The Cane Creek Regulators

by Johnny D. Boggs

  It wasn’t Stewart, but Gouedy who made the interruption. “And do you know how many assemblymen are from the entire backcountry, Governor? Four. Four men to represent the vast majority of people and land. Charlestown has six alone. And Georgetown has …”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Montagu rose, his back soaked through with sweat, and ripped off his wig. “I cannot abide such heat any longer. Write your petition, gentlemen, and present it to my secretary. Elizabeth, let us retire to our residence. I doubt if it will be cooler, but at least these infernal biting bugs will be fewer.”

  * * * * *

  They sat inside the George Coffee House. Emily had to give Charlestown credit—never had she tasted coffee this good. It even seemed to cool her off. Although she had been rescued from spending another unbearable afternoon with Lady Charles Montagu, she really wanted to know how the dun marsh tacky had fared in that race.

  “We need a man to speak on our behalf,” Gouedy was saying. “Someone who carries much more influence than you, Breck, or I.”

  “I know of no one in the backcountry more respected than you, Robert,” her father said. “And William Bull and Justice Shinner have pleaded our case for two years now. Montagu is a damned fool, who belongs in England.”

  “It’s not just the governor, Breck.” Gouedy shook his head. “We have a provost marshal …”

  “One.” Breck laughed. “One man. With a jurisdiction that covers the entire colony. A provost marshal, with no deputies, who lives …” he couldn’t help laughing even harder, “in England! And who draws most of his annual wages … as a damned playwright.”

  “There is talk of Marshal Cumberland hiring a deputy,” Gouedy offered. “Aye. That I shall believe when I see him in Ninety Six with a writ, a pistol, and sheriff’s bracelets for prisoners,” said Stewart.

  “There is more talk.”

  Stewart set his mug down, waiting, as Gouedy shot a quick glance at Emily before returning his gaze to her father.

  “She has heard everything and more, Robert,” Breck assured him.

  Emily loved her father even more for that.

  “Bull said that the governor feels more pressure,” Gouedy said, “not from us, but from parliament and London.” He waited until a young couple had passed well out of earshot. “The Stamp Act passed last year created such an uproar in Charlestown …”

  “What of it? There was a Sugar Act. So now …”

  “Now, people in this colony and colonies elsewhere protested. They claimed it was unfair to be taxed without representation. This Stamp Act …”

  “Hurt Charlestown,” Stewart interrupted. “Not us in Ninety Six. And, by Jehovah, parliament repealed that act last year. Bah … protesting a silly act. How about protesting for what we need in the Ninety Six District? Bridges and law and order. A jail, for God’s sake. And maybe a church. Or at least a clergyman.”

  Later Emily realized that the newcomer could not have timed his entrance more perfectly. This tall, lean man, with brilliant green eyes and fine dark hair, stepped up to the table at that very moment, holding out a slender hand, and smiling. “I believe, sirs, that I might be able to help you in that regard.”

  Emily, Gouedy, and Breck Stewart stared in silence at the tall, neatly attired man. The stranger smiled. Slowly Gouedy shook the man’s hand, but when the stranger turned to Stewart, the big innkeeper took the offered hand and turned it over, running his coarse finger over the palm.

  “Not one bloody callous do I see,” he said. “And what be it that a tall man like yourself can do to help us out … in regards to law and order? For I do not suspect you are a bridge builder.”

  When his hand was released, the young man smiled. “You misunderstand me, sirs. Do I have the honor of speaking to Squire Robert Gouedy?”

  “Nay.” Stewart flipped a finger at Gouedy. “That’s Gouedy. I am Breck Stewart.”

  The man’s eyes lit on Emily.

  “My daughter, Emily,” Stewart said. “Who is bound for Georgetown on the morrow,” he added quickly.

  “An honor.” The man bowed, and then turned to Robert Gouedy. “Sir, Lord Montagu, our governor, has asked me to seek you out, for if you are bound for the backcountry, I would like to travel with you. I am a minister of the cloth, sirs, fresh out of the seminary. I am the Reverend Douglas Monteith.”

  “Monteith.” He had Breck Stewart’s attention. “A fine Scottish name. Yes, by all means, you must travel with us. At least taking you home will get Jemima Cochrane off my arse. You are Presbyterian, are you not?”

