stopped scant inches from his uncle. “And I’m telling you I ain’t leaving without them.”
The older man was no taller than Abel, but considerably bigger by every other measure. The boy had no idea how he would fare in a fight with his uncle, and hoped it would not come to that. Ben had a different idea.
Before he even knew the fight had started, Abel found himself back on the street, sitting on his backside, his jaw throbbing. He shook the cobwebs out of his head and stood up.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Uncle Ben. You don’t appear to be feeling all that good.”
Ben laughed. “I ain’t never felt so bad that I couldn’t lick the likes of you. What I ought to do instead is turn you over my knee and give you a good spanking. If that no-account daddy of yours had done that more often, you wouldn’t be here disrespecting your elders like you are. But I guess I can’t expect much better from one of Lee Pate’s boys.”
Abel waded in with fists flying, but even in the man’s dissipated state Ben did not yield. The boy’s blows seemed to have no effect on his whiskey-numbed opponent. The only part of the man that moved was his big-brimmed hat. Knocked askew by Abel’s fist, it tipped off Ben’s head, rolled off his shoulder and fell to the walkway.
With a roar, Ben staggered out of his stupor and lashed out with heavy fists. He pummeled the boy’s body with bruising blows and a walloping uppercut slammed Abel’s head against a wooden post that propped up the bank’s porch roof.
But the attack was all Ben could muster and, gasping for air, he knew he had to end it then and there. He groped at the front of his duster, trying with an uncooperative hand to find his knife in the scabbard on his belt. A man in his line of work needed no such weapon, but vanity told him its heft and jeweled handle conveyed evidence of his wealth.
Slipping the knife from its sheath, he grabbed a hank of Abel’s hair and tipped back his head. Wobbly and woozy, Ben lifted the knife. But just as the blade’s razor-edge reached the boy’s neck, he mustered the strength to hoist a knee and plant it in his uncle’s crotch. With a gasp and whimper, Ben staggered and dropped to his knees, the knife clanking to the sidewalk beside him. Abel seized the opportunity along with a handful of shirtfront, hammering Ben’s head with his other fist until blood streamed from his crushed nose, trickled from his ears, and seeped through mashed lips.
Abel’s blows grew weaker and he stopped, turning his uncle loose. Ben fell forward and rolled to his back, head dangling over the edge of the plank sidewalk. The boy dropped, gulping air. Crawling on hands and knees, he gathered the knife and slowly, but without hesitation, sliced a wide and deep scarlet arc across his Uncle Ben’s throat.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Daniel Lewis whoaed up the team to have a look around. Fort Smith did not appear to be a big town, but it surely was a bustling one.
“Righty-o girls. Looks like we are here.”
Mary, Martha, Emma, and Jane joined their father at the first of the family’s two wagons, each drawn by a pair of oxen.
“Is this where we will be staying, Father?”
“Ah, no, my Jane. It is Texas we are bound for. But if the prospects look good, perhaps we shall lay over here for the winter.”
At thirteen, Jane was the youngest of the girls. Emma, at fifteen, never let her sister forget she was the baby of the family. Martha and Mary, at eighteen and nineteen, considered themselves beyond such childish obsessions, and what with doubling up in an attempt to fill the role of a dead mother, they had little time for it.
The Lewises stood beside the wagons watching men scurry about like insects under a lifted rock. They hauled carts burdened with bricks, pushed wheelbarrows full of mortar, drove wagonloads of saw logs going one way and milled lumber the other. High-wheeled freight wagons lumbered by, loaded with goods under canvas. Indians paraded in and out of the agent’s office, soldiers drilled under arms, roustabouts unloaded cargo from riverboats, drovers herded small bunches of cattle, sheep, and pigs. Everywhere the girls looked, it was a chaotic cavalcade of men. Some pretended not to look as they passed, others couldn’t help staring. Some doffed hats, others stopped dead in their tracks at the unfamiliar sight of the female of the species.
Spying a uniform with enough embellishments to imply importance, Daniel advised his daughters to stay put, then hustled after and hailed the army officer.
“Begging your pardon, Sir, I wonder if I might impose upon you for a bit of information.”
The officer, a captain, looked Lewis over, noting worn shoes, dust-covered trousers, and worn shirt rolled at the sleeves. “What can I do for you?”
“As you might have surmised, my family and I have only just arrived here. It has been a long road from Missouri. Where might we go in search of accommodations?”
“Accommodations? Of what kind?”
“Well, my good man, a rental house, perhaps. Or a house taking boarders if it comes to that. Even a hotel, on a temporary basis. We have been traveling these four weeks and are weary and in need of a comfortable place to rest for a time.”
The captain smiled, then shook his head. “I don’t know that you’ll find what you’re looking for here in Fort Smith. As you can see, we have more people than we have town at the time.”
“It does seem busy. For what cause?”
“The government is funding the rebuilding of Fort Smith— the military base, that is. What with all the Indians the War Department is removing to Indian Territory, the Arkansas politicians lobbied that soldiers be garrisoned here for protection.”
