The Story Keeper (3 page)

In under a minute, I was out the door with the forbidden fruit innocuously tucked in a folder. Unfortunately, Roger was just around the corner at the coffee credenza, preparing his morning mug of brew.

“At it early again?” He smiled, toasting me with his cup and seeming amiable enough. “You’re making the rest of us look bad, you know.”

“You’re here too.” I tried to sound casual, but I felt like I had a package bomb squeezed to my chest. I just wanted to get rid of it before it blew.

Yet in the back of my mind, there was that bit of aquamarine paper, the swirl of ink, the niggle of curiosity . . .

“I have an author and an agent coming in for an early meeting in the boardroom,” Roger offered.

Was it my imagination, or was he casting an eye toward the folder in my double-armed embrace? Maybe I looked guilty. Or maybe he knew what was inside. Maybe he’d put it on my desk.

“Well, have a good meeting, then.” I turned on my heel and headed back to my office. My trip to Slush Mountain would have to wait.

The folder seemed to grow heavier and hotter as I walked down the hall. A part of me was saying,
Just tuck it in the desk drawer where no one will see it, then return it after they all leave this
evening.
But another part of me, the part that had led me around more than one blind corner in my life, was saying,
Well, if you’re stuck with the thing for a while, why not take a peek?

That whisper of mischief, the one my father and the men of Lane’s Hill Church of the Brethren Saints had so vehemently tried to beat out of me as a child, always brought about one of two things: incredible adventure or unmitigated disaster.

I was sliding my fingers over the forbidden treasure before I rounded the corner into my office and shut the door. The glue on the bottom flap clung for a moment, seeming determined to keep whatever secrets lay hidden inside, then the tension released, and the contents, perhaps fifty sheets in total, came loose in my hand, the blue-green piece on top. A pen-and-ink drawing inched into view
 
—a sketch of what looked like a thick cord holding six oval-shaped beads and a rectangular pendant of some sort, all ornately carved.

The artwork was nicely done.

Below the drawing, three words had been hand-inscribed in graceful, curving script that seemed fit for an ancient scroll in some long-hidden chest.

The Story Keeper.

Chapter 3

The Story Keeper

CHAPTER ONE

If they caught Sarra here listenin’, she’d get a beatin’. Each day that passed by, Brown Horne Drigger grew a little bolder, a little more sure that Sarra’s daddy wasn’t comin’ back for her. Could be he was dead in the river or tumbled off a rockslide on his mule or got by a black bear or shot for the money pouch he toted for Brown Drigger. Mighta been any of them things, or some other.

The thought was a quilt of light and dark, worrisome in one way, freein’ in another. If her daddy was no more for this world, she could run, and there was scarce a thing she wanted more than to bolt off down the holler and fly far as her legs would carry her. But there was sin in bringin’ about the killin’ of the man who sired you, the man your mama must’ve loved sometime long past. And though she never knew much of him
 
—he’d come and went from Aginisi’s small farm as he’d
chose to over the years
 
—Sarra knew sure as dayrise that he was the one who’d made her.

There was no gettin’ by that truth, much as she wished it sometimes. As she’d rounded from knobby-legged girl into a womanish body these last few seasons,
his
favors were the ones she saw in the cloudy, oval-shaped mirror over Aginisi’s dresser. His high cheekbones and wide, thick mouth. His straight brows that cast a hard, heavy shadow. His long, lean frame. But Mama’s stark blue eyes and rope-crimp black hair and hickory-nut skin. At sixteen, there was no mistakin’ Sarra’s kin, and for that reason Brown Drigger had thought twicet about takin’ her to secure the debt agin his money pouch until her daddy’s returning.

Brown Drigger was afraid to end up keepin’ her . . . but then again, he
wanted
her. She’d found that out quick. He’d come round at night, touchin’ while she lay curled into herself like winter possum, playin’ sleep. He’d do no more while he waited for her daddy to show hisself here, but time was runnin’ out for her either way.

She’d heard it said to Brown Drigger
 
—there was money in a girl that hadn’t been made a woman yet.

