Middleton shot a glance south, then sprinted toward the barn. “Let’s ride, boys! Everyone mount up!”
Emily watched, her throat dry as men flew out of the main house and the slaves’ quarters, running, some of them barefooted, others shirtless, toward the barn. She rubbed her palm against the stock of the rifle. Behind her, to the south, ten of Owen Devonald’s boys and Rory MacCance waited with their weapons ready, long guns and muskets, knives and hatchets.
Donnan came out of the cabin last, pulling on his waistcoat, glancing back down the trail, shoving a pistol into his sash before he disappeared inside the barn.
Whipping the horse with his hat, a rider galloped out of the barn. Another followed. The stopgap broke, and riders thundered down the trail, following the path Oliver had taken. No one headed in the direction of Emily and Devonald’s men; they had been stationed there as merely a precaution. Just in case some of the outlaws did not take the bait. Still, they did not move but stared at the house, waiting to see if anyone else would come out.
“I counted ten riders, sir,” one of the men—a boy actually—told MacCance. “That should be all of them.”
“Aye,” MacCance said, “but we shall wait just the same.”
Two minutes later, she heard the first muzzle blast from the north.
* * * * *
They led their horses up the trail. When they found the first regulator, they stopped. He was pinned underneath his dead roan, shirtless, his eyes staring at the towering pine trees, but seeing nothing.
“You know him?” Rory MacCance asked.
“Virgil Hickox,” Emily answered. Someone had branded his face, carving a T in the center of his forehead with a knife.
“Thief, I reckon,” MacCance said.
“Traitor,” Emily corrected, and pulled Ezekiel, skittish from the blood and the scent of gunpowder hanging in the forest, behind her.
Another regulator had ridden his horse over the edge of the bluff, landing on the banks of the Wateree. Neither horse nor rider moved.
Nobody even bothered to stop and look at the third body. Minutes later, they found the rest of the men. Here the stench grew so great, the horses would not move ahead, so they led them a ways back, tethering them to trees and shrubs. Those that had hobbles used them. One horse pulled away from its rider and galloped off back toward the Stewarts’ summer retreat.
Emily whispered in Ezekiel’s ear, rubbed his neck, and left him with the other horses. She walked past James Middleton’s dead body, hacked badly, and found moderators and liberators surrounding three men, the last of the Cane Creek Regulators.
Her eyes landed on Donnan, who was kneeling, hands tied behind his back, face pale, his left ear reduced to a bloody pulp. If he felt pain, he did not show it, just stared at the bloody leaves and grass before him.
One of the men, face pale, tears streaming down his bloodstained face, saw Emily. He sang out, “This is the one!” He pointed at Donnan. “Miss Emily … he killed that Cherokee. At Jacob’s Fork. I saw him. He done it. I swear. I …”
He was the man from the tavern, O’Keeffe. The man beside him, one of the Peedee bandits, said to him, “Shut your mouth, you yellow-livered swine.” The other man Emily did not know, but came from the Peedee, which meant the bands of regulators and liberators had joined together.
Donnan said nothing. He did not even look at Emily.
“Take them to Charlestown?” someone said.
Devonald tilted his head back and bellowed, “Do you know what happened the last time we turned over cutthroats such as these to the law in Charlestown?”
“We are here for justice,” Dr. Bayard tried to remind them.
“Aye, and justice we can deliver here,” Devonald declared.
Dr. Bayard’s head shook.
Devonald said, “This fellow yon just told you how this … bastard … shot down that Cherokee, did he not? I was at Jacob’s Fork. Where Breck Stewart was called to glory. That Cherokee was a damned fine boy.”
Emily felt as if her heart was breaking all over again, but this time no tears came.
“He was just a red savage,” one of the liberators said.
“Shut your trap, Bill. You’ve been on the Peedee for eighteen months. I have been there twenty-three years. You don’t know the Indians the way I do.”
“They hanged Birmingham Long,” Thomas Taylor reminded them. “For no damned reason.”
