Paxton and the Lone Star (3 page)

Wild-eyed, jaws clenched and hands balled into fists, he turned to look one last time upon the land that had defeated him, and then stalked to the wagon.

“You'll kill yourself,” Hester said as he climbed in beside her. “And all of us. You can't do everything by yourself.”

Carl unwrapped the reins from the brake and shoved the handle forward. “I wouldn't have to do it by myself if you'd given me a son.” He snatched the whip from its socket and swung it over the mules. “Git up, mules.”

Elizabeth climbed into the wagon as it lurched forward and took her place in the back beside Lottie, whose face suddenly contorted. “We're going,” Lottie sobbed. “We'll never see it again. Never, never.”

Elizabeth cradled the cuttings and turned so she could see out the back. The old stone house, the barren garden, the barn, stark and leaning, were framed in the canvas opening.

“I miss it already,” Lottie said, straining valiantly to keep from crying outright. “Well?”

On the front seat, Hester sighed and Carl hunched his shoulders as if wounded.

“Well, say something!” Lottie hissed. “Isn't it awful?”

Elizabeth watched the clouds tumble, watched the sunlight glint off the weathervane on the peaked barn roof, and the grove where the sweet dreams of innocence and childhood rested with the dogwood and the lilacs and the graves. “No,” she whispered, her voice choked with emotion. “It isn't awful at all.”

Slowly, the wagon rounded the curve at the foot of the hill and, as if it were a picture being wiped clean from a slate, their home disappeared. Elizabeth lay back and closed her eyes to picture the miles ahead and the new land that awaited them. “It's wonderful,” she said dreamily. “It's all new, and marvelous, and wonderful.”

PART ONE

Leavetaking

Chapter I

The serrated line of molten sunlight touched his hair first, then crept across his forehead. When it hit his left eye, True Paxton woke and looked around. Before him, covering the lowlands as far as the shimmering beach, the Brandborough Fair lay spread like a multicolored quilt set out to dry. There was little activity at three in the afternoon, for it was then that the heat-dazed crowds sought shade and relief from the humid, still air. True calculated another hour at least before the return of the ocean breezes. Only then, when whitecaps roiled and tossed in the Atlantic and the tent canvases started to pop and snap, would the pace begin to pick up again.

The cottonwood in which True sat was a massive old tree, one that had stood there as long as he could remember. For the moment he perched motionless, one with the tree. His sandy-blond hair almost matched the light leaking around the edges of the leaves. Partially by birth and partially by sun, the deep bronze of his skin approximated the color of the bark. His eyebrows were incongruously dark arches over eyes so light blue they appeared almost white. High, sharply defined cheekbones, a narrow if somewhat bent nose and tapered jaw gave his face a not unpleasantly triangular look. Lower, his neck, shoulders, and chest were hardened by work, knotted with muscles that even in repose reminded one of the strength of the limb against which he rested. But the time for rest was over. Groggy, True grabbed for a limb over his head and heaved himself to his feet. Sweat ran down his temples, dampened the fringes of his hair, streamed from his armpits. Late August was a hell of a time to hold a fair, but the old traditions took a long time to die out. The year was 1834, and the Brandborough Fair had been held every year for the last fifty, starting when Brandborough was but a hamlet of twenty-seven souls, not counting bondsmen and slaves. The years had wrought many changes at the same time they were so firmly bonding traditions. True remembered his first trip to the fair as a five year old excited over the prospect of new discoveries. He hadn't missed a single year in the seventeen that had followed. Nor had he lost the sense of excitement, not even, he thought with a wry grin, after the grueling ride that had brought him here this year. Stocking feet cool on the rough bark, he padded down the limb, jumped lightly to the slatted roof of the stables, to the top rung of the ancient wooden corral, and then to the ground.

The stables were quiet, sweet with the smell of horses and hay. A half dozen paces inside the shade, listless and lazy after a day of rest, a huge hammerheaded roan stallion whisked his long, flowing tail at the flies that plagued him, and waited out the afternoon. True walked to the horsetrough, scooped bitingly chilly water, and doused his head and chest. “You're hot too, I guess,” he said, rubbing the excess water from his belly with his hands.