Sarra wanted nothin’ of Brown Drigger, nor her daddy, nor any man. Aginisi had warned her of it, and Mama’d taught the lesson by doin’, time and time again. Her daddy’s coming brung sweetness and bobbles and sour mash whiskey to the little dugout behind Aginisi and Gran-dey’s log house. And then come hurt. Mama, simpleminded as she was, never seemed to have a knowin’ of it ahead, but Aginisi did, and Gran-dey did when he was still livin’. The three of
them warred inside Sarra, even from the grave. There was Aginisi’s tellin’ that her daddy was no good, and Gran-dey’s warnin’ there wasn’t no trustin’ the man, and Mama’s believin’ there was some good that hadn’t been found out yet. There was the bond of blood ties, the last she held on this earth.

If the man was still livin’, after all.

If not, she knew the mountains well enough. She’d got friendly with Brown Drigger’s dogs
 
—the ones he’d promised would track her down and tear flesh from bone if she tried runnin’ off.

Even as the thought henpecked, Sarra crept past the low-slung cabin wall, shinnied under the edge in the wet leaf litter where stone piers held the split joists up off the mountainside. Smothering a hand over her mouth, she tipped an ear up to listen. It was one of the newcomers she was wonderin’ about just now. The younger man who’d come up the trail to Brown Drigger’s store, ridin’ a rawboned gray behind the muleteer’s wagon.

Muleteers, she’d seen a time or two here, come to trade goods and haul off pelts, silver coin, and sour mash whiskey. But the young man was a new thing, and strange to the mountains. His clothes made him out for a Jasper plain enough, but it showed most in how he watched ever’thing while the muleteer and Brown Drigger chewed words as traders do. The young man studied the world in the way of a winter colt finally let out to spring pastures and catchin’ sight of the big, wide world, first time ever.

When he snatched off his fine felt hat to follow inside, his hair fell straw-colored and soft, close-cropped behind his neck and curly. His face was shaved bare, too smooth and young for the tall, lankish
way of him. But he’d moved toward Brown Drigger’s cabin with a sure stride. Just before steppin’ up the porch, he seemed to look her way, toward the smokehouse, where she’d been cleanin’ the boil pot to ready for a sausage makin’. This morn, Brown Drigger’s men had kilt three hogs took in trade for moonshine. Their fat carcasses hung behind the cabin, split and gutted, the blood draining off into the ground, the last of it slow and thick like honey.

Brown Drigger and the newcomers had been inside hours now as the carcasses cooled and Sarra worked to wash and prepare the intestines for casing up the sausage. She’d done the same many a time with Aginisi, her small hands workin’ beside her grandmother’s to turn the guts wrong-out and rinse water through before carefully scrapin’ off the tiny fingers that moved waste along the animal’s insides when it was livin’. She knew how to wash gut, was good at it even, and she knew she’d best not stop when Brown Drigger hollered for his woman to come in the cabin.

Pegleg Molly left behind a threat before she headed off. “You git ’em done while I’s seein’ to the mens.” She backhanded Sarra on the way by, catching an ear so that Sarra’s head rang before she blinked the pain off.

She didn’t answer, and Molly left to do for the men, who’d likely worked up an appetite while gamblin’ and dealin’ in thin mash and goods.

It was the change in the sounds of the cabin that’d finally pulled Sarra from the crock of petal-white membranes. The careless laughter and loud talk had took to quietin’ in a worrisome way, and so she
crawled under the cabin to hear. Could be they’d brought news of her daddy. Bad news.

Settling her fingertips on the tree litter and mud, she peeked up through a gap in the floor near the stone hearth where she’d found broken hours of sleep for nearly a month now, folded in the wool blanket Aginisi’d wove with her own gentle hands
 
—one of the few things Sarra’d carried from the little log house before leavin’ on a mule behind her daddy.

The men in Brown Drigger’s store sat gathered round the table. Six, maybe seven in all were there now. Either Brown Drigger’s men had got back while she worked in the smokehouse or others’d rode in lookin’ for a drink, a place to sleep, or trade for goods.

“My horse!” The words rattled out in Brown Drigger’s liquored slur. “You ain’t leavin’ here with my horse. Double or nothin’.”

Silence. Sarra stopped her breath along with it. Brown Drigger was as prideful of the palomino stud as of his own left hand. He’d sooner lose one as the other.

“We’ve gambled enough.” The voice had a dangerous sober to it, and Sarra knew the voice too
 
—the man with the pockmarked face, the one Brown Drigger had made uneasy trades with three weeks before, not long past the time Sarra’d been left here. “Take my advice, old man. Quit before I figure there’s anythin’ else here I got a hanker for. Believe I’ll be ridin’ on now.”

