The Road to Reckoning (21 page)

When a man is on the road to power he buys everyone a drink. Once elected he tries to close the saloons.

I had never had oysters before, what with them being a poor food, but baked they were not disagreeable. Beer I had drunk many a time but not as strong, and I understood the word
heady
after I was only halfway through my pewter.

Henry Stands’s eyes twinkled at my foolish grin over my mug. He rubbed his nose and cleared his throat as he often did when he was about to say something I disliked.

‘Now, son, the way I see it, we can put you to a judge here and see what he has to say. Tell it as it is. Nothing to hide.’

I put my head close to the table and whispered, ‘But did we not … kill men?’

‘Self-defense. We are not vigilantes or desperadoes.’ He glared at me ‘Do our acts concern you?’

I sat back. I had slept on it, breakfasted over it, and now chewed on my dinner, and although my hands at the time had trembled I felt no God bearing down on me.

‘It happened very naturally,’ I said. ‘You gave them fair play.’

‘It was an even-break. They died in their boots,’ he said.

You may misunderstand this phrase, think it noble. It is of fiction. Good men die in their bed with their boots off. There were times when ‘boots on’ has been enough to acquit a man of murder.

‘Can you not take me back, Mister Stands? Just to Paterson? I would not like to lose out on meeting with Mister Colt.’

He looked around the room, measured the rest of our companions, and ended on Mrs Hollinshead behind the counter.

‘I hope she is not a widow,’ he said, and then scratched his head before putting his hat on. ‘I will take you home. There is the money from your man Colt to appraise. But an incident has occurred. That should be given up. There is your troubles and its resolution and I have some good reputation and standing for honesty.’

‘Will the law not take hold of me?’

‘I do not suppose. First we should remove my rigging from your horse and then see about it.’

This was a giveaway!

‘You are planning to leave me again!’

‘Finish your beer. I am to no such thing,’ he said. ‘No, I am beginning to think that I will be at your wedding and funeral and wipe your behind for both.’ He stood. ‘I will ask that petulant ring-seeker at the bar where to find a judge.’

He went to the bar, to the middle of it, and set his hands to look like he was holding it up and that he owned the place, as always he stood. He was talking to a man in a cap who had made room for him, a diminutive fellow with a bugle on a gold cord at his hip. They went back and forth for a while as I drank my beer. Henry Stands gave him his ‘much obliged’ nod when the fellow handed over a letter to him. He came back to me.

‘That man. Dean. He is the post-carrier here. He says that Stodgell Stokes is the post office, general store, and judge here. He has a letter for him so we should introduce ourselves.’ He walked, and our bright dinner of oysters and beer was solemnly over. I slouched out after him. The small man with the bugle saluted his cap at me. I saw that he had silver hair under that cap and something crawled through me. I did not smile back.

We changed the rigging. The tavern had a livery attached but we had money only for hay. As the horses ate Henry spent a time smartening up his clothes with horse brushes. He was planning to ditch me to a judge, I was sure, but he ignored my sullen face. I knew that we had to make some word to the law but I would rather it had been in a letter or from a distance. I still had my father’s work to do.

The tavern was at the end of the main street called Elizabeth, named after one of Stroud’s daughters, and with directions from the hostler we rode up to the post office and general store, which was also the judge’s trade.

There were some fine manse houses on that street and these were old Stroud homes. That was for certain a family that had done well, but being among palaces is no assurance of good men.

The jolly sound of the bell over the door brought the man in apron and pince-nez beaming toward us from around his counter.

He wiped his hands on a cloth in his apron band, which he tied at his front. He had those cuff protectors the same as Chet Baker and I liked him right away.

Henry Stands was leaning on the wrists of the Patersons and looking around as patriarchal as ever. He did not remove his hat, so I did for the both of us.

This man, Stodgell Stokes, was about as old as my father and just as clean-shaven.

‘Can I assist you, sirs?’ He did not mind Henry’s guns and winked at me bashfully.

‘Are you the judge?’ Henry Stands dispensed with the man’s other hats.

‘I am Judge Stokes, sir.’

