by Lori Benton
Big hands clenched around swollen traces, Ally squinted at the road. “Trees too thick to get the wagon under!”
Lightning highlighted the stretch ahead, densely wooded on either side, the road itself disintegrating into a quagmire, threatening to stick fast a wheel or turn a hoof and break a leg. Having traveled that road, Ian minded an inn thereabouts. He told Ally so. “Will ye be all right if I ride ahead, see can I find it?”
Ally waved him on. As Ian heeled the roan into a trot, he granted that, despite the present situation, they had had better grace for their journey than he could have hoped for.
In the new-minted village of Asheborough, a few miles from Mountain Laurel, he had acquired a wagon and a four-horse team to pull it. Along with some hard coin, he had traded nearly all the household goods he owned, lumber from the shop, and one of his uncle’s last two broodmares. The other, Juturna’s docile dam, was hitched to the wagon’s tailgate with her filly.
Into the wagon had gone his joiner’s tools and the cookery Naomi couldn’t—or wouldn’t—part with. Two trunks held their clothing. Sundry casks contained provisions. There was bedding and a canvas shelter; Ian had meant to camp along the road when possible rather than spend for bed and board. Blessed with dry weather, the plan proved sound through the Valley of Virginia. They spent an extra day in Philadelphia, where, having need of provisions and nothing to trade, Ian found a banker willing to exchange a small amount of gold flakes for coin, few questions asked. Fewer answered.
At Philadelphia they had left the wagon road and were now on the old King’s Highway, which would take them through New Jersey, New York, and on to Boston. Ian thought they were near a village he had ridden through three years past. He minded an inn, mostly for its name, which had struck him as fanciful then. But what had it been?
The wind whipped sidewise, drenching his face. After a mile of road curving through forest unbroken by farm, field, or sign to mark the hoped-for inn—the Blue Goose? Blue Door? Blue something—ahead on the verge he spied a humpy shape, indistinguishable through the rain. Smaller shapes moved around it.
His first impression threw him back to his fur-trapping days in the wilds of Canada, before his sojourn to Mountain Laurel. The scene ahead looked for all the world like a great bull moose brought down by a pack of wolves, busily tearing at the carcass. A few yards nearer and the shape resolved into what it was, a small coach overturned. Three men moved about, releasing its team, getting them off the road.
Ian approached with caution, seeing, as he dismounted, one of the horses down in the miring mud. He shouted to the men as he walked Ruaidh to the wood’s edge, where one, likely the driver, had hitched the team minus one.
The man bellowed a greeting and they joined the others next to the downed horse. Plainly there was no helping it. As Ian had feared for his own, it had taken a misstep, broken a foreleg. The passengers drew back as the driver produced a pistol from some dry corner of his person and did what had to be done for the creature.
Even muffled by the storm, the shot left Ian’s ears ringing.
The driver, tall and broad-chested under a voluminous cape, handed the spent pistol to one of the others, then turned to Ian and in a hearty baritone boomed, “Yesterday I dined in state with President Washington! Today finds me ankle-deep in mud, soaked to the hide, putting down my best carriage horse. Providence keeping me humble!” Reaching out a beefy hand, he continued, “But your kindness in stopping is appreciated, sir! As we can do no more for my poor horse than roll her carcass off the road, might you be willing to aid us in righting my coach—if the deed can be accomplished?”
Ian shook the man’s hand, as wet as his own, hastily reassessing. His horse. His coach. The president’s table? The other two collected the baggage fallen in the crash, moving muddied trunks aside.
“I’ve a wagon coming!” Ian shouted over grumbling thunder. “And a driver of considerable strength. He’ll lend it if we four cannot prevail. Is there damage?”
“Not presently ascertainable.” The burly owner looked past Ian. “That your man coming now?”
It was. Ian waved Ally to halt the wagon and climb down. Naomi’s face appeared briefly in the canvas opening behind the bench. Then Ally was there, looming over even the coach’s owner, shaking his head sorrowfully at the dead horse in the road.
“We need to right this coach!” Ian shouted.
Ally turned from the unfortunate horse. “Tell me what to do, Mister Ian.”