The roan stallion shook its massive head and nickered softly. True wet the animal's nose, grabbed the outthrust tongue briefly. “Cool off soon, Firetail,” he said reassuringly. “Relax. Heat'll bother her just as much as it does you. You'll be fine. Here.” He dipped a bucket in the trough and set it in front of the horse. “Last you'll get before the race. Drink it up and we'll take a walk. Get the kinks out.”

It wasn't the best day in the world for a race. Only five days earlier, in Charleston, they had run against a New York horse and a surprisingly fast mule that must have had lightning for a sire. The heat had been brutal there, too, and Firetail had had to work hard enough that True felt it wise to rest him and ride the pack horse for the next two days. One thing had led to another. Two days out of Charleston, Joseph's horse picked up a limp and they were forced to lose a day. Consequently, they had arrived at Brandborough sometime after midnight the night before, which stole the day of rest they always tried to give Firetail before a race. Then to compound matters, neither Tom Gunn Paxton, True and Joseph and Andrew's father, nor Adriana, his wife, nor anyone else of the house, could be found. None of the boys knew what had happened until that morning when one of the hands showed up with the news that Temper, Firetail's sire, was ailing and Tom Gunn Paxton didn't want to leave his prize stud's sire. And besides, a visitor had showed up at Solitary, the Paxton homestead. “So just win and get on home, he says,” the messenger reported. “Your pa's expectin' you no later than noon tomorrow, Maggie Hansa or no,” he added with a knowing leer directed specifically to Joseph.

True wasn't sure about Maggie Hansa and her girls, but the admonition to win was more easily given than followed. Talking low, holding the tension well in rein, he began the routine that preceded every race. He'd checked Firetail's shoes early that morning, but did so again. He took out the blanket, light saddle, and tack he'd use for the race, inspected them all, and relocked them in the special carrying chest he'd made for them. He gave the horse a brief, brisk rubdown. By the time he'd finished, Firetail had had his fill of water and was beginning to react to the routine. “Easy, boy,” True crooned. He smoothed the workout blanket across Firetail's back and threw on the heavy saddle made for everyday riding. These preparations always fascinated him. It was as if horse and man were one creature, each feeding off the other's anticipation of what was to come. True tried to hide the tension that slowly built in him but knew he was unsuccessful, for the horse picked it up, magnified and passed it back to his master. As Firetail's tail switched faster, True's fingers drummed on the nearest piece of wood. As True found he was unable to sit still, Firetail punished the floor with his hooves. Firetail's ears perked forward, and his nostrils flared. True's senses were keyed to a fever pitch. Only in the last moments before the race, as if they had planned it that way from the start, would a calm settle over both of them, only to shatter in a burst of energy that was as explosive as the report of the starter's pistol.

The ritual had become almost second nature over the past two and a half months. During that time, True, his brothers Joseph and Andrew, and Firetail, the roan stallion, had traveled from town to town up and down the state. Learning quickly who had the fastest horse and who the next fastest, one of them would challenge the latter to a race. True then let Firetail win, but only by the slimmest of margins, just enough to pique the sporting blood of those who had truly swift animals, and then they would repeat the whole process. So far, as the Paxtons' money belts attested, they had been remarkably successful, but the strain on horse and man was great. True was glad this was the last time they were running, at least for the year.

The first tentative stirrings of wind had started to float in from the Atlantic by the time True was finished and led Firetail out of the stable. Walking the animal around the core of the fairgrounds, he headed for the beach and the course they would run in another hour and a half. The crowds had started to build again. Barkers rubbing heat-drugged, sleepy eyes began desultory pitches that would build in fervor as the temperature dropped. Boys and girls tested their legs and lungs in mad scurrying dashes from booth to booth and tent to tent. Farmers stretched, popped their backs, looked knowingly at the sky, and nodded sagely. The word that True and his animal had appeared spread quickly, and the careful men who made it their business to know about horses stationed themselves where they could see how the stallion moved before they placed their final bets.

