Then he had hit upon a promising lead. He had written to Lettie about it, his excitement as much for penetrating the Thorn's daytime disguise as for the hope of bringing him to book for his crimes. He would not set the name down on paper, he had said, until he was sure, but by the next mail he would tell Lettie the man's identity. Two days after that last letter was posted, he was killed.
It did not take a genius to understand that the Thorn had removed Henry with two motives in mind: the theft of the money and the silencing of a threat.
The sun shone down on Lettie unremittingly. The sand of the road seemed to capture and hold the heat. It made a whispering sound as it fell from the wheels and billowed into a long white cloud behind the buggy. Flies droned, zipping about the lathered horse and around Lettie's face. As the day advanced, there was little shade, even in the stretches of woods, as the shadows retreated nearer to the tree trunks. The air took on a thick, sultry feel that made breathing a chore.
Even with its discomforts, however, Lettie began to enjoy her outing. There were wildflowers growing in profusion along the roadside and between the wheel ruts: yellow daisies, pink and white poppies, puff balls of purple, and white blooms on the long arching stems of blackberries. Now and then she crossed a small bayou or creek on a narrow bridge of logs without railings or else splashed across a shallow ford in a cooling spray of water. More than once she sat in the buggy in the middle of the stream enjoying the shade of the inevitable overhang of trees while the horse drank and blew before trotting on again. Birds called in a multitude of trilling and melodious or rasping and strident noises. Crickets and peeper frogs sang. Startled rabbits bounded away down the road in front of her, and once a deer, a large doe, stood silently watching as she bowled past. Near farms, she sometimes had to pull up until ranging cows, munching the grass in the road, or families of piglets rolling in the dirt of the potholes, deigned to amble out of the way.
The only people she met were two Union officers who saluted as they passed and turned in their saddles to look after her; a man with his wife, five towheaded boys, and two dogs piled in a buckboard on the way to town; and a white-bearded patriarch herding perhaps two dozen rather dirty sheep.
The miles rolled away under the wheels. Lettie did not consider herself a judge of horseflesh, but the animal between the shafts, a chestnut mare, seemed uncommonly fine to her, sweet of temper and instantly responsive to the least pressure on the reins. There was a whip in the socket beside her, but she had no use for it. She felt responsible for returning the mare in good condition since she could guess how much value it must have to Aunt Em.
Lettie felt free. It was odd, but she had never quite had that sensation before. Perhaps it was because she was alone, far from her family and friends, in a strange part of the country. Women were so protected, so hemmed in by restrictions and prohibitions and warnings that they seldom had the opportunity to enjoy this sense of being on their own. From everything she had heard, Southern women were even more hampered in that way than those of her own region, and heaven knew that was bad enough. It was possible that Colonel Ward had become imbued with this sense of masculine alarm over excursions of females and therefore had felt it his duty to warn her away from the spring where her brother was killed. No one else had thought it necessary to persuade her to forgo the journey. Of course, no one else had been told exactly what she meant to do.
Regardless, it was good to be doing something definite at last about looking into Henry's death. She had thought about it and fretted over it for so long that it had seemed as if the day would never come. Not that she expected to discover anything of importance by looking at the spot where he had been killed, but it was a place to start. It would aid her to picture in her mind exactly what had happened, and would therefore enable her to think about it constructively.
Lettie stopped at a farmhouse, a crude dwelling made of logs rather like two cabins built with an open hallway connecting them, a hallway of the kind known as a dogtrot because it was where the dogs always stayed. There were certainly enough of those about the house. They came streaming out in a most alarming fashion when she pulled up in the yard. Their barking brought out the farmer's wife, however, who yelled the dogs to silence while she wiped her hands on her apron.
The woman took a long look at Lettie's serviceable tan poplin carriage costume with its separate bodice trimmed in brown velvet braid and the latest drawn-back—style skirt without hoops, and at her wide-brimmed hat of plaited straw trimmed with daisies centered with brown velvet eyes. She apparently approved of what she saw, for a slow smile of appreciation transformed the suspicion on her face to friendliness.
"Morning. Won't you get down and set a spell?"
"Thank you, but no," Lettie said, though when she saw the woman's obvious disappointment she was sorry she could not be more obliging. "I'm looking for a spring in this part of the country. Perhaps you could help me?"
"A spring? Only one hereabouts is some miles farther along, t' other side of Saline Creek, the one where the Yankee soldier died."
Lettie swallowed on a constriction in her throat. "That will be the one. You're sure I'm on the right road?"
"Sure as sure can be." There was curiosity in the woman's tired eyes, but though she moved closer to the buggy, the better to see and to hear, she asked no questions, a form of backwoods courtesy. "I've a pot of greens on the stove and a nice bread pudding in the oven, if you'd care to partake?"
There was a real warmth in Lettie's smile as she lifted her reins. "It's very kind of you, but I had best be on my way."
The woman gave a slow nod. "You take care of yourself, now," she said with emphasis, and stepped back. She stood watching, with her hand shading her eyes, until Lettie had driven out of sight.