“I see.”
“So, we’ve had to bring in workers from New England to do the work. They’ve built a sawmill, put up a brickworks, dug wells—well, all that won’t matter to you. What does matter is that there wasn’t much in the way of public lodgings in the first place, and with all these extra men, you won’t be finding a room to rent, let alone a house—or even a bed to share.”
Daniel, hands clasped behind his back, lips pursed and brow wrinkled, considered his next question. “Is there work available for a body hereabouts, then?”
“It shouldn’t take a man more than five minutes to find a job as a laborer. If you’ve any skills, not even that long.”
“Would we find a place to establish a camp? Perhaps build a cabin?”
“Plenty of room. Were I you,” the captain said with a nod toward Daniel’s wagons and the Lewis girls standing by, “I’d find me a place outside of town, well away from Belle Point. Those young ladies will for sure attract unwanted attention otherwise.”
Daniel soon discovered the accuracy of the captain’s comments on the housing situation in Fort Smith—and the magnetic nature of his daughters. Looking to the south, he found a campsite on Mill Creek. He fitted up a platform of milled lumber and erected a walled tent atop it, purchased from army surplus. With the few pieces of furniture and rugs unpacked from the wagons, and a small potbelly stove purchased in town,
the shelter proved cozy.
Mary, Martha, Emma, and Jane arranged sleeping pallets on the tent floor; Daniel spooled out his bedroll in a wagon bed. A wagon sheet served as a kitchen fly and a rocked-in fire pit the cook stove.
Work was easy to come by. Daniel hired on at the brickyard, simple stoop labor as an off-bearer, hauling pallets of molded bricks to the drying yard, where they lay until ready to be kiln-burned. His daughters took in laundry and the workmen kept them so busy that even after buying extra buckets and tubs and paying for delivery of cordwood they turned a tidy profit. Soon they invested in a town buggy and horse to pull it to make pickup and delivery and running errands more efficient.
At every opportunity, Daniel haunted any gathering of men he could find, seeking information about Texas. Other than stories about the revolution—Goliad, the Alamo, San Jacinto—he learned little about the Republic. Most of the men in Fort Smith came from the southern states or the East; only a few had seen Texas firsthand. He did learn there was cheap land for all takers, and prospects were good for those willing to face the tenuous political situation there—Mexico threatening to fight to regain possession, some Texians petitioning for annexation by the United States, others for maintaining independence from both powers. Liking what little he heard despite possible setbacks, come spring Daniel Lewis planned to continue his quest for Texas.
It would take some doing to change his mind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Blood sprayed from Ben Pate’s slashed throat, then streamed, slowed to a dribble, then seeped with only an infrequent drop absorbed by the syrupy bog soaking in the dust.
Abel sat in a sagging heap on the edge of the sidewalk, his own strength seeming to dissipate along with Uncle Ben’s blood. The knife, heavy in his hand and heavier on his mind, stuck to his fingers as he tightened and loosened his grip on the ornamented handle. His mind ricocheted from shock at what he’d done to wonder at what he would do, to fear of the course his life would take as a result—pinging wildly from one frenzied thought to the next. Getting out of town, out of Shelby County, out of Tennessee, was a given. But how to get what he came for before leaving was not.
He picked up his uncle’s hat and brushed it off. He looked it over, turning it in his hands, staring into the crown as if the answer he sought might be hiding there like the rabbit in a magician’s top hat.
And then he knew.
For a while, he would become his Uncle Ben. Cloaked in his uncle’s long coat and wide-brimmed hat, with the aid of the dark of night, he just might pull it off, if only for a moment. That, he hoped, would be time enough.
Abel shrugged into Ben’s linen duster and pulling the borrowed hat low, he walked down the quiet streets toward his uncle’s house. He maintained a deliberate pace, fighting the urge to run and compromise the disguise. With hunched shoulders and bowed head, he mimicked his uncle’s inebriated gait.
Every step pounded the killing deeper into his unsettled mind, spawning fears that in taking on the evil man’s countenance he had also absorbed his soul. Grabbing a gatepost for support, he paused outside Uncle Ben’s dark house as his insides once again attempted to void themselves.
With a deep, shuddering breath, he eased open the door.
“Peter!”
The stillness of the big house echoed with the call Peter was not sure he had heard. With eyes slowly blinking themselves awake, he lay listening in his bed.
“Peter!”
This time, there was no doubt. Peter swung his feet out of bed and felt around the floor for the carpet slippers there. Slipping on the robe that hung from a hook on the back of the door of his small room, he opened the door and looked into his employer’s office. The faint odor of sulfur matches tickled his nose.
Against the dark window, he made out the darker silhouette of a man in a wide-brimmed hat seated at Ben’s desk. “Ben? Is that you?”
The only answer was a grunt.
“What is it? What do you want, Ben?”
“Get the key to the safe,” the slurred voice said.
Drunk. Again. Peter retreated to his room, fetched his keys, and returned with a lit lantern. He raised it high, saw Ben swiveled in his chair, facing the window. He set the lantern atop the lockbox, fiddled with his ring of keys for the one he sought, and opened the lock.
