Paxton and the Lone Star (16 page)

Just aboard the ferry, not daring to run down the gangplank to help for fear of frightening the mules even more, the captain froze in place. Someone screamed. Elizabeth's hand wouldn't move. The fall into the river wasn't far, but far enough to ruin the wagon and half their belongings, not to speak of what would happen to the three of them. Terrified, she did nothing.

“The brake, goddamnit, girl, the brake! Shove it forward! Now!”

The man's urgency, the wild look on his horrifying face, cut through the fog of her fear. As quickly as panic had seized her, Elizabeth regained self-control and relased the brake. The wagon jerked another half inch backward but then stopped and, with the man firmly gripping the lead mule's harness, rolled forward uneventfully onto the ferry.

Hester was sobbing, Lottie staring wide-eyed at the water. The crisis over, Elizabeth started to shake. Beyond their monstrous-looking benefactor, who had dismounted quickly and was tying the mules to a ring set in the deck, a furious True was working his way aft on foot. Captain Maland, no less furious, was cursing at Baggett and Crease for endangering his passengers.

“Shut up, Maland. No harm done,” Baggett said, leering at the shaken women. “Nice timing, Leakey. Tell that little gal that the next time she'd better think twice before shootin' at a sleepin' man.”

“Ain't gonna be no next time, Baggett,” Hogjaw said, crossing the space between them in four easy strides.

“I know. 'Cause the next time I'm gonna … Hey! What're ya'?…”

Hogjaw ducked under Baggett's horse's neck. Baggett reached for his rifle, but then grabbed his saddle horn as Hogjaw ripped his foot from the stirrup with his left hand and slammed him in the back with his right.

“Godda—” Baggett squawked as the mountain man lifted him bodily from the saddle and held him in the air, face up and helpless as a bug, then took three more steps and pitched him over the side and into the water.

“Crease?” Hogjaw said, his eyes small and dangerous as he turned to Baggett's partner.

For one second, Crease looked as if he might try to fight, but he quickly reconsidered and dropped his rifle. “Okay, Leakey, okay. Hell with it. I'm goin',” he said, and leaped from his horse into the Mississippi. Seconds later, covered with mud, he and Baggett stood side by side in the shallows.

Hogjaw bent double laughing. The skin on his jaws jiggled up and down alarmingly. He pulled off his hat and slapped it against his thigh. The hair around his jaggedly stitched leather skull flap flailed out. “Your gear will be waitin' on the other side, boys,” he yelled gleefully. “Gaw Dee, but I ain't seen two wetter rooster chicks since cuss all!”

The last wagon came clattering aboard and the crew raised the gangplank and began casting off. Captain Maland disappeared into the pilot house, leaving behind him a string of orders. “Everything under control?” True asked, at Elizabeth's side.

“I think so,” Elizabeth said, forgetting her hostility for the moment.

A shrill whistle piped over the din of anxious horses and mules and the exclamations of the settlers. Unnoticed by Elizabeth, the great side-wheel paddles began to turn and the ferry edged away from the landing. “Who is that?” she asked, pointing at Hogjaw.

Remembering their ploy, True colored. “Well,” he began, embarrassed. “That's, uh, well … He's your new … what you might call, uh … Actually, he's … Uncle Howard Leakey!” He laughed nervously and added helpfully, “We call him Hogjaw.”

Elizabeth stared dumbstruck.

Lottie gasped and stifled a scream.

Hester put her hands over her face. “Oh … my … God!” she groaned.

Chapter XI

There were trails across Louisiana, to be sure. Rough trails, but trails blazed and cut and rutted. There were dark places where the ground was soggy the year round, and ferries across rivers and fords across creeks. Always there were trees and mosquitoes. October was their only-friend, for the mosquitoes would have been much worse and the flies nearly unbearable save for the cooling weather.

They learned how to address one another in the morning before they were fully awake and the long hard day lay ahead. They learned how not to tread on frayed tempers when the afternoon came spinning to a close and the bone weariness was descending upon them. They learned what comments played havoc with civility and what jokes eased the inevitable tension. On Sundays they rested, and gave thanks to the Lord before turning to the more mudane matters of patching harness and greasing wheels and caring for hooves and repairing torn clothes and cooking. And, blissfully when possible, finding a spot simply to lie down and gaze up through the trees to the sky, and sleep.