With the brute strength of five they had the coach tilted up, then over onto its wheels, creaking and rocking, with a drenching that made little difference in anyone’s state. Ian checked the coach over but found it serviceable, if battered. As he rounded the conveyance, he caught the burly owner straightening from examining the undercarriage with an air of one acquainted with its mechanics. Still he turned to the man Ian had finally identified as the driver.
“What say you, Eldredge?”
“It’s but two miles, Judge, to that inn ye’re aiming for. Reckon did we take it easy, we’ll make it. But we’ll only be hitching two horses.”
“That’ll be the Blue Moon?” Ian asked, recollecting the name at last.
“The same,” said coach’s owner—a judge, if Ian had heard aright. “Do you make for it yourself?”
“We do. And if ye’d care to make a full team, I’ve a spare horse ye can hitch for the distance. She’s pulled a wagon and is biddable even in this stramash. Should ye like to try her?”
The man’s blunt features beamed. “I would—and thank you kindly. May I know your name, sir?”
“Ian Cameron,” Ian said as rain slapped him in the face. “Lately of Carolina.”
“Returning north to settle?”
“God willing. And you, sir?”
“Judge William Cooper, returning to Otsego County, New York, where I am well settled indeed. But let us make for the Blue Moon, where you, your man, and anyone else in that wagon shall bide the night at my expense.”
“That’s generous but—”
“The least I can do!” Cooper clapped a hand wetly to Ian’s shoulder. “Though not all.”
“What mean ye, sir?”
The driver and the second passenger were leading the horses back onto the road.
“Let us get out of this,” William Cooper said, “sufficiently dried—and watered of a different sort. Then I shall make it plain.”
By the time coach and wagon reached the Blue Moon, the storm had nearly abated. Ian drove the wagon beneath a shelter running the length of the inn’s stable. With the horses boxed, Ally saw to their feeding while Ian checked on the wagon’s passengers. Naomi knelt at the open tailgate. “Provisions we got in Philadelphia be fine,” she reported. “Everything but some bedding that wicked up rain. I’ll spread it to dry if you help Daddy out.”
Ian did so, half-lifting the old man to the ground. Naomi handed down Malcolm’s cane. Ian pulled Mandy off the wagon and hooked her to his hip, where she squirmed against his damp coat. “Wet, Papa!”
“Aye,” he said, grinning. “I need changing. How about ye?”
Mandy shook her curls. “No, no!”
“I saw to it whilst you was putting up the horses,” Naomi called from the wagon’s depths. Possessions sorted to her satisfaction, she clambered down. With the rain subsided to a sprinkle, Ian hung his cape in the wagon to dry and escorted his party across the muddy yard, handing Mandy over to Naomi to give Malcolm an arm when the old man’s knees proved stiff.
“Too long sitting idle. I’ll be a spoilt auld man, Mister Ian, afore ever we reach Boston.”
“If ye never lift a hand to work again, ye’ve earned it.”
“I’m no’ through living yet. Ye’ll have another garden to tend, by and by.”
God willing, he would, Ian thought. But where? He supposed that depended on Seona. He hadn’t written of his return, fearing such news might frighten her into doing something rash. He had only asked she do nothing until she heard from him
on the matter of their son. She would hear, soon as he stood before her to speak his mind. A thought to set his heart racing.
The inn sat level with the yard, nothing but a stoop to mount. A foyer greeted them with a stair to the rooms above, a parlor to the left. To the right a taproom emitted a sharp tang of spirits and pipe smoke, the buzz of conversation, and a hail: “Be out to you folks directly. I’ve just had word of your coming.”
Moments later the innkeeper, a bespectacled man of middle years and stature, emerged to greet them, smelling much like his establishment. “Mr. Cameron? The congressman had a room set aside for you, although . . .” He eyed Malcolm leaning on his cane. “Mayhap I should be putting you on the ground floor instead of abovestairs?”
“We’d appreciate that,” Ian replied, then frowned. “The congressman, did ye say?”
“Congressman Cooper.” With a scratch at a grizzled sideburn, the innkeeper regarded him. “Met him on the road, coach overturned?”