True could feel their eyes on him as he swung into the saddle at the starting line. He'd seen a half score of them at other fairs. There had been only one or two at first, but their number had grown quickly during the last two weeks. He didn't like them, but was aware that their bets stimulated the locals' antagonism to Firetail, and so indirectly helped the Paxtons' cause. In any case, their own self-interest necessitated their keeping Firetail's great speed a secret, so no harm was done.

The professional gamblers were another increment of the building tension. True held the reins lightly and let Firetail break into a trot as he guided him over the marked course. As they neared the great oak that marked the mile, True let him run for a few hundred yards, then reined him in for the turn and swung wide in order not to dig holes in the sand. When next he came that way, Firetail would know what he had to do, and the following rider would be forced to swing a little wide if he didn't want to endanger his mount's fetlocks at the precise moment they were the most stressed.

A mass of bunched and quivering muscles, Firetail was becoming harder and harder to hold in. Breaking, wheeling, prancing, he worked his way along the mile back to the start and finish line where True swung down for the walk back to the stables. The level of activity had increased dramatically, for the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees in the last half hour. The smell of candy and fried food filled the air. Babies squawled, mothers shouted, children ran laughing underfoot, men argued and debated. An organ grinder's monkey solicited pennies from children and, with a comical grimace, dutifully bit each one before placing it in the cup he carried. Off to one side, a dozen men drove marked posts into the ground and weighed hundredweight boxes of stones for the horse-pulling contest scheduled to start right after the big race between Firetail and Tory, Mose Nolan's Virginia-bred mare that was the pride of the county.

Tory was a fine-looking mare, True had to admit as he led Firetail into his stall and stripped off his saddle. Lithe and trim, she looked even more so in contrast to the pair of huge Percherons in the open stall next to her. Looks were deceptive though. Experience had taught that more than once. True stripped off the sweat-soggy saddle blanket, opened the traveling case, and took out Firetail's racing togs. “Easy, boy, easy,” he whispered as the stallion crowded him toward the rails.

“How is he?” a voice asked.

True turned and saw his older brother, Joseph. “He'll run.”

Not given to accepting such pronouncements on faith alone, Joseph inspected Firetail himself. Lightly complected, his broad face was friendly-looking and heavily freckled. Thinning dark brown hair hung below his shoulders. Six feet four inches in height and broader by far in the shoulders than True, he was more often than not taken by strangers as a good-natured, shambling country bumpkin who lacked the wits to fend for himself. The truth of the matter, that Joseph was a shrewd judge of both men and horses, and used others' mistaken impressions of him to good advantage, was a secret he took great pains to protect from outsiders. Another horse expert would not have been fooled, of course, if he were given the chance to observe Joseph's eyes as he studied Firetail, or his hands as they quickly searched the stallion for fever or swelling. “Looks like it,” he announced a short moment later, stepping back from the horse. “Only a couple hundred dollars left to go. I'll have it all down on him by the time you start. Luck,” he finished laconically, melting into the crowd.

Twenty minutes remained. True tightened the cinch, checked out reins, bit, and halter. A row of boys watched as he pulled off his heavy work boots and shoved his feet into the light racing boots he'd ordered specially made from Charlotte. A clean shirt, fresh white lawn with bloused sleeves and leather laces at the neck, completed his outfit. The only thing left to do was go out and win the race.

Mose Nolan and his mare still hadn't left the stable. True let one of the boys swing open the stall door for him, another hand him his hat. The hat was a touch of genius. An English racing hat, it drew ridicule from rustic onlookers and helped foster the illusion that True was as much an idiot as his horse was too ungainly to outrun even a Percheron. “There he is!” a voice shouted from the crowd.

“That's him, right enough,” another chimed in gleefully. “Oo-oo! And look at that hat! Bet his daddy ain't seen that.”

“Hey, Paxton! I seen that so-called stud of yours race. Barely nosed ahead of Gierson's nag up Charleston way. He'll not do as well against Nolan's mare. Nolan whipped Gierson's by better'n a length.”