“Now, step away,” came a voice—not Ben’s, and cold sober. Peter turned to see the borehole of a pistol in the hand of the man standing over him. He recognized the shadowed face under the hat as that of one of the men who were here earlier— yesterday, now—arguing with Ben. He moved away from the open safe and stood, the pistol following his rise. The gun, he saw, was one of a pair of caplock revolvers—some of the first manufactured by Samuel Colt—that were Ben’s pride and joy. He saw the other pistol on the desk, taken down from the wall where the boss displayed it and its mate.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“You know what I want. Get that Bible and that other book out of the safe,” Abel said as he ratcheted back the hammer.
Without a word, Peter dropped again to his knees, rustled around in the safe and came up with the books. Abel gestured with the pistol, and Peter handed them to him, one at a time. Abel slipped the books into a coat pocket. These books ain’t all that big, given all the trouble we went to to get them.
“I suppose you want the money, too,” Peter snarled.
“No. I got what I came for. Now, get up.”
“Where’s Ben?”
“Don’t you worry none about that.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I said don’t worry about it.” Abel gestured again with the pistol. “Get dressed.”
“Why? What are you going to do to me?”
“You’re coming with me. Need you out of sight for a few days. Now, get dressed.”
Abel stood in the doorway of Peter’s room, watching him pull on clothes and shoes. “Ain’t you got any boots?”
“No. Why?”
“Them city shoes ain’t likely to hold up where we’re going.”
The blood left Peter’s face and his eyes went wide.
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s go.” Abel stepped back from the doorway to let his hostage through. He stepped to the desk and pocketed the other revolver. “I will take these guns,” he said. “Ben won’t be needing them.”
Peter blanched again. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
Abel did not answer.
“How? You’re not much more than a boy.”
“Man enough, I guess,” Abel said. “Now, where does Ben keep powder and caps and balls for these things?”
Peter gestured with his chin toward a drawer chest beneath where the pistols hung.
“Get them.”
Peter did, and handed them gingerly to Abel, who stuffed the pouches into the coat pocket with the second pistol. “Let’s go.”
Peter led the way out the door and into the still-quiet, dark town. Abel, hard on his heels, nudged him now and then with the pistol barrel.
Neither man knew what would happen next.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Blue dawn hung heavy over the Mississippi River. Even the songs of the morning birds seemed listless to Melvin as he sat on his blankets, listening to Richard’s sleepy breathing. The tethered mules were growing restless, rattling their halters and hoof-scratching at the ground. He contemplated stirring up a fire from the gray ashes in the fire pit and boiling coffee but cast the thought aside.
Tired to the bone after a fitful night, Melvin could sleep no more. He worked his shoulders slowly, wincing at the pain. Twice in two days he had endured severe beatings, both at the hands of family, first Uncle Ben and then little brother, Abel. All owing to the foolish notions of an addlepated Pa.
Some family.
The mules stirred. Melvin followed the direction of their alert ears, and movement on the path toward the campsite lifted him from his torpor. Two men approached.
> “Rich! Wake up!”
Richard rolled to his stomach and raised to hands and knees. He wagged his head, snorted, turned to sit on his backside. “What? What is it?” he said, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands.
“Somebody’s coming.”
“Who? Where?”
“Two men. Look!”
Melvin’s stomach roiled at the sight of the man in the long duster and wide-brimmed planter’s hat.
“Damned if it ain’t Uncle Ben!”
“What?” Richard said, his sleep-smeared eyes still trying to focus.
“Uncle Ben. And it looks like that man what works for him. You know—the one what was at the house.”
Richard flipped back over to his hands and knees and scrambled to grab the rifle where it leaned against a tree. He pulled back the hammer and checked the seating of the cap. He turned over to sit, shouldered the weapon, and found the approaching men at the end of the barrel.
Melvin whispered, “You suppose they’ve killed Abel?”
Richard laid his cheek against the rifle stock. “Don’t know. Serve the little bastard right if they did.” He took a deep breath hoping to steady his heart, pounding from the suddenness of the men’s approach. “Stop right where you are!” he hollered.
The men stopped, studying the situation. Abel raised his hands. “Put the gun down, Rich. It’s only me.”
Richard lowered the rifle barrel, staring without comprehension at his little brother, looking for all the world like his Uncle Ben. He lifted the barrel upright, and used the rifle, buttstock on the ground, as a prop to get himself upright.
Melvin, too, found his way to his feet, flinching at the hurt. “Abel? What the hell? What you doing in Uncle Ben’s clothes?”
Abel and Peter walked on toward the camp.
Richard said, “Mel, gather some wood and get that fire going.”
“But Rich! I—”
“Do it! Now!”
Muttering in indecipherable annoyance, Melvin set about gathering driftwood. Abel, weary from the long walk through the night, skirting most of Memphis, lowered himself to a seat on Mel’s blanket. “Might as well sit,” he told Peter.