Gilly was paler yet. “You’re a liar. If he came out of that pit, he didn’t come out alive!”
“Oh, but he did,” Clemons said. “And he said it wasn’t no accident that he fell into that pit. You pushed him. And he ain’t forgot it, nor forgave it. He’s going to find you, he says. And he’s going to kill you when he does.”
“Hell!” Gilly spat, beginning to feel like a man riding a runaway horse of a situation. “He ain’t going to do nothing to me! Even if he found me, I reckon I’m able enough to outrun a peg legger. He won’t have a chance to do me no harm. I can deal with him as easy as I did the first time.”
“Aha! So you admit you caused him to fall!” Jones said.
Gilly, realizing he’d just made an error of judgment, turned a burning eye on Jones. “I didn’t say—ah, damn it all, what does it matter now? Hell yes, I pushed him into that hole. And if it didn’t kill him, next thing I do to him will. I’ll make sure of it!”
Jones shook his head and said, “You’ll never have another chance.” He stood and stepped back from Gilly. “Gentlemen, we have a confession there from Gilly’s own lips that he tried to murder the leader of our sworn gang, and in fact believed he had murdered him. So as far as I’m concerned, he’s guilty of the crime, same as if he’d succeeded at it, and the proper penalty is his own life. Gentlemen, I say we hang him, for the attempted murder of Jeremiah Littleton, and for endangering all of us without necessity through the murder of that man in the house we robbed.”
Gilly looked as if the very soul had just drained from him as the others gave a very ragged “Hurrah!” at Jones’s words.
Gilly came to his feet, wobbling, head throbbing terribly now from the blow he had received earlier. “You men ain’t going to hang me,” he said. “We’re friends. Have been a long time.”
“I got a rope over on my saddle,” said Clemons. “I’ll fetch it . . . friend!” The word was heavy with sarcasm.
“Boys, boys, listen to me. I ain’t done nothing any worse than any of you—’specially you, Sikes. You know the kind of man you are. I shot that man we were robbing, sure. And I pushed Littleton into that pit. I admit it all. But what you did, Sikes, was a lot worse than that. That poor little girl over in Virginia, just a child, and you treated her worse than if she was a common whore! She was a child, Sikes! Anything I done don’t compare to such a crime and sin as that! And what’s wrong with you, anyway, that would make you have that kind of a lust in you? It ain’t normal, a man wanting a child in that kind of way!”
Sikes glared silently and hatefully at Gilly. The others said nothing at all, but proceeded with their preparations.
They performed the deed in the simplest manner, pulling Gilly up off the ground by the neck rather than dropping him. He was in tears when they did it, and unsettled his executioners rather badly by managing to stare at them accusingly even as he swung, eyes bulging and red, tongue emerging between lips.
Clemons said, “He’s dying slow. Maybe I should pull down on his legs, make him choke faster. That’s what kinfolk of hanged people used to do over in England, I heard once. Made them die quicker.”
Harlow Jones shook his head. “Let him alone,” he said. “Let him choke. He don’t deserve no kindnesses.”
“But he’s so light of weight, it might take him so long. . . .” Clemons looked up at Gilly’s face, the eyes now nearly absent of light. He shuddered and turned away. He was not a man of strong stomach.
“Let’s go. I don’t want to see this no more.” Jones wrinkled his nose. “Good God, I think he lost his bowels.”
“It happens sometimes, I hear.”
They simply left Gilly dangling there, bug-eyed and swinging and self-soiled, and departed. The weak-stomached Clemons could not resist looking back, as hideous as the sight was to him. With embarrassment he turned again and retched.
Two minutes after they were gone, something stirred in the forest, and a big, strange figure emerged and stood a moment before the dangling Gilly. After moments of silent staring, the figure moved forward, reaching toward the hanged man with powerful arms.