“His driver called him Judge.”
“So he is. Judge, congressman, and more besides.” The innkeeper looked them over. “Is this all your party? Will one room suffice?”
“It will,” Ian assured. “I’ve another man I’m guessing will be sleeping in your stable, if it’s agreeable?” Ally would want to stay with the horses. Ian had imagined the rest would share floor space somewhere. Judge, congressman, whatever else he lay claim to being, William Cooper was generous beyond all bounds.
The innkeeper took the situation in stride. “He may stay in the stable loft. I’ll see he’s victualed.”
A plump woman of an age with the innkeeper had appeared in time to hear their last exchange. Pausing with hands on ample hips, she assessed them, gaze settling on Naomi and Malcolm. “Oughtn’t they to sleep in the barn with the other? We’re not running a boardinghouse for slaves.”
She firmed her lips as if expecting argument.
Ian gave it. “Firstly, madam, this man and woman aren’t slaves. Second, Naomi minds my daughter. If she’s to sleep in the hay, so must my child—as will I. Ye may tell the congressman so.”
“Slaves or no,” the woman said, “they’re still—”
“We could certainly all move on,” came the hearty voice of William Cooper, who stepped from the taproom, “if we’re causing inconvenience. There are other inns along this road.”
“No.” The innkeeper raised a conciliatory hand. “We’ve the room free—empty, I mean. Let me show you, Mr. Cameron.” The man shot the woman a quelling glance.
Faced with the prospect of losing the congressman’s business, she relented. Partially. “They ain’t supping at my table,” she said over her shoulder, making for the depths of the house. “There I draw the line.”
William Cooper eyed the innkeeper, as did Ian, wondering who had the final say.
The man cleared his throat. “My sister is the law in her kitchen. As for the rest, they’re welcome to sup in your room if they wish.”
Ian looked to Naomi and Malcolm. “What d’ye say?”
“Fine by me,” Naomi said, arms snug around his daughter. “Daddy’s wore out. This girl gonna sleep soon, too. We’ll take supper in the room.”
“All right.” Ian nodded to the innkeeper. “Let’s see it then.”
At William Cooper’s invitation, Ian sought his supper in the inn’s taproom. Seated with his driver and fellow coach passenger, Cooper poured Ian a cupful of the inn’s hard cider and dove headlong into a proper introduction. Born not far from that very inn, the man had begun as a wheelwright by trade, then progressed to a merchant. “After the war I took an interest in lands to the west, which is proving a lucrative investment.” Now deep into a political career, Cooper had founded a village at the foot of Otsego Lake, christened it Cooperstown, and become a promoter of settlement on the New York frontier. And the man was not above five and forty years, if Ian was any judge.
“But you, Mr. Cameron,” Cooper continued, changing tack between helpings of the hearty Cheshire pie served for supper. “I catch a hint of Scotland in your speech. Born across the water, were you?”
“I was,” Ian confirmed, glancing aside as the coach driver produced a pipe, knocked its dottle onto the boards, then swept it to the floor. “But I barely remember Scotland. My father sailed for Boston when I was a bairn. He set up for a bookbinder, then sent for us—me, Mam, my older brother—just in time for the British to blockade the city, us within, him without, fighting with the militia.”
“A blockade ending with the British expelled from that port,” Cooper said. “Did your father survive the war?”
“Still binding books in the North End.”
Cooper’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm—and the cider he had downed. “I’ve recently acquired a bookbinder for Cooperstown. Have you the art and mystery yourself then?”
“No.” Ian inhaled a lungful of the driver’s pipe smoke, pungent but sweet; the scent reminded him of Uncle Hugh. “That’s my brother. I was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker, a trade I’ve pursued since. On and off.”
“What have you ventured in the off?” Cooper asked, quick to pounce on the detail. “Did you farm in Carolina—I believe that’s where you’re from? North or South?”
Ian took a swallow of cider before answering. The man’s probing might be rooted in curiosity naturally felt for any chance-met fellow traveler. Or not. “Until recently I owned a tobacco plantation in the North Carolina Piedmont—Randolph County. I farmed it long enough to know I’d do so again.”