“Did not you say that there is a provost marshal in Ninety Six?” It was the young boy, Oliver, who had performed so magnificently at the Stewarts’ summer place.
“A deputy provost marshal,” black-toothed Meacham said.
“Then deliver them to him,” Oliver said. “In Ninety Six.”
“You do what you want,” Devonald said, “but we still have that bastard David Clarke to bring to justice. And he shall not ever see Charlestown to be pardoned … or a deputy provost marshal.” He pointed to the Peedee prisoner. “Nor shall that son of a bitch. He goes nowhere … but to hell.”
“Do we take Donnan and O’Keeffe to Ninety Six?” Dr. Bayard asked, looking at Benjamin Cooper and Pierre Maupin. “Deliver them to Kilduff? He did say he had a warrant for Donnan’s arrest.”
“No,” Emily said without even thinking. She stepped away from MacCance, moved beside Dr. Bayard, and butted her rifle on the ground. “No,” Emily repeated. “You cannot take him back to Ninety Six.”
“Emily …” Dr. Bayard began, but she raised her hand.
“You would do that, Doctor? You would shame my mother? You would let my baby sister and baby brother see what their brother has become?” Her head shook. She could feel Donnan’s eyes on her, but would not, could not, look at him. “You would have him buried alongside my brave father. To rest there … together … for eternity?”
“Emily …” the doctor tried again.
“Your mother already knows what Donnan has become,” Cooper whispered. “She must know.”
“But Alan and Elizabeth shan’t know.” Emily’s heart felt heavy, but she refused to quit. “He killed Go-la-nv Pinetree in cold blood, my brother did. He killed Birmingham Long. He almost murdered a deputy provost marshal. He is as reckless a rogue, as heartless a thief and killer, as any bandit my father ever pursued. He hangs. Here. Today. Right now.” She caught her breath, and lowered her voice as she said, “We will swear ourselves to secrecy. For all anyone here knows, Donnan Stewart rode to Fort Loudon. That is the last we ever saw of him.”
“And what of these two scum?” Thomas Taylor asked, and slammed the stock of his pistol against O’Keeffe’s skull.
“Brand them as thieves and send them on their way!” one of Devonald’s crew cried out.
“I’d like to see our bastard hang, too,” Devonald said.
“Haven’t you killed enough, Devonald?” Meacham said.
“Not until Clarke’s head sits atop a pike in front of my inn.”
Maupin’s head bobbed slightly. He looked at Dr. Bayard before saying: “Hang Stewart. Brand the others. Miss Emily is right.”
“As long as we hang somebody,” one of the liberators from Peedee said. He laughed, but no one joined him.
“If the Reverend Monteith was here …” Benjamin Cooper started to say after a hard silence.
Maupin silenced him with a stare, then said, “He is not here. God is not here.”
“God is here,” Dr. Bayard assured him. “And He will curse us all if we do this.”
“So be it,” Emily said. “I will not shame my mother. Or my brother and sister. I will not destroy my father’s legacy.”
“Hang the bastard,” Devonald said. “He is no son of the Breck Stewart I knew and loved.”
Emily moved closer to Dr. Bayard. “Do you remember Finnian Kilduff?” she asked. “Do you remember the scars on his back? Or how Birmingham Long was left to rot from an
oak limb? Do you remember …” it was difficult to say, “Go-la-nv Pinetree?”
Maupin came closer, and whispered in Dr. Bayard’s ear. “She is right, François. It is better this way.”
Bayard said nothing, gave no order. He just stood there, eyes closed, letting Devonald’s men haul the two outlaws away, to brand them as thieves, and do whatever they needed to do to ease their blood lust until they found Clarke and his gang. A noose was thrown over Donnan’s head and tightened around his neck. It was Cooper and Taylor who led him to a tree where they sailed the rope end over a stout branch.
Someone shoved Donnan up onto a horse as Taylor secured the rope around the tree trunk. It was only then that Emily managed to look up at Donnan Stewart.