PART THREE
BACKCOUNTRY
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Crawford Fain had expected to be in Jonesborough several days sooner than he actually got there. What slowed him down was illness, a rarity for a man of usual robust health. It arose quickly and knocked him off his feet. Pain in every muscle and joint, a head that would not quit aching, bone-shaking chills that alternated with bursts of furnacelike internal heat that drenched him with sweat. He could hold down no food for three days, and only a little water.
Titus built a half-faced camp in the woods beside the trail and put his father there to recover his health and strength—and neither he nor Micah was willing to mention to each other how similar the arrangement felt to the time they had spent with the doomed Sisalee lying in that hunter’s shelter. The difference was that Fain’s illness was transitory and not life-threatening, nothing like the apoplexy that had laid the old “white Indian” low. Nor was there an unstable little girl with a hidden pistol and a grudge ready to find lethal expression.
After a couple of days of rest, Fain had begun to improve, slowly. Micah brought in a deer, and from the meat cooked up a thin broth that he swore Fain would be able to tolerate, and which would give him strength.
It did. Fain remained unbalanced, aching, and weak, but his stomach settled and the nourishment did much good. He sat up on his bedroll in the half-faced shelter and, though he would never admit it, found he was enjoying the opportunity for rest and the chance to be tended to. In particular, he valued the time he could spend with his son, who seemed now to actually want to be at his father’s side and hear what he had to say. A few years ago Titus had displayed almost no interest in his sire.
“I’ve come to realize there’s a lot about you I don’t know,” Titus said. “And a lot less I know about your parents. This might be a good chance for you to tell me a few things.”
Fain nodded, staring out the open front of the shelter and enjoying the feel of the light breeze on his face. “Son, you’re right. And there’s some things I didn’t tell you when you were a boy because I didn’t know you needed to hear them then. Like the fact that your grandfather was in some ways not a good man.”
“How so?”
Fain looked over at his son. “He was a thief and bandit, Titus. He broke houses and operated as a highwayman back in his homeland, in England. Might have wound up on the gallows had certain things never happened. And if he’d ended up doing the Tyburn dance, I would never have landed in the Colonies, and you and me wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now.”
“Tell me more.” Titus was surprised and troubled, his father having never given a hint of this kind of thing before.
“Your grandfather was a man of poverty, and of a poor raising. It sent him down the wrong path early on, and he turned to theft as the surest way to make a living.” Fain paused for several seconds. “I’m not sure I should be telling you this part even now, but as a boy I was involved with some of his crimes, too. The housebreaking in particular. I was small of frame, you see, and a good climber, and your grandfather would find ways to sneak me into houses, where I would hide myself through the day and then let him in under cover of night. Then Father, with me helping, would take whatever was valuable that we could get out with without waking anyone up. Your grandfather knew places he could sell it. It was a simple system, but it worked. We kept operating like that till I was twelve, thirteen years old. I’m sorry to admit it to you, but you’re a man now and you can deal with knowing your father ain’t lived a perfect life.”
“Pap, you were just a boy, doing what your father told you. Even so, I’m . . . to borrow your word, I’m ‘smote.’ I had no notion of anything like this.”
“I’ve kept it from you. Best to raise a boy to believe the blood in his veins comes from generations of righteous-living folk, not sinners. But you’re no boy any longer, Titus, and
you should know the truth about those who came before you.”
“What about the highway robbery? Were you involved in that as well?”
