Colter's Path (9781101604830) (15 page)

Rachel didn't dislike Witherspoon; she considered him a kind and gentle man, different and better than many she had known who tried to impress her with their grit and ruggedness. Of course Witherspoon was, in his own mind, trying to appear gritty and rugged, too, but was unknowingly doing it so ineptly that she could only find it funny.

When she was a little girl, Rachel's only real toy had been a straw-stuffed, furred creature she childishly called Aminal, something her mother had stitched together for her from a couple of old beaver pelts. Exactly what species of beast Aminal was intended to represent had not been evident from its appearance, but to Rachel's mind it had been a fat, lovable woodchuck. Now Rachel was grown and Aminal was long gone, but when she took an amused glance at Witherspoon Sadler in his unflattering buckskin garb, it was as if her childhood companion had come back, full-sized and transformed into a man. In the privacy of her thoughts, Rachel thought of Witherspoon as Aminal, and prayed constantly that she would never slip up and call him by that name out loud.

“Good evening, sir,” Witherspoon said to the man who had entered their camp. “I'm told you're asking after someone.”

“I'm looking for Jedd Colter. I hear he's the guide and pilot for this group?”

“If he is, could I tell him who is calling?”

“An old friend. I'd rather surprise him than give him my name right off, though. He'll know me when he sees me.”

Witherspoon was a trusting man by nature, but if his more worldly-wise brother had exerted any worthwhile influence upon him, it was in teaching him not to be so ready to assume the best regarding strangers. Witherspoon pondered that he didn't know this man or what he wanted with Jedd Colter, and his inclination was not to immediately bring the two of them together. Especially in that he knew Jedd was sleeping in anticipation of an upcoming predawn guard shift for the camp. It wouldn't be right to disturb his rest without at least knowing there was good reason. And that this stranger was not dangerous.

Witherspoon did not give an answer right away, and the stranger gave him an intimidating look…not hard to achieve with the timid Witherspoon.

“Tell you what,” Witherspoon said. “Jedd is sleeping right now because he has to be up for guard duty late in
the night, but we'll go sit nearby so we'll know when he wakes up.”

“Guess that'll have to be good enough,” the man said.

“What's your name, sir?” Witherspoon asked.

“I'm Rand Blalock, from North Carolina. I knew Jedd when he was a boy and I was sheriff in the county he was born in, there in the mountain end of the state.”

“I'd guess he'll be glad to see you.”

“He will. We go back a long way, Jedd and me.”

J
edd dreamed, and in his mind he was back in North Carolina again, rifle in hand, knife in sheath, powder horn and “possibles” bag strapped across shoulder. At his side was his father, alive and strong and just as he had looked in Jedd's youth. They strode together across a familiar ridge, hunting deer.

In the dream they were not alone. With them was Rand Blalock, the local sheriff, longtime family friend, and frequent hunting companion of the Colters. As usual, Blalock was talking too much and walking too heavily and loudly, annoying his companions. When Jedd's father would ask him to be a little quieter, Blalock would take obvious offense and reduce his talk to a mumble that made him hard to understand yet still carried farther and more loudly than it should. He had one of those voices.

Then it seemed to Jedd he heard another voice besides Blalock's, and it wasn't Treemont's. Yet it was familiar, but it didn't belong in a dream of North Carolina.

At length Jedd awakened and sat up. The first thing he noticed was that Sheriff Blalock really, and amazingly, was present, seated on the ground near the smoldering fire that was now reduced to red-glowing coals. And he
saw the origin of that second voice: Witherspoon Sadler, seated in a rotund heap nearby Blalock.

Blalock looked much older than the version of himself Jedd had tracked along with through the Carolina woods. Jedd realized that he'd been dreaming about Blalock because he had been hearing the real man's voice through the veil of sleep. And he'd heard Witherspoon's voice likewise.

The oddity of the situation hit and he frowned at Blalock. What was he doing here? When had he showed up?

“Howdy, Jedd,” Blalock said. “You're looking fine. Last I seen you, you was yet a boy.”