None of them knew it, but they did not travel alone. A flame, a candle in a darkened room, a song softly sung—a gypsy song, a lullaby—accompanied them. From a distance, Adriana watched.

Auburn hair hiding her face, she sat in solitude. On the table in front of her, a deck of cards, a candle, a needle. Silently, she dripped a puddle of wax on the middle of the table, pricked her finger with the needle, and allowed a single crimson drop of blood to stain the cooling wax. Then, as the red dot glared upward, she placed the cards just so, fashioned them just so in a spiral radiating from the waxen island. Her hands manipulated the cards, but fate decreed the order in which they lay. When the spiral was complete, she placed her hands upon the cards and closed her eyes. Outside, an October wind rattled the windows and summoned her spirit.

Night, day. Day, night. Past, present. Present, past.

Find him find him find him.

And then the chill. Always the chill as the power and spirit lifted her from herself and drew her into the vision.

She followed him—them—across Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. She heard the names and faces of the rivers and towns and hamlets. She smelled the dust of the road and the wet of the rain, watched green leaves become autumnal in the slow evolution of the year, in the tilting of the sphere, in the changing. She rode with him across the Father of the Waters and under the canopy of the forest.

Always was she drawn to the image of brambles clustered about a tree, a tree that earth never knew, that never existed but in the imagination. The amulet of gold worn by her first-born was her talisman. An amulet of gold floating on her consciousness, and bright in a shuttered room of Solitary.

As Adriana promised, she did not leave True's side.

You won't be back. None of you will return. I have seen it in the flame of the candle and in the lay of the cards. Trouble lies ahead, flesh of my flesh. Great deeds, death for some, life for others. And for you?…
The faintest of smiles played fleetingly across her face.
As the tree rises from the brambles, so shall you overcome adversity.

Chapter XII

“Heave!” called the ferryman, leaning into the hawser. The inch-thick spliced hemp line fixed to the upstream side of the narrow plank raft ran through pulleys attached to trees on either bank of the river. The first half of the trip across was always the easier, for then the ferry ran slightly downstream as the current formed the hawser into a long, flattened U. The second half, when the ferry canted upstream against the current, was the harder. “Heave!” the man repeated. His sons, muscles bulging as the boat inched across the Sabine, hauled with him.

The Kania and Michaelson wagons were the first to cross. Positioned just slightly upstream of the center line of the ferry, they shared the ride with the Paxtons and Hogjaw Leakey who, once they landed, would add their effort to that of those on the eastern shore. Buckland Kania read from Psalms while Mila held the team steady. Behind her, Elizabeth kept the reins carefully entwined in her tapered fingers, experience gained in the crossing of the Mississippi and half a dozen lesser rivers in the last two and a half weeks.

The Sabine was special. Elizabeth and all the other settlers had felt it when they first set eyes on Gain's Ferry and looked across to the river's western bank which marked the beginning of Texas. Once there, they would be in a foreign land, would be immigrants as their forebears had been not too many years ago. The wagon bobbed and creaked as Lottie stepped down. “Where are you going?” Elizabeth asked.

Lottie nodded toward the front of the ferry in response, gripped the side rail for support, and squeezed between it and the Kanias' wagon. Elizabeth craned her neck. Through the open wagon ahead of her, she could see past Mila and Buckland to where Andrew and Joseph stood at the squared prow. As she watched, Lottie appeared at Joseph's side, and Joseph's hand stole to the small of her back. A moment later, partially blocked by Mila, True moved into sight at Lottie's right side. Elizabeth arched her eyebrows, then looked away as an inexplicable pang of jealousy struck her.
I
should have expected as much,
she thought, as much surprised by the jealousy as by True's apparent interest in Lottie.

He's nothing to me. Not really. Just like all men who, like bees, gather to the ripest flower.

And Lottie had made no bones about being ripe.

Still, Elizabeth was forced to look at herself, and in so doing, make comparisons. Her nails were short and ragged. One was black where she had pinched it while replacing the lid to a water barrel. Lottie's were longer and smooth. Her hair looked mousy, she knew, for she had spent much of her time caring for Hester and little on herself. Lottie's shone with a rich luster: she brushed it at least a hundred strokes each day while Elizabeth was driving. She dressed like a man in baggy trousers and an ill-fitting workshirt. Lottie always looked feminine and desirable.