  With a sheepish smile, the Reverend Douglas Monteith shook his head. “I am Anglican, sir, and an itinerant. I shall travel across the backcountry, beginning in the Peedee, for such is my desire, and then I plan to move across north and west, but eventually I should bring the word to Ninety Six.”

  “Anglican.” Stewart snorted and sipped his coffee. “That damned Church of England. Such is my bloody luck.”

  * * * * *

  When the tapping began on her door the next morning, Emily sighed. She had recognized her father’s footsteps, and knew she could put off her banishment to Georgetown no longer. She was already dressed and packed, and had been for more than three hours. Sleep had not come easily, and so she had finally given up.

  Georgetown, and a summer—and who knew how much longer afterward—awaited her. Boredom. No hardwood forests. No horse races. No Sundays in the tavern. No bandits, on the other hand, but then no Go-la-nv Pinetree, either.

  Cursing her luck, she rose from the chair, crossed the room, and opened the door. Immediately she regretted having had those thoughts.

  “Father!” she blurted, an appellation she never used. “What has happened?”

  Breck Stewart’s face was pale, and he seemed distant as his hand, holding an envelope and sheet of paper, dropped to his side. His voice was hollow as he said, “Are you ready, Emily?”

  “Yes.” Tears of fear welled in her eyes.

  “Come along. We must find some breakfast. Then we are to meet Robert and the parson at the stables.” He blinked, and then seemed to bring himself back to the present. He even laughed, waving the letter at her. “Your prayers have been answered, Daughter, for you shan’t be going to Georgetown this summer, after all.”

  She wanted to ask why, but was afraid to ask.

  “A note from your grandmother. Yellow fever is rampant in Georgetown,” he said. “We are going home. To Ninety Six.”

  Chapter Six

  The itinerant minister, Reverend Douglas Monteith, writhed on the ground, clutching his private parts and spewing sobs and gasps. As Robert Gouedy and Breck Stewart ran to attend the poor soul, Emily walked past the preacher, took the reins to the marsh tacky that had just laid the Anglican low, and led the dun a few rods away.

  “I am … dying,” Monteith moaned.

  “No,” said Gouedy, “but it is possible that Breck’s new horse has rendered you unfit for nuptial rites.”

  “Watch your tongue, sir,” Stewart said sharply. “You forget my daughter is in our company.”

  Emily shook her head. Her father kept forgetting just how old she was. Hell’s fire, she thought, she felt practically like an old maid. Rebecca Rowe was to be wed, possibly as soon as Preacher Monteith arrived in Ninety Six, and Darlene Courtney, two years younger than Emily, already had an infant son.

  “I apologize for my course language, Miss Emily.” Gouedy swept off his cap of animal skin, and bowed.

  You might consider looking after the parson, and not worrying about my delicate ears, Emily almost said, but then the reverend rolled over and vomited.

  She rubbed the dun’s neck. Emily did not know how much money her father had spent on the horse, but figured he was worth it—no matter the price—even if it had finished third in that race at the New Market Course. He could breed with the chestnut mare, and while a marsh tacky mig
ht be better suited for the swamps of the Low Country, such a horse would do just fine in the hills and forests of Ninety Six.

  A few minutes later, once the preacher could stand, Gouedy and Stewart helped Douglas Monteith to a stump on the side of the trail.

  “I told you … it was … a sin,” the preacher sucked in a deep breath, turned his head, moaned again, “traveling on the Sabbath. It is a sin. This is punishment from God.”

  “Nay, it is punishment from him.” Stewart pointed to the dun. “I warned you about walking behind any horse or mule, Parson.” Stewart turned, jutted his jaw toward one of the wagons, and Emily understood. She tethered Ezekiel to a spoke, scurried onto the wagon, and found the stoneware jug procured from Dillon’s Tavern in Charlestown.

  “We will not ride today,” Monteith said sternly. “I forbid it. God forbids it.”

  Emily hurried to her father, and handed him the rum.

  “Well …” Gouedy grinned. “It is certain that you shan’t sit in the saddle for a day or two. At least, not without much discomfort.”