Cooper quirked a brow. “Surely not tobacco this far north?”
“No,” Ian agreed. “Corn. Wheat. Cattle maybe.”
“All of which grow with abundance upon the rich soils and grazing of western New York,” Cooper assured him, “while the forests would give your cabinetmaker’s heart joy. Particularly the maples, from which sugar is derived—an enterprise I’d hoped by now to see better prosper. Alas, the product competes poorly against the refined sugars of the Indies.”
“It’s good sugar, made right,” Ian said. “I’ve seen the process.”
“Have you?” Cooper’s eyes, which drooped at their corners, now went nearly round with surprise. “When and where?”
“A few years back, in Canada. I’ve an uncle settled among the Chippewa. I trapped furs with him before I went to Carolina. His wife has a sugar bush, as they call it.”
“Indeed!” Cooper slapped the boards with delight. The thump rattled cutlery, drawing glances from diners at the table’s other end, though not, Ian noted, his driver and the other passenger, doubtless accustomed to the man’s exuberance. “Now there’s a thing I hadn’t expected to look at you. Cabinetmaker, planter, and frontiersman. One might wonder what you’ll be up to ten years hence.”
“One might,” Ian agreed with a dry laugh.
Though disposed to like the congressman from New York, he sensed Cooper’s queries had been driving the conversation to an intended point, but some question about their journey arose between the driver and passenger, demanding Cooper’s attention, leaving Ian to down the dregs in his cup and make a surreptitious exit, heading to the stable to check on Ally and the horses.
Outside, clouds hung low in the twilit sky. The stable welcomed him with the muggy warmth and scent of horseflesh. Ally rose from a bench where he had polished off his supper.
“I liked them apples baked with pork, Mister Ian. What you call it?”
“Cheshire pie. And if ye think that was good, wait until ye taste Mam’s beefsteak pie. All’s well then?”
“Got a blanket in the loft yonder.” Ally canted his head toward the ladder. “Everybody brushed. Fed. Feet tended. No harm taken from the day.”
“Good.” Ian gripped Ally’s arm. “Thank ye for your help today, with that carriage. We’ll move on in the morning. I’ll be out early to lend a hand.”
He found a girl at work in the kitchen and returned Ally’s plate, then slipped away unremarked by anyone lingering in the taproom. It was from the p
arlor across the foyer his name issued.
“Mr. Cameron?” William Cooper filled the doorway, tumbler in hand. “Share a dram before turning in?”
Manners won out over Ian’s desire for bed. They weren’t long settled in the rustic parlor before Cooper came to the point. “Back in that downpour I said I’d more to offer than a night’s shelter. Having made your better acquaintance, I feel the more compelled to keep my word.”
Ian sipped his whisky. “Ye’ve my curiosity piqued.”
“As I mentioned,” Cooper went on, “I’ve dabbled in frontier land speculation. Now I find myself in possession of vast tracts of New York land, north and south of the Mohawk River. A wilderness, empty and untrodden. My primary aim of late has been the matching of suitable men to the task of taming it.”
Such land was in truth neither empty nor untrodden. Or had not long been. Ian had once visited Grand River, where the displaced Mohawks had settled in Upper Canada, but the New York river valley that bore their name had been their homeland and that of the other Iroquois tribes. In the wake of their forced departure, or confinement to reserves, the face of the land was inexorably changing. Emptied, aye, but fast filling again with a different breed of men.
“I suppose the one must follow the other,” he allowed.
Cooper looked pleased. “If but the half of what you say of yourself is true, you’re a young man of gumption, willing to venture to better yourself and your dependents. I’d like to see you do so in New York. My home county of Otsego naturally commands my heart, and you’re welcome there if a situation can be found to suit. If not, I’ve lands available north of the Mohawk River, as I said.”
Cooper let that dangle, a baited line.
Ian rested his half-empty tumbler on his knee, surprised by the offer but seeing it for the thing the congressman had been angling toward since supper. It was good bait, but Ian wasn’t ready to bite. He opened his mouth to say so, but Cooper, the skillful fisherman, gave another tug.