Why was she so perverse? True had tried to be friendly, had offered to drive, to help in every way, and she had declined. And now, illogically, she seethed with jealousy when in all candor, she had no right whatsoever to complain.

Sighing, she watched the approaching shoreline, then glanced back to check on her mother. Each passing day, each unraveling mile, had added to Hester's distress. Her husband was dead, the provider was gone. She was incapable of facing the frightening prospects of the world into which she was heading. Unable to accept reality, she had withdrawn deeper and deeper into a self-spun cocoon of loneliness and apathy. Elizabeth had searched for the right words, the magic phrase that would bring Hester to life again, but so far had failed. All that was left to her was fear, and hope. “Mother?” she said, leaning back into the wagon. “Mother?”

“Texas, miss,” a voice at her side said.

Elizabeth straightened to see Hogjaw's horrid, friendly face smiling at her. She had long ago gotten over the shock of learning the identity of the fourth member of the Paxton party and, much to Lottie's inability to understand, had even taken a liking to the mountain man. “I know,” she said, glad for the interruption. “I hope it's not as dull as Louisiana.”

“So it's excitement you want, eh?” Hogjaw said with a laugh. “Well, gal, Texas has a way of twisting a person's wish. Sort of like the Great Spirit. Sometimes you find out that what you asked for ain't really what you wanted when it shows up on your doorstep. I recollect one time out here I got so lonely I made the mistake of sendin' up my prayer smoke just for the sight of a two-legged critter like me. And damn and by golly if not more than a day later a whole party of Comanche come off a ridge and lifted my hair and left me for dead.” He shook his head, made a clucking sound. “Well, when I come to, I stumbled around for I don't know how long an' finally run into some Quakers who sewed my head together as best they could. I don't know to this day which hurt more—gettin' my hair lifted or patched back on. But I'll tell you what. I sure plumb had my fill of folks for a while. An' learned to be a sight more careful 'bout my wishin', too.”

As horrible as the story was, Elizabeth laughed.

Hogjaw leaned over in his saddle and winked. “Real pretty smile,” he said. “Ought to show it more often. Mighty becomin'.”

Ahead of them, Buckland Kania started a new psalm. “O God, Thou art my God; early will I see Thee: my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary.…”

And at that moment, the ferry jerked sharply, scraped the river bottom, and ground to a stop. Hogjaw let out a war whoop, kicked his mule in the sides and urged her forward. True, Joseph, and Andrew answered with howls of their own and, as one, grabbed the hinged ramp and flipped it into the water. “Best sit down, Reverend,” Andrew yelled, “and get that team movin'!”

Joseph helped Lottie back to her wagon and stood by to help lead the team off. Hogjaw went ahead and splashed into the water to check the bottom and the clearing where the first two teams would await the others. Unable to restrain himself, True jumped aboard Firetail and, with an exuberant whoop, rode him off the deck and through the shallows. Water exploded in his wake. Clods of wet sand flew from Firetail's hooves. There was work to be done, but True didn't care. They had come this far! They had reached Texas!

The western shore of the Sabine was sandy. Fifteen or twenty feet inland, thick-boled, towering pine trees walled out the distance. True raced Firetail along the winding shore, leaped him over fallen tree trunks, roared through the shallows, and waved his hat to the settlers still on the opposite bank. Then suddenly, as he went around a sharp bend, he found himself alone and reined Firetail to a stop.

The forest lay hushed and brooding to his left. Hard by his right, the river slid stealthily past. He sat in a pool of silence and in total isolation, poised between the known and unknown. Beneath his shirt, the amulet he wore felt hot against his skin. Stretching to the east, the October sky was pure and blue as sapphire. Only slowly, as his ears became accustomed to the quiet, did he become aware of the soft sounds that meant he was not alone, that this was not an enchanted place where all life was held in suspension. His saddle creaked softly as he leaned back. Firetail breathed rhythmically. Somewhere, a small animal made dry scurrying sounds through the underbrush. A fish flopped out of the water. Far off, a woodpecker rapped against a rotten tree. And his own heartbeat, felt more than heard, whispered to him from his temples.