His eyes showed no fear, but his voice betrayed him. “Why do you do this, Emily?” he asked.
She wanted to look away. She wanted to be far away from here. She also wanted Go-la-nv Pinetree to be alive. And her father. And Finnian Kilduff not to be lying, suffering on a bed inside Darlene Courtney’s cabin. She made herself hold Donnan’s gaze. Her mouth opened. Her voice sounded hollow.
“For good order and harmony of the colony.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
After thanking Rachel and Luke Zachary for her kindness, Emily turned away from their cabin, and headed down the path to Ninety Six.
Robert Gouedy’s two wagons had stopped in front of the ruins of the tavern, where his slaves loaded on the last of Machara’s luggage. Machara stood talking to Mrs. Cochrane, while, behind her, Alan and Elizabeth were busy trying to pinch one another.
Emily took a deep breath, but kept walking. In the second wagon, she saw the back of Finnian Kilduff’s thin, dark head where it was resting on a pile of pillows, in preparation for the grueling journey to Charlestown.
By the time Emily reached her mother’s side, Mrs. Cochrane was walking away, dabbing her eyes with the tie of her apron, and Alan and Elizabeth had stopped tormenting one another.
Machara sighed, looked at the blackened remnants of Cormorant’s Rock Tavern, and turned back. Her eyes found Emily, and she smiled. “Emily,” she said, “are you ready?”
Now came the biggest test of Emily’s life thus far. She had buried her father. She had hanged her brother. Looking up at her mother, she said, “I am staying, Mum.”
Machara must have expected it, but still she said, “Emily … you cannot.”
“I can,” she said, finding her resolve as somehow she always managed to do. “Da told me a woman can own the license to operate a tavern. And that I shall do. This I have been doing. Even before …” she nodded at the remains, “that. So I shall pay for the license, and continue to follow Da’s dream.”
“What tavern?” her mother’s raised voice caused Emily to step back. Machara pointed angrily behind her. “That? Ashes? Blackened timber not fit for kindling?”
Emily licked her lips. “A tavern,” she said, “can be rebuilt.” But can a family? she wondered. A settlement? A colony? A life?
Her mother appeared about to cry, so Emily stepped closer, put her hands on her mother’s shoulders, pulled her close, hugged her tightly, and whispered into her ear, “Someone has to look after Da, Mum. Someone has to follow his dream. And I can do it.”
“It is not …” Machara sobbed, “not fitting for a lady.”
“Mum,” she said softly, “I am no lady. Everyone in Ninety Six has been saying that for years.”
“You are precious to me,” she said.
“And you are precious to me,” Emily said. “But do you know who I am?”
She felt her mother’s head nod, and heard her say in a resigned voice, “Aye. You are a Stewart of Appin.”
Smiling somehow, Emily gently pushed her mother away from her shoulder, and gave her time to compose herself before saying, “No, Mum. I am the daughter of Machara and Breck Stewart.”
Machara smiled back, shook her head sadly, but proudly, and pulled Emily into an embrace that was as strong as any of her father’s had been. Then Machara stepped back from her daughter, and said to Benji Cooper, “Mister Cooper, would you mind unloading our luggage?” Machara turned back to Emily, saying, “We shall stay here as well.”
Which is when the tears exploded, and Emily fell into her mother’s embrace, sobbing without shame, without control as she felt Elizabeth wrap her arms around her right leg, and Alan grab hold of her left. She would need her mother’s strength. She would need her brother and sister. She would need everyone in the district. And when the Reverend Douglas Monteith returned that fall, she would need him, too. She had a tavern, a home, and a life to rebuild, and a terrible secret, a sin, for which she must repent. She would need God. God … her mother … and Ninety Six.
It was then Emily heard the voice that came from the second wagon. A weak voice, but one that still managed to carry power with it. And promise.