  “He can ride in the wagon,” Emily said. “I shall ride the marsh tacky.”

  “Not today,” the preacher said.

  “Yes, today,” Stewart said as he withdrew the cork from the keg, took a swig, and then passed it to Gouedy. “When we get you to the settlements on the Peedee,” Breck said softly, “you can return to your calendar and rest on Sunday. But there is no Sunday when we are on the trail.” He looked down the wood-lined trail. “Not in the backcountry, Reverend.”

  “But staying here is …”

  “Dangerous,” Gouedy said. “We are few. Two men. A preacher. A girl.”

  “And this is no likely camping spot,” Stewart put in. “We are miles from Pine Tree and two days from the Welsh Neck. If we stay here, we risk attack from the rogues who scavenge this country for fools that tarry.”

  “But …” Monteith sighed. “We are not that far from Charlestown.”

  “We are far enough,” Stewart insisted.

  Monteith shook his head. “To what kind of country hath my church sent me?”

  “You are not in England, sir.” Gouedy returned the jug to Stewart, who brought it to the preacher’s lips.

  “Drink this,” Stewart said softly. “Kill-devil will dull your pain.”

  The preacher drank, and Gouedy said, “The temptation in the wilderness.”

  “Don’t be sacrilegious, sir,” Stewart said, taking the jug away from Monteith, and passing it back to the trader. “As the parson says, today is the Sabbath.”

  “Since when?” Gouedy laughed, and drank.

  * * * * *

  For the life of her, Emily could never understand why anyone settled in the Peedee.

  Well, actually she did know. Years ago, her father had told her how the provincial government had offered bounties—bribes Gouedy had called them—to anyone twelve years or older who would settle there.

  She just didn’t think that any amount of money was worth it. This region lacked the hills of Ninety Six, and the forests weren’t full of hardwoods. Instead, pines grew so thick and so tall that crossing through the country seemed like traveling inside a tunnel. Even at noon, the sunlight appeared to be fading, and the trees trapped in all the heat and humidity that could lay travelers low. Besides the forests, there were the swamps, foul-smelling stagnant water filled with croaking toads, snapping turtles, alligators and, worst of all, mosquitoes.

  She swatted one of the latter.

  “Last year,” Stewart joked, flicking the reins as the four horses pulled the wagon toward the Welsh Neck, “I saw a mosquito swallow a crow. Whole.”

  Having recovered from his incident with the horse’s hoof, the Reverend Monteith laughed, then slapped his neck. His hand came away bloody, and he said, “Thunderation, sir, I fear that was no joke.”

  Gouedy was leading the way in his wagon, with Emily on Ezekiel behind him, and Stewart and the preacher in the second wagon, laden with their haul from Charlestown.

  The men in the wagons laughed as Emily brushed at the gnats hovering in front of her face. She didn’t know which she disliked more, those annoying gnats or the bloodsuckers. She could not wait until they had left behind this swampy, dark country and returned to Cane Creek and Ninety Six.

  Ten mosquito bites and an hour later, they used the ferry to cross the Peedee River at Long Bluff. The river had risen from recent rains, carrying logs and driftwood that moved like battering rams, but the Dutch men running the ferry knew their trade, and knew the river.

  A short while later, they were pulling up in front of Devonald’s Tavern at the Welsh Neck.

  Owen Devonald sat on the porch, a slave girl standing at his side, her only apparent task to fan her master. The young girl said nothing, did not even look toward the newcomers, just kept waving the homemade contraption of sticks and parchment over the innkeeper, who alternately sipped tea and smoked his pipe.

  “Prynhawn da,” Devonald said, snapping his fingers to dismiss the thin mulatto. “Croeso.”

  “Speak English, old man!” Gouedy shouted while reining in his wagon. “You no longer reside in Wales, Devonald, but America.”

  Devonald’s hair, once black, had begun to show streaks of gray. He sported high cheek bones and a firm jaw, and his olive skin was shiny with sweat. He wore deerskin pants, a dirty linen smock that came almost to his knees, shoes of soft leather with ties instead of buckles, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, pinned up in the front.

  “And a fine America it is, too,” Devonald commented, setting his pipe on a tray. In defiance of Gouedy, he repeated his Welsh greeting, then translated. “Good afternoon. Welcome.” He pushed himself to his feet as the slave disappeared inside the inn. “You have some people nay I have seen, Breck.”

