The Stone of Blood (4 page)

The rain was unrelenting as he made his way home!

“Pa!” he shouted to the house as he brought his horse to a stop and dismounted. “Pa! They’re coming!”

Obadiah and his grandson came out of the house, with rifles loaded and lanterns lit and ushered Caleb and his horse across the field and out back into his shed. Once inside Obadiah hung the lantern up and pulled open a door that lay beneath the floorboards. And he helped his injured son climb down into the chamber.

“You stay put now! You hear me?” Obadiah demanded. “No matter what you hear boy, you don’t come out for nothin’!” he stated as he shook his head and looked down upon his son’s wounds. “We’ll be back to doctor ya up once it’s over.”

“I’ve got it Pa!” Caleb said excitedly as he patted his haversack. “I’ve got the stone!”

His father’s eyes welled up with wonder, but there was no time to discuss it now. The riders were coming!

“Stay down! Stay low!” Obadiah said as he closed and concealed the door.

The thunder rumbled across the darkened sky with blinding warm summer rains. But for the lightening of the storm one could all but see.

“Hey there!” a rider called out as two darkened figures crossed the grassy fields. “We’re lookin’ for a’ Grey Back’ that just came ridin’ through here. Have you seen him?”

Jeremiah and his grandfather raised their rifle barrels, pointing them squarely at the one who had spoken with an arrogant tone of familiarity.

“You’d better ‘toe the mark’, Nate!” Obadiah said. “You’ve got no right to be on my land! Be gone with ya, or these’ll be the last words you’ll ever hear!”

“Well look at what we have here!” Nathanael exclaimed sarcastically. “Are you boys seein’ what I’m seein’?” he said in amazement as he looked around at his men. “It looks like this might turn out to be an interestin’ evenin’ after all!” he remarked as his men smirked and began dismounting their horses.

Nathanael sat in his saddle for a moment as his eyes met Obadiah’s gaze, and then he spoke again; this time in a foreign tongue.

“Je pensais que vous étiez mort vieil homme!” Dit-il basculé son chapeau et ajusté son bord avec la pluie battante hors il de chaque côté. “Je pensais que quelqu'un avait sûrement vous découpé en petits morceaux ou monté votre tête sur un mur en maintenant!”

“I thought you were dead old man!” Nathanael said as he tilted his hat and adjusted its brim with the rain pouring off it on either side. “I thought somebody had surely carved you up into little pieces by now or mounted your head on a wall!”

“Les rebelles your'n est-il pas?” At-il demandé tout en plaçant sa main à son menton. “Et l'Ordre’, il existe encore?" Il secoua la tête et sourit, puis. “Et ici, je pensais que je'''était le dernier!”

“The rebel’s your’n aint he?” he asked while placing his hand to his chin. “And ‘the Order’? It still exists?” He shook his head then and smiled. “And here I had thought ‘I’ was the last!”

Nathanael gestured then towards the guns and chuckled as he dismounted from his horse.

“Ce que le garçon porte est le mien Abdias, et je vais l'avoir.”

“What the boy carries is mine Obadiah, and I will have it.”

"Allez-y et nous tirer dessus si vous devez.”

“Go ahead and shoot me if you will.”

“Car vous savez que je ferai ce que je dois! Et rien, pas même vous va m'arrêter!”

“You know that I WILL do what I must! And nothin’, not even you is gonna stop me!”

Lightning flashed! And then …all of them changed.

THE REBEL RAIDERS IN
KENTUCKY
–
NEW
YORK
HERALD

 
From
New York
, dated
June 20
^th
, 1864

Capture
of
Bardstown by Jesse’s Gang.
Louisville
, KY June 19
^th
1864 Jesse’s rebel gang numbering twenty-five to thirty, attacked Bardstown yesterday morning. The garrison of the place, numbering twenty-five men surrendered. The rebels then moved down the railroad, and destroyed the bridge and water station near
Boston
. Thence they went across the
Nashville
Railroad, two miles north of
Elizabethtown
, and when last heard they were going toward Litchfield.

Two

The Halls of the Old Tavern

I remember a time when I was younger; a time when the world had meaning and everythin’ just made sense. It was a time and place when the world actually
did revolve around me
and where the sun really did rise and set
by the hands of my mama’s clock
!