Past the farm, the road wound through virgin timber. The great towering trunks of pines and oaks, ash and black gum and sweet gum seemed to block out the sky, while beneath them was an understory of smaller trees, dogwoods and mulberries among them. Along the sides of the road where there was more sunlight, these were hung with thick vines that trailed from tree to tree and tangled with the bushes and vines growing below to such an extent that the mass appeared impenetrable.
She came upon the landmark for the spring suddenly, an open, cleared area beside the road in a curve. There were signs of several campfires where people had stopped for the night or else paused to boil coffee or to cook using the sweet water available there. The spring was supposed to be the best in the area, a great boon for people traveling the military road, many of them heading west to Texas.
Lettie pulled up the buggy in the shade and got down. She tethered the horse, then took her noon dinner, which was wrapped in a cloth, and walked toward a dim trail through the trees that looked as if it would lead to the spring.
It was cooler under the tall canopy of trees. The path, winding amid the undergrowth and matted with a thick carpet of leaves and pine needles, descended a rather steep slope toward what appeared to be a small stream with moss-grown banks. The air here smelled of wet earth and crumbling, decaying vegetation. Along the meandering water course at the foot of the hillside was a glade of ferns, the soft green color like a promise of Eden. The stream, however, was hardly more than a clear rivulet of water, the overflow from not one but several springs—small, clear pools seeping from the high bank that rose behind them, reflecting like woodland mirrors the green of the leaves that arched over them.
Some effort had been made to render the largest of the seep springs, which lay among the roots of the tall trees, more usable. A big, bottomless barrel of cypress wood had been sunk into it to form a curb to hold back the sandbanks. On the broken branch of the great dogwood that leaned over it was a gourd dipper, which was hung by a leather thong strung through a hole in the handle. A green leaf or two floated on the water; one had an orange and black butterfly perched upon it. Otherwise, the water was pure and unsullied.
Lettie pushed aside the leaves and dipped the cup Mama Tass ha
d given her into the water, drinking deep. Dipping again, she wet her handkerchief and wiped her face and hands, removing the dust of the drive. Then, stepping away a few paces, she spread her dinner among the ferns and sat down to eat.
She was ravenous; in fact, she could not remember when she had been so hungry. It was well past noon, but she had not wanted to stop until she reached her destination. The fresh air and the exhilaration of accomplishing what she had set out to do, with possibly even a bit of the spice of danger, gave her appetite such an edge that she ate as if she expected the bread and chicken and cake to be snatched from her. When every morsel was gone, she licked her fingers, then, with a hasty glance around, wiped them on the checked napkin provided.
Grinning a little at herself, she pulled off her hat and threw it aside, then lay back among the ferns, stretching with clenched fists. A shaft of sunlight striking through the distant cathedral ceiling of leaves overhead glittered in her eyes. She closed them and was aware abruptly of one of those moments that come so seldom and so briefly in a lifetime, a golden moment when her every sense was alive and it was good that it was so. She lay still for long minutes, savoring it.
The sun went behind a cloud and the woods grew dimmer. Lettie felt the irritating tickle of grass against her neck. She wrenched herself up into a sitting position again and reached for her cup. Another drink would be good. The water was so sweet and delicious that it was better than the finest champagne.
Lettie was standing at the curbed spring, sipping the water and looking about her, when she saw the cross. It was a crude thing made of two gnarled and blackened pieces of pine nailed roughly together. It stood on the high ridge that ran behind the spring, on the opposite side of the stream from where she had left the buggy. There was a cleared area around it, as if some attempt had been made to form a suitable resting place for the dead.
Henry's grave. Lettie had known it was somewhere at hand but had not expected it to be quite so close. She had been told of how a young man out looking for strayed cows had seen the buzzards circling the spring and gone to investigate. He had found Henry's body lying almost in the water, as if he had been shot while kneeling to drink. Whoever had killed Henry had taken his identification and his outer clothing and left him to the wild animals, so he had been buried on the spot as an unknown victim of a shooting. It was only later that he was identified as the payroll carrier from Natchitoches.
Lettie put down her cup with care. She caught the front of her skirts and, weaving her way among the great trees and smaller saplings, climbed the slope of the ridge. She did not stop until she reached the cross.
The grave, if ever it had been mounded, was flat and covered with tufts of grass, pine and sweet-gum seedlings, and a scattering of last year's dead leaves. Solitary, silent, it kept watch over the spring and fern-filled glade.
Lettie reached out to touch the crude cross with gentle fingers. She stared down at it through a blinding shimmer of tears, seeing instead Henry as she had seen him last, laughing, excited in his quiet way about his posting to Louisiana. He had given her a hug as she saw him off on the train, a rare show of the deep affection between them, and he had hung out of the train window waving until he was out of sight. He had loved apple cobbler and maple trees, old books and thunderstorms. And now he was dead. Murdered. Left to lie alone in this godforsaken spot.