“I am staying, too,” Finnian Kilduff said.
the end
Author’s Note
Although most of the characters in The Cane Creek Regulators are fictitious—Mr. and Mrs. William Bull, Robert Gouedy, Lord and Lady Charles Montagu, and Charles Shinner being the primary exceptions—the events detailed here are based on fact. While it did not all happen exactly as written on these pages, some of the depicted violence did not come from my imagination. The Carolina backcountry could be inhumanely brutal, and it would get even worse in the years following where this novel ends.
James Mayson, not Breck Stewart, was the actual captain of the vigilante band from Ninety Six, and Douglas Monteith is loosely based on Anglican minister Charles Woodmason.
Still, history records that in the decade before the American Revolution, with pleas for help falling on deaf ears among most colony officials in Charlestown (which became Charleston around 1783), vigilante groups called “regulators” did form to fight outlaw bands running rampant across the South Carolina backcountry. And when the regulators began taking extreme measures against what would be considered petty crimes, if crimes at all, citizens had to rise up against them.
All of which helped fuel the bloody revenge and retaliation—as Gouedy predicts in this novel—that erupted when colonists revolted against the British Crown in 1775. During the American Revolution, that anger and animosity turned South Carolina’s backcountry into scenes of some of the worst atrocities—on both sides—between colonial patriots and their neighbors who remained loyal to the British Crown. As Light Horse Harry Lee recalled in his memoirs, the Revolutionary War in the backcountry of the Carolinas “often sank into barbarity.”
For research, I am indebted to the park rangers at Ninety Six National Historic Site in Ninety Six, South Carolina. They not only answered my questions for this novel, they helped my son on a research project he was doing on Colonial America for school.
For language, I often opened the pages of Colonial American English (Verbatim, 1985) by Richard M. Lederer Jr. and 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence (Follett, 1971).
For Charlestown, I turned often to “Revolutionary Charleston, 1765–1800,” a 1997 dissertation by Stanley Kenneth Deaton, courtesy of the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida; A Short History of Charleston (University of South Carolina Press, 1997) by Robert N. Rosen; and e-mail blasts to Leigh Jones Handal, director of communications, tours and fundraising at the Preservation Society of Charleston and a beer-drinking buddy during our days at the University of South Carolina.
For Ninety Six and backcountry history, I frequented the pages of Ninety Six: The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry (Sandlapper, 1978) by Robert D. Bass; The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant (University of North Carolina Press, 1953) edited by Robert J. Hooker; South Carolina: A History (University of South Carolin
a Press, 1992) by Walter Edgar; Old Ninety Six: A History and Guide (History Press, 2006) by Robert M. Dunkerly and Eric K. Williams; and Ninety Six: Landmarks of South Carolina’s Last Frontier Region (University of South Carolina Press, 1950) by author Carl Julien and photographer H. L. Watson.
Other sources include Colonial South Carolina: A History (University of South Carolina Press, 1997) by Robert M. Weir; The Oligarchs in Colonial and Revolutionary Charleston: Lieutenant Governor William Bull II and His Family (University of South Carolina Press, 1991) by Kinloch Bull Jr.; The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 1970) by George C. Rogers; Rise Up So Early: A History of Florence County, South Carolina (The Reprint Company, 1981) by G. Wayne King; Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1756–63 (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) by John Oliphant; The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1993) by Tom Hatley; John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier: A Study of Indian Relations, War, Trade, and Land Problems in the Southern Wilderness, 1754–1775 (University of Michigan Press, 1944) by John Richard Alden; and The History of South Carolina: Revised Edition (The State Co., 1922) by William Gilmore Simms.
Thanks also to the staffs at the Preservation Society of Charleston; Fort Loudoun (Tennessee) State Historic Area; Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia); Jamestown (Virginia) Settlement & Yorktown Victory Center; the South Carolina Historical Society; and, for helping me track down some of these books, the Vista Grande Public Library in Santa Fe.
Finally I must also thank my late friend, Robert J. Conley, Sequoyah Distinguished Professor of Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, for his insight regarding the Cherokee Indians.
—Johnny D. Boggs, Santa Fe, New Mexico
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