“Never. Father kept me from that because it was the most dangerous side of what he did.” Fain paused again, then gave a dark little chuckle. “Funny thing, Titus. There were things that happened on both sides of my father’s criminal life that didn’t just kind of vanish once they happened. Things that had longer-lasting aspects.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Let me just tell you the stories. The first one involved me, and happened during one of our typical housebreaks. The last break-in we ever did, in fact. I was thirteen years old and up to my full man’s height by that point, though I’m not a tall man. I’d sneaked in through a cellar door into a house my father had picked out to rob . . . and I hid in a room in the upstairs. Well, that night somebody entered that room, a man and a girl, and the man commenced to doing things I’ve never been able to close out of my mind since. I saw it all out of the darkness where I was hiding, fearing all the while that I’d make a noise or otherwise show myself, and wind up getting caught. But I wished before long that I’d not been so cautious, for it just got worse and worse. Finally that man knelt over that poor girl he’d misused so sore, and, I swear to you, cut the tongue out of her mouth. It was dark, for the most part, so I couldn’t see it clear, and I’m glad I couldn’t. But I saw enough to bring me out of my hiding place. I lit into that devil and wouldn’t let up. He’d hit the girl with a candlestick, and I put my hand on another just like it and struck him with it, hard. I killed that man, Titus. Your father has the blood of that man on his hands and his soul.”
Titus was astonished. “Pap, what you did was help a helpless girl. You did the work of the angels, Pap.”
Fain shook his head. “It was too late to help her as much as I should have. She’d already been hurt by him, and mutilated. Her tongue was gone from her head, son. And I’d let it happen, when if only I’d moved a little sooner . . .”
“Pap, I got to say, this tale sounds mighty familiar. It matches that story that’s heard so often about . . . What was her name?”
“Molly Reese. Molly Reese who had her tongue cut out by her own father and whose life was saved by an ‘angel’ from the shadows in a dark room. If it sounds like the same tale, son, it’s because it is. I was that ‘angel’ that came out of the dark and killed her attacker. And the girl was Molly herself, the real one. Not the false Molly Reese that Camp Meeting Bledsoe has foisted on the world for a good while now. I’ve known for a long time that Bledsoe’s ‘Molly’ wasn’t the real one, because I’d known the real one when I was young.”
“I’m astonished, Pap.”
“There’s yet more to the tale. After I struck down her pap and got Molly out of that house, I took her home with me. My father and mother, they took her in. For three years she was sheltered by your own grandparents and lived as my sister. She adored me for having saved her that night. It was me who taught her to read and write. And it was my mother—she had a talent with words—who helped Molly write out her narrative that became so famous, and gave old Bledsoe the grist for the mill of fraud he’s had grinding away at his camp meetings with that woman pretending to be Molly.”
“It surely must be hard for you to know Bledsoe’s been out making a false presentment about somebody you knew well.”
“It is. I had to listen to him going through all that bilge when he was preaching there at my fort a while back. And that woman was out there holding her mouth open like her wits were gone so folks could come by and see that ‘Molly Reese’ really had got her tongue cut out. By the way, Titus, Houser the physician came nigh to prompting me that evening into telling him what I’ve just told you. But I didn’t. You are the first I’ve ever told this to.”
“What happened with Houser?”
“At the close of the meeting, Houser looked into the mouth of Bledsoe’s Molly and was able to see that her tongue had never been cut out, but just had never grown in, and from that he’d determined that this woman couldn’t be the true Molly Reese. Since he figured that much out on his own, it was hard not to just tell him the full tale. But I’ve made such a habit of keeping all that part of life private that I just held my own tongue and didn’t speak. When you get into the habit of silence about a certain thing, it’s hard to change your practice.”
“Where is the real Molly Reese now?”
“Still in England, far as I know. I lost her trail long ago. She’d be nigh my age now, just a couple of years younger. My father moved your grandmother and me to the Colonies and by that time Molly had already left us and gone back to London. I don’t know for sure how she lived, and maybe it’s best I don’t. I’ve heard that part of her living came through selling copies of her narrative. But once that became so commonly printed and familiar, I doubt she could find buyers for long, and after that there’s no telling what she might have been forced to.” Fain shook his head. “You know, it’s been so long now I’m not sure I’d know Molly if she walked up to this shelter right now and said hello.”
Titus smiled. “Not that she’d be able to say it.”
“She’d do better than you’d think. She learned to make sounds in such a way, even with no tongue, that you could tell what she was trying to say, just about every time.”