She heard not a sound. It was a prickling along her spine, a sudden, primitive tightening of the nerves that warned her. She lifted her head, dashing away her tears with a quick, almost furtive brush of her fingers. Alarm burgeoned inside her, coursing along her veins as she turned first one way, then the other, her gaze searching among the trees.
Then she saw him, a man in a rusty black suit standing so still and tall in the shade of a great pine that he almost merged with its trunk. He wore a gun in a belt around his narrow waist and a black hat pulled low over his eyes. His face was shadowed, though the line of his dark mustache could be seen as he pushed away from the tree he was leaning against.
"I didn't kill him," he said.
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4
"You!"
The Thorn. Lettie would recognize that husky voice anywhere, and though she had only seen his tall form against the starlight, it, too, was familiar.
"Who did you expect, riding out alone like this? Should I be on the watch for the man you are to meet?"
"I'm meeting no one." She allowed the scorn she felt for the question to edge her tone, even as she realized that it might have been better to claim a rendezvous so that he would think she had a male protector near.
"All alone? Don't tell me you weren't warned of what a risk that could be for a woman? Or did you come because of the risk? Maybe I should consider your presence an invitation?"
It was anger that drove him. Ransom acknowledged that truth without surprise. Anger because she was so damnably vulnerable and didn't seem to have the sense to know it, because she was beautiful standing there with the breeze lifting the fine tendrils of hair that curled at her temples and molding her skirts against her, because she was oblivious of the effect she had on men and with which he was waging battle. It would be so easy to take her there among the ferns, so easy to be the kind of man she thought him.
Lettie's eyes narrowed. "An invitation? To what?"
"Why, to a larger portion of the charms I tasted when last we met."
"You must be mad!" The color that swept across her cheekbones was not all caused by anger. "I came to visit the grave of my brother, nothing more!"
"Too bad. It might have enlivened what looks to be an otherwise dull afternoon."
His easy acceptance of her rejection was less than complimentary. A tremor passed through Lettie as the memory of the brush of his mustache and the smoothness of his mouth crossed her mind. Her tone waspish, she said, "You can always dress up and frighten the locals."
"But not you?" The words were dangerously quiet.
"Do I appear frightened?"
"I can't say that you do, which makes you either a good actress or stupid."
"Stupid?" she repeated, her fury so great that she could hardly speak.
"Shall we say lacking in forethought if the more exact word offends you? First, for failing to recognize your danger, and second, for adding to it by throwing down a challenge."
That he was right did not make his strictures any easier to bear. "Are you saying that if I cower before you in terror I will be free from harm, whereas defiance will give you leave to do as you please?"
"In a word, yes."
Disdain curled her lips. "I don't believe it. You will do as you like, regardless."
"Does that mean," he inquired in a tone that was like the slice of a knife, "that you have resigned yourself?"
"Definitely not!"
"It must indicate then that you absolve me of ill intent. I didn't know you thought that well of me."
"I don't! I believe you are capable of anything, anything at all."
"You and half the rest of the world. You have no idea how flattering it is to be charged with every crime that takes place within a hundred miles, from robbing a drunken senator while dressed in curled wig and satin skirts to molesting a sixty-year-old widow in the guise of a three-hundred-pound mule skinner. Flattering, but hardly helpful."
"I wonder what can have given people the idea it was possible?" she said with mock innocence.
"I wonder why you are still unmarried, with such a beguiling tongue in your head."
She gave him a cold stare. "And then there's the question of why you are still unhanged when you openly show yourself in the light of day."
"Luck and cowardice. I only show myself to unarmed victims."
Was she to be a victim after all? The truth was, she had no idea what he meant to do and, in her present state of mind, did not much care. Her greatest concern, one that was shocking in its virulence, was how best to insult him now.
"Very intelligent," she gibed at him.
"He was armed, of course."
"Miss Mason, I am telling you as plainly as I can that I had nothing to do with the death of your brother."
She stared at him without the least change of expression. "How it is that you know my name?"
"I have my sources of information."
"I'm sure you do."
"You haven't listened to a word I've said."
"I can't imagine why you should think I would."
"An excess of optimism, I suppose."
Lettie heard the bitterness in his voice and was surprised. She looked away from him, lowering her gaze. This exchange of words over Henry's grave suddenly seemed vulgar. She turned, moving away a few steps. She knew the Thorn followed her, for she heard the dry rustle of the grass under his feet. He did not come close, however. Over her shoulder, she said, "If not you, then who?"
"At a guess, the jayhawkers in this area. They cast a long loop these days."
"And make good scapegoats."
"I suppose you could look at it that way."
She swung on him, her wine-brown eyes blazing. "My brother wrote to me that you were giving the army more trouble than the outlaws and the Knights of the White Camellia combined. He was sure that you were the brains, if not the actual perpetrator, behind the robbery of a post office two months before he died and the deaths of at least three wagonloads of settlers going west with their gold hidden among their belongings. He said that you were half devil and half avenging angel, that you pretended to be such a white knight and actually could have been something fine and good, a force for what was right, but that you had channeled your wits into murder and theft, making a game of it, and that was the worst thing of all."
Southern Rapture Page 7