If it was time to get up, then it must have been mornin’ and the sun would rise up and shine in the east. If it was time to go to bed, then it must’ve been nighttime and the sun would set in the west and the world would go dark. You couldn’t have told me otherwise, cause that’s just how I saw it. I lived in it! I was there!

I don’t recall my exact ages of course as to when all of this happened mind you. But at least for me, these pages and for all intents and purposes I’d have to guess that everythin’ must have happened along about the time that I was five years old! That’s when time started for me. Before then, time had no consequence or meaning.

My Grandpa told me when I was five …that life used to be a whole lot simpler.

“
Life was simpler but
people were mean as hell back then, Toby!
” he said. “
By god they were mean!
” He continued as he shook his head and tapped his finger hard against the table to drive home his point. I saw the pictures he showed me. Pictures that was mostly black and white.

According to my Grandpa, Bardstown was once the biggest city in the state! Even bigger than Louisville was at the time; and I guess that since
we
were
the biggest, that’s why we used to get visited by alot by famous people; people like Daniel Boone, Jessie James and even Abraham Lincoln!

Grandpa told me that Abraham Lincoln once came through here with his family when he was a little boy! Now I don’t know for sure if my grandpa meant that Abraham Lincoln was a little boy when he came through here or if he meant that he came through here when my grandpa was a little boy. But I believe that he must have meant the first one, cause I don’t think my grandpa was even born back then!

But alot of famous people have come through here! And even lived here too! One of em’ wrote a song about us! His name was Stephen Foster. He wrote a song about a Plantation House located on the other side of town! It’s called “My Old Kentucky Home”!

We also had a famous inventor livin’ here by the name of John Fitch. He’s the one who invented the first steamboat! And what's more, there’s a tavern in our town square that’s thought to be the oldest stagecoach stop this side of the
Appalachian Mountains
! I reckon that’s the main reason we’ve had so many people come through here. Cause we were the first and last place for people to stop and get somethin’ to eat before they headed out west!

Our buildin’s and roadways are filled with a kind of livin’ history here!

Just the other side of the tavern …where a lone coffee tree grows …the old jailhouse whispers its own tales of the past. Most of its visitors consider it to be haunted! The very first hangin’ in our state occurred here, right there at our local county jail. It seems that a man killed his wife’s lover, and then the night before his execution, he and his wife attempted to commit suicide together. But though his wife died …he survived the suicide attempt …and was hung the next day. And after the hangin’, both he and his wife were buried together in the same coffin! It was their final request. Now that’s got truth and ghost story written all over it!

There are lots of other tales and ghost stories surroundin’ our town. And I’ve found that while they may seem like they’re entirely made up, they’re often based upon real life! For instance, it’s rumored that a real life ‘
witch
’ was either burned at the stake or hanged here in the early eighteen hundred's. Though I can’t seem to find a documented record of it, she is said to haunt the pioneer graveyard that rests behind the Old Jail House! A large black cat is supposed to watch over the crypt where her body lies. The cat has been seen many times and over many, many years! Some believe the cat may be the witch herself, disguised in a feline form!

My Grandpa told me stories about how witches can turn themselves into cats! They can probably turn themselves into all kinds of other animals too!

In a town so chalked full of real life history and stories, you’d think it would’ve been more than enough to have filled a kid’s imaginations, right up and until he was all the way fully growed!

But as times were, when I was a kid, I still pretended an awful lot!

Pretendin’ wasn’t “
the same as being real
” my mama told me. She said that I could “
pretend all I wanted to about stuff like jumping off the roof of our house and flying or about playing cars right out there in the middle of the street!
” But she said that “
in real life that just wasn’t ever gonna happen!
”

So there you go! And so I pretended alot!

In the recesses of my mind, imagination and real life often found themselves intertwined. And I guess dependin’ upon how you looked at it that was okay!

***

June 1864

It was just shy of sundown the day Jessie James rode into town. He made his way through the city streets, tipping his hat to the ladies as he passed them along his way. He didn’t hide his face here, there was no reason to. Bardstown was his second home. He was a local hero.