“Pap, why did your father bring the family to America? And how did you go from being a city boy in England to a woodsman on a whole different continent?”
“That, son, is a whole different tale, and I think I may hold on to it awhile longer. I’ll get around to telling you, promise you. It ties in with what I’ve told you already.”
“Tell me now.”
“I’m talked out, son. Voice is weak. I think I may sleep for a spell. I’m not accustomed to sickness like this. I hope you don’t catch it.”
“Me, too. Me, too. Thank you for talking to me, Pap.”
“I’m glad I’ve got you to talk to.”
When he had completed his mission and was traveling again, anticipating joining his prior companions at Jonesborough, Potts was glad to leave White’s Fort and Eben Bledsoe behind. Bledsoe, in recovery from the brother-inflicted gunshot wound he was blaming on the outlaw Littleton, had been quite displeased with Fain’s progress, believing him to be moving too slowly. He was, however, intrigued by the meager information Fain had uncovered, particularly that Deborah now went by the last name of Corey.
“Please let Fain know that I will expect much more from him the next time I see a messenger come riding in,” Bledsoe said. “In fact, I expect next time to see Fain himself, and Deborah with him.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Potts said neutrally. “Hope you’re all healed up soon, Reverend.” He rode away. Next time, he hoped Fain would ask Micah or Titus to play messenger. There was something about the overbearing Eben Bledsoe he instinctively didn’t like.
Now that September had come, the heat of summer had given way at last. The days still could grow hot, but the heat faded earlier and evenings were sometimes actually cool. Humidity, the worst aspect of summer in the backcountry, was much diminished and the atmosphere had a clear, crystalline quality.
Jeremiah Littleton had always favored this time of year except for the fact that it led into the fall, when trees shed their leaves and it was harder for a highwayman to hide himself along the sides of trails and roads. It was much easier in the summer, when leaves were lush, to find the proper spot for an ambush.
Littleton, riding along slowly and going east for no particular reason other than random choice, had to smile to himself as he remembered a time he and his gang had gone to a particular spot to intercept and rob a band of immigrants coming to the Cumberland from the Watauga and had gotten themselves into position when they realized they were not alone. Across the trail, in the woods on the other side, was another gang of would-be highwaymen, already hidden, awaiting the same party of travelers. Littleton had come out and confronted the riv
als, and then the others of both gangs had joined the gathering, the result being that the immigrants and would-be robbery victims had come up to find two bands of fist-fighting men pummeling one another for no obvious reason in the midst of the forest trail. The travelers, all on foot and with no animals other than packhorses and three milk cattle, simply withdrew into the woods and managed to hide as the bandits finished their fight. The bandits actually had a laugh at their own expense over the absurdity of the situation, and sat down together and drank themselves into a stupor like the oldest of friends. The immigrants, meanwhile, made a new route through the woods, behind a nearby ridge, and simply bypassed the men who would have robbed them had all gone according to plan.
“Don’t matter no-how,” one of the rival gang had said. “They looked like a mighty poor band of people, anyway.”
Littleton chuckled at the memory, but a throb of pain from his foot made the chuckle die fast. The odd thing about it was that the pain came from a foot no longer there, a foot that was even yet wedged in a tight rock crevice in the base of a pit near Fort Edohi miles away, being eaten by insects and worms. He’d heard about such pains afflicting those with lost limbs, but he had never believed it. He believed it now, and it seemed the most unjust thing possible. A man is forced to cut off nearly half his own leg with his own belt knife, and even so is left to hurt in places where there is really nothing there to be hurting? Where was the sense and justice in that?
It had gotten worse since he’d started wearing the wooden leg. At first it had been fine, the stump of his limb fitting perfectly into the cup the wood-carver had hollowed out at the top of the peg leg. Over subsequent days, though, something had changed in the fit, causing pain that was making Littleton a miserable man.
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