Jedd lithely rose from his sleeping place and advanced to Blalock, hand outthrust. “And you're looking fine, too, Sheriff! Where'd you come from?”

“First off, I'm sheriff no longer and ain't been for a long time. And I came into your camp tonight because I'd heard you were part of this band of argonauts. I hoped I'd find you, and I have.”

Jedd, shaking off drowsiness very quickly, grinned widely. “Glad you did! You heading to California to get your share of the gold along with nigh every other man in the nation?”

“Not me. Too old for such foolishness.”

“Well, I sure hope California gold ain't foolishness, for that's where we're heading, and gold's what everybody's after.”

“No foolishness in it for the young. But it's not an old man's venture. Only one thing could take me all the way to California, and it ain't gold.”

Witherspoon rose, trying his best to spring up as easily and spryly as had Jedd. He staggered and wobbled and might have stepped right into the remnants of the fire had not Blalock grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Blast!” Witherspoon exclaimed, embarrassed. He looked around quickly and Jedd knew he was making sure Rachel McCall hadn't been close by to see him playing the stumblebum.

“Just relax, friend,” said Blalock. “Nothing to be nervous about here. You'll find me an easy kind of man.”

“You'll find me a clumsy one,” Witherspoon muttered.

“Sheriff, what brought you here if you're not going to California?” Jedd asked. He knew the “sheriff” designation was not now accurate, but he'd grown up knowing Blalock by his then title, and there would be no way to shake himself of it now.

“I'd come to Knoxville looking for you,” Blalock replied. “That was how I learned you'd gone off with this here group. I followed even though I figured there was little point in it with the head start you folks had on me.”

“Well, us folks have had a lot of delays, too,” Jedd said. “We were under the leadership of General Gordon Lloyd, and he proved to be a very slow-moving, slow-acting fellow. He's passed on now, sorry to say. But it will probably help us go faster.”

“I heard he'd died. Too bad, that.”

“He was a good man. Just slow. But why were you looking for me in Knoxville? I been gone from there for several years. For that matter, why were you looking for me at all, anywhere?”

“I went to Knoxville because it was the last place I knew you to be. I didn't know you'd gone off west.”

“Well, I went back when the whole matter of piloting for the Sadler group came up. And I had a private reason to go back, too. But why did you need to find me?”

Blalock's face, which always had possessed a sorrowful look, in Jedd's judgment, because of Blalock's drooping eyes, looked even more sad than usual all at once. Blalock sighed loudly and slowly. “Jedd, I come bearing some sad news.”

Jedd felt a cold dread crawl over him. “What is it, Sheriff?”

Blalock's eyes shifted quickly. “Jedd, is Treemont Dalton still running with you?”

“He is. He's part of this very same group.”

Blalock winced. “I'm right glad he ain't right here with us at the moment, for there's bad news about his people.”

Jedd swallowed. “Tell me.”

“You remember Tree's cousin Carver?”

“Surely do. Why?”

“He's dead, Jedd. Murdered. Flat-out butchered. And not just him, his family, too. Wife, children, all of them.”

“Good God! What happened?”

“It ain't fully known just what happened because there was no one who saw it. No one left alive, anyway.”

“Who did it?”

“Seems to have been done by somebody who came through and stayed with the family a few days. Nobody in the area knew him, and nobody knows why he was there. He might have been kin of Carver's wife. His name was John Collier. Ever heard Treemont mention that name?”

Jedd thought it over and shook his head. “Not ringing any bells with me. Was Carver's wife a Collier before she married?”

“No. Beth was a Bradburn. But she could have been kin to some Colliers. Hell, they're both kin to my people, you know that? The Blalocks have ties to the Daltons and Bradburns both.”

“Why would this Collier have to be kin to the family at all? Maybe it was just somebody they knew.”

“Could be. But folks who talked to the current sheriff, Jim Campbell, said they had it in their heads from somewhere that this Collier visitor was kinfolk with the family on Beth's side. So somebody must have been told that along the way, by Beth or Carver or one of the children.”

“Any notion at all why this Collier would have done this?”