  Emily turned in the dun’s saddle to watch as her father set the brake before dropping from the driver’s box to the ground. The Reverend Monteith climbed down, still moving gingerly from his run-in with Ezekiel two days earlier. He seemed to be hurrying toward her, perhaps to help her dismount, but she surprised him by swinging down easily, almost bumping into him, which caused the Anglican to back away quickly from the animal.

  “My daughter, Emily,” Stewart told Devonald. “You’ve met her before, years ago.”

  “Aye, when she was but a button,” he said. “But this is a woman full grown. Who … thank the Almighty … looks nothing like you.”

  Emily smiled and curtsied. No matter what her father said, she could act like a lady.

  Ignoring Devonald’s jibe, Stewart gestured at the pastor. “This is the Reverend Douglas Monteith.”

  “Monteith, eh?” Devonald said, stepping off the porch. “Presbyterian?”

  The minister replied, “Anglican.”

  “Well, damn my soul to hell.” The trader grinned. “I mean, condemn my soul to Hades.” He swept off his hat, and bowed at Monteith. “It is a blessing to have a man of your faith in a place like the Welsh Neck.”

  “I think we have a fair trade, Owen,” Gouedy declared, chuckling, “an Anglican itinerant for some Cheraw bacon?”

  “How about tossing in that little marsh tacky?” the trader asked.

  “You do not have enough sterling to buy that dun, my friend,” said Stewart.

  * * * * *

  Now she knew why her father and Gouedy had agreed to escort the Reverend Monteith to an out-of-the-way place such as the Welsh Neck. It had nothing to do with Christian charity or to protect a newcomer to the American colonies. It was all about trade.

  Primarily her father wanted to be able to serve the tasty bacon shipped down from the settlement of Cheraw, almost in North Carolina. No one from the Waxhaws to Charlestown knew how they did it in Cheraw, but, throughout most of the colony, everyone considered Cheraw bacon a delicacy. So after a rum-fueled negotiation, two slaves loaded the heavily sa
lted pig meat, as Emily’s father referred to it, onto the wagon, along with flax and two hogsheads of indigo, in exchange for cash and some newspapers Stewart had collected in Charlestown. Bartering completed, they retired inside the Welshman’s tavern for catfish stew, corn pone, coffee, or a more potent drink, and conversation.

  “Has there been trouble with bandits here along the Peedee?” Gouedy asked.

  Devonald spat out what Emily guessed was a Welsh curse. He lifted his mug and downed the grog, slammed the mug on the table, and shook his head. “Squire Wilds was raided a fortnight ago. Says he has only six hogs left. The infernal villains shall reduce the entire backcountry settlers to poverty.”

  “We met with the new governor in Charlestown,” Gouedy said.

  “And?”

  Gouedy shook his head.

  “Emily,” Stewart cleared his throat, “you have finished your dinner, so why not enjoy the afternoon … outside. We shall be along shortly.”

  Dismissed. Kicked out. Sometimes she was still treated like a kid. Like a girl. But she dared not argue. The Welsh Neck was not that far from Georgetown, and, yellow fever or not, she did not want to risk igniting her father’s wrath and finding herself being shipped off to her grandparents.

  * * * * *

  They left the Reverend Douglas Monteith with Owen Devonald. The minister would preach in the Peedee, make his way to Cheraw, the Waxhaws, into North Carolina and briefly along the Great Wagon Road before journeying back into South Carolina, toCowpens, Ninety Six, then down to Pine Tree and perhaps back to Charlestown.

  Wishing him luck, and warning him to keep his eye out for stray hoofs, Emily, her father, and Gouedy left the Welsh Neck and turned back toward Pine Tree, and eventually north for home. They would camp that night at the farm of Dogmael Jones just a few miles away. Staying on a Welsh Baptist’s farm was a lot cheaper than with Owen Devonald.

  Or, at least, that had been their plan.

  Dusk approached quickly as they eased the horses and mules into the Joneses clearing. The first thing Emily noticed was the quiet. Then she saw the dog lying on the porch, not moving, appearing dead.