‘Then I have a letter for your post office, Judge.’ Henry put over the letter. ‘And I have circumstances. Regarding the boy here.’ He threw a shoulder at me. ‘Matters of the law.’

Stodgell Stokes kept his office in his residence. He locked his store and we followed him up his narrow stairs.

The paint on Stroud’s courthouse was still wet. It had not been the county seat for long. If Judge Stokes was also the post office and the general store I was sure that would not be the case much longer and he would have to make a full-time profession of the law. We were bringing him something weighty and others soon enough would do the same beyond the remit of horse-thieves and stolen toile. Once a town builds a courthouse all manner of evil descends. It is worse than building a brothel.

He bid us to sit before him. Henry Stands flapped out his coat over the arms of his chair and still did not remove his hat.

‘Now what is it I can do for you, gentlemen?’ Stodgell Stokes was still the storekeeper.

Henry cocked his thumb to me. ‘This here is Thomas Walker. He is a boy from New York city. Six nights ago his father was killed on the road. Near Milton.’

‘Outside Lewis,’ I said. ‘In the forest.’

Henry continued for me. My word still a boy’s.

‘My name is Henry Stands. Orange county. I am a trader. Indiana ranger befores. I am on my way to Cherry Hill to reconnoiter escapees. I am taking the boy home.’

Judge Stokes appeared before us, the nail-seller now put away to a drawer. ‘I am sorry to hear this, son. We shall make this a matter for the marshals. I assure you I will make it my strictest priority.’ He reached for stylus and paper hidden among cotton reels and a box of pins.

I folded my arms. ‘There is no need for marshals, Your Honor. The matter has been settled.’

‘Settled?’ He blinked at us in turn. ‘I’m afraid I do not understand?’

Henry Stands stared through him.

‘There were four men that killed the boy’s father. They sought to kill the boy. I … protected. They robbed him, and us both when they come found us again. I had to settle for them. In self-defense and in defense of the boy.’

The judge sat back, still looking between us.

‘Well, of course you did.’ He pointed his writing hand to Henry’s belt. ‘Your pistols there, Mister Stands? With your scabbards as they are, the hilts out. Is that not what one might call a “cavalry draw” … sir?’

Henry Stands had placed two of the Patersons in his old belt. Full-load. There was a pause and I could hear carriages strutting past from the street below.

‘It is good for shooting from a horse,’ he said.

‘Do you shoot from a horse often, Mister Stands?’

Henry offered nothing. Stodgell Stokes waved away the remark. ‘No matter. I was only curious. Now these men that killed the poor boy’s father. You know them?’

I cut in. Spoke amid men.

‘Thomas Heywood!’ I declared. ‘It was him that did it all!’

Henry Stands put his hand across my front to hush me.

‘These were road-agents,’ he said. ‘They may have been late of Murrell’s men traveling east or some such gang. I will not seek reward for doing what is right.’

‘You have killed these men?’

Henry Stands held the judge’s eye.

You did not ask actual badmen such.

The counterfeit, the imitation, the ‘boot-black long-hair’ would boast, would tell all. Not in this room.

A
hard face from the actual was enough.

Judge Stokes looked away to slice open the letter we had brought to distract himself from that cold look. I think Henry Stands was vying the man and measuring him by the store beneath our feet and I was getting to that opinion also. A man who fancied the law and sold tinware would not know what our road had been like. But then, this man was still a judge despite his apron.

‘What is it that you want of the law here, gentlemen?’ he said, his spectacles fixed to the page. Them frames were a good six dollars’ worth.

Henry Stands shifted.

‘About ten miles west there is a tavern. Jackson way. They are there with three horses. The keep there will be reporting. I do the same. I am taking the boy back to his family. Self-defense is my statement. I took a horse because they killed my own and I had need to escort the boy.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘That is probably all.’

I leaned to Henry to remind with a whisper about the ghoul Strother Gore but he whisted me back.

A clock chimed off behind us and I jerked but Henry Stands did not stir. His head hung a little as he studied his hands. Stodgell Stokes was reading down his page; he had lost interest in our statement and his eyes flicked to me from over the letter.

‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I would say that you have done the right thing, Mister Stands, by bringing this to the law. You are to be commended.’

He put back his chair but stumbled as he went up and had to grab for the desk.

‘If you will excuse me for but a moment this letter you have brought has determined my immediate attention.’ He patted the air to keep us to our seats and took the letter with him.

‘I will be a short time, gentlemen.’ He shuffled out.

When I had heard him creak down the stairs and that friendly front bell chime, I stood up and leaned on his desk.

‘Why should we not tell about that Mister Gore?’ I asked.

Henry did not look up from his hands. ‘It would do no good. And probably worse.’

‘But he had bodies there! There could be good people looking for their relatives?’

‘As I said. Probably worse.’

This was not a satisfactory answer but I did not press, for that never went well with him.

I looked down at the packet that had carried Stodgell Stokes’s letter. It was marked from Berwick. With no thought or malevolence it was in my fingers. I turned it over. The effeminate hand on the back froze my fingers pale.

It was from mister William Markham! Him with boys and asylums on his mind!

Twice a day that stage came into Stroud and mister Markham for all his paunch had a fast pen over his slow feet, I knew that much.

A letter as fast as us!

Judge Stokes had looked at me as he read it and had caught the table as he stood. I was too worn to be taken in by coincidence. I held it up.

‘Mister Stands!’ I waved the paper. ‘His letter is from Mister Markham! That man at Mrs Carteret’s!’

I could feel stone walls closing in on the orphan.

Henry stood and took the packet. He looked it over, back and front as if there would be some hidden cipher.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he said, crushing it and putting it to the floor. ‘Should have burst that fat man. God knows what he has written against.’

He took my hand and I planted my hat.

Stodgell Stokes would have slowed us some if he had locked his door. He must have been too trembling to do so.

Outside was a bright spring afternoon, but the street, which had been bustling, was now still. Henry kept a hand to my chest and edged me behind him.

The tall hats and parasols had gone. Instead there were five wide hat-brims and shotguns standing on the planks and mud across the street. Stodgell Stokes both apart and with them. He demonstrated himself too far to be a threat but his voice was veritable enough for an unarmed man.

‘You are Henry Stands?’ he called, and Henry said nothing and to Stodgell that was enough affirmation for the shotguns.

‘Stands, I have a letter from Mister William Markham! Respected member of our church and elected member of our county. He informs that you have kidnapped this boy for reward or to sell into servitude. He states that you are a member of the actual gang that deprived this boy’s father of his life and are a wanted roadman that drew a weapon on him and that there are a number of crimes on warrant that are fitted to your description.’ He lifted the letter aloft. ‘What say you on these charges?’

Those five shotguns were brought up like morning plows as if Henry were the horse and drawing them.

‘What you have is incorrect,’ Henry said. ‘Ask the boy.’

But they did not hear or would not ask. Stodgell Stokes went on.

‘The letter states that you have bewildered, seduced, and confused the boy. Do you deny that he is the property of the St John’s asylum? Against Mister Markham’s word? Kidnapping is a hanging, sir!’

I could feel the air crisp. These lies, these paper lies, which are the worst and shape wars, were making the round world into a square.

I would shape it back.

I stepped in front of Henry Stands, my arms spread.

‘No! This man is taking me home! I have agreed to all!’

Some flat-brimmed hat yelled over to me from behind his breech.

‘Stand aside, boy! You are safe now!’

Another cocked his piece. ‘The Hoosier has the boy hostage!’

That snapped them all into life.

Henry Stands stood solid. Prey and predator, but I would remain his shield.

My father had made me the same in front of him and I told you I have made peace with that. I should have volunteered then. I volunteered now because I knew death. It has nothing to do with fear. Fear only
precipitates. And perhaps I might have saved my father still if I had not just sat on the ground that night and watched.

I stood in front now, like I should have done before, against five guns at my body. To save all three of us. My father watching.

‘He is my friend!’ I yelled.

‘Away, boy!’ This came from a black coat and hat. His face hidden behind his gun, high collar, and pulled-down brim. I had seen that shadow. It was now a common shape to me. I think that is how the Devil walks the earth.