“Not a bit. They were found outside the house, laid out in a line, all seven of them. Shot in the back of the head, every one of them. No blood in the house, so somehow he—or whoever did it—had gotten them all outside. Or maybe they were killed here and there and dragged to the same place and laid out in a line. Apart from being shot like they were, the corpses were left in decent condition. Except for Carver.”

“What was different with him?”

“He was chopped up. No other way to describe it. Cut into pieces—arms and legs hacked off, feet cut off at the ankles, hands cut at the wrists, head severed—but then the pieces were all laid out in place, like he was whole. Strangest thing I ever saw. But the fact that Carver's remains were treated so much worse makes me figure that motive for it all might have had something to do with him more than the others.”

“You saw it yourself, then.”

“I did. I ain't been sheriff for a long time now, but I still held a deputy status up until a short while ago and happened to be in town when the boy who'd found them rode in and gave word. I went out with Sheriff Campbell to the house. It was hard on him, real hard. There was a time, you see, when he'd courted Beth Bradburn himself. Carver Dalton asked her for her hand first, though, and she said yes. Broke poor Jim Campbell's heart clean in two that she married somebody else. And he sobbed like a child when he saw Beth lying there dead with that flyblown hole in the back of her head. ‘She should have married me,' he said to me. ‘If she'd married me, she'd not have been here for this to happen to her.' That's what Jim Campell said. ‘Should have married me.'”

“I know some of what he went through,” Jedd said. “I was set to marry a gal name of Emma McSwain, daughter of the president of a college in Knoxville. She cut me loose, though. Didn't even have a marriage offer from anybody else when she did it, either. She decided I was too poor, too broke, to be a husband for her. She ended up marrying a man named Stanley Wickham, and from all I've heard, he's naught but a sorry bastard. Treats her hard and mean. Unfaithful, too. But he had a bit of money, so if money was what she wanted, I reckon she should be happy.”

“She still in Knoxville?”

“No, sir. California. He took her there.”

“Well…and now you're going there. Reckon you'll see her?”

“I reckon so.”

“Well, Jedd, I got to tell you that this fellow who killed
the Dalton family, the story is that he's gone to California, too. Or maybe just on his way. Whether by land or sea, I don't know. That's what led me to hunt you down. I wanted you to know what had happened before Treemont did—and I wanted to tell you that there's a damned good reward up for the capture or killing of this John Collier.”

“I'm no manhunter, Sheriff Blalock.”

“I know that. But I got a feeling a good friend of yours might decide that he's going to do some manhunting, once he knows what was done to his kin.”

“You're talking about Treemont.”

“Of course.”

Jedd thought it over and saw that Blalock was right. Treemont was devoted to his kin, and he'd been particularly close to his cousin Carver Dalton. When he wasn't out hunting with Jedd, he was fishing or trapping with Carver. Tree had shared space at the table of Carver and Beth Dalton. He'd be devastated when he learned what had happened to them. And probably bent on vengeance. That would be Treemont's way.

Jedd looked seriously at Blalock. “I don't think Tree should be told right off that Collier might be in California. I'm afraid he might spend all his time, once he gets there, trying to hunt the man down and call him to account.”

Blalock merely nodded.

Witherspoon had been sitting by listening quietly to all that was said. He made a strange “urp” noise in his throat and drew the attention of the other two. Witherspoon swallowed hard and said, “He was cut to pieces and then laid back together, like puzzle pieces?”

Blalock nodded. “That's a fact. But I failed to mention that his arms had been switched, and his legs laid back in place upside down, so that he was lying on his back but his feet were pointing downward. And his privates had been cut off and shoved into the hole in the back of his head. Horrible thing to see. Horrible.”

Witherspoon tried to speak, but merely achieved making that strange noise in his throat again. He came
to his feet much faster this time, not stumbling like before, and rushed off behind the nearest wagon, from whence the sound of his retching could be clearly heard.

“Not a man of strong stomach,” Jedd said to Blalock.

“No. Evidently not. I can't much blame him, though. I nigh did the same thing when I first saw that family lined up dead.”