Overhead, chairs shifted and bodies moved. Pegleg Molly’s wooden foot dragged the cabin floor, her heavy steps moving toward the door. “Git gone with you’uns now.”

“Not with my horse, they ain’t!” Brown Drigger come desperate then. “I give a gold bag fer the beast, and come spring he’ll earn it back in breedin’. He ain’t leavin’ this place, less’n it’s with a bullet in ’im.” A pistol cocked, and Sarra reached for the tiny carved-bone box that hung at her neck
 
—the other thing she’d brought from Aginisi’s when her daddy led her off. Long as she could remember, she knew it’d be hers when Aginisi shed this world for heaven.

“Ain’t no reasonin’ with a fool, now is there?” The man with the scars again. “Yer woman best put down that gun and be friendly-like, friend. You trade me outta that horse if’n you want ’im. Ain’t seen much else here I got me a need of, but ya want the horse back, I’ll trade ’im for the girl. The one with them blue eyes. She yourn, ain’t she?”

Air caught in Sarra’s throat. Turned solid.

“Ain’t yet. Not for four more days yan, leastwise. Her pap left ’er for promise agin a money pouch. He don’t clamber back with my goods, I’ll keep the girl, let Molly make a little business outta her. They’s plenty come by here who’d pay to get under the blanket with somethin’ looks like her.”

“Guessin’ you got yerself some decidin’ to do. The horse stayin’ here when we shuck off . . . or the girl? It’s one or t’other.”

A fist slammed the table. “I give my word a the man. Ain’t no livin’ soul can say Brown Horne Drigger ain’t good as his word. ’Sides, the girl’s daddy, he’s copperhead mean. Man’d as soon gut ya like them hogs out back as look at ya. Ain’t bound to cross ’im.”

A chair slid over the well-worn floor, and dust mist sifted through
the planks, catching the long rays of afternoon light, beautiful against the ugly. “I be takin’ the horse and gone then, reckon. Make it back this way again, mayhap I’ll stop and see what I missed out’a with the girl.” Footfalls crossed the floor, the sound heavy and unhurried, the boards groaning neath the giant of a man.

“Wait.” Brown Drigger’s protest stopped the walking. “You leave the horse. Hist yerself by here four days yander
 
—the bargain be up then. Girl’s yourn if her pappy ain’t showed hisself yet.”

A shifting, a turning, a curtain of dust against light, and then the striking of a bargain. “Reckon I’ll take ’er now and make sure the man don’t show his face nowheres n’more.”

CHAPTER TWO

Rand Champlain whistled to himself as he wandered upward from the creek toward Brown Horne Drigger’s cabin. He riffled through his field notebook as he walked, checking his sketches against the leaves in the underbrush alongside the path. It was one of his purposes during this year of wanderings to catalog the flora and fauna of the Blue Ridge Mountains and points beyond, as well as the customs, languages, and cultural variations of the peoples he found. He was by no means a professional
 
—as an artist, a naturalist, or a student of the anthropological disciplines
 
—but the pursuit of scientific knowledge had been one of his justifications for leaving behind Charleston, and the expectations of family, for this singular year in the wild.

He intended to return home, having preserved much of it by way of his sketches and his Hüttig & Sohn folding camera. With the
dawning of a new century just over a decade away, and railroad tracks spreading in all directions like climbing vine, he suspected that the days of untraveled lands were numbered. He intended to see them, discover all he could of the unspoiled places, before they were gone. These months traversing the Appalachian wilderness were the beginning of a journey westward from which he eventually planned to return by waterway and steam train.

His toe struck a stone in the path, and he stumbled before catching himself near a growth of hemlock. This pest he had learned of when the muleteer had assured him that by merely touching the hemlock in order to preserve a leaf between the pages of his pressing form, Rand had condemned himself to certain and agonizing death. It was all for the sake of a joke on the muleteer’s part, but the ruse had continued for hours while Rand waited for the first signs of death by hemlock to occur. Ira Nelson had proven to be a disagreeable, if competent, mountain guide.

A soft, slight jingling caught Rand’s ear as he squatted on the path, observing what appeared to be a small patch of low-growing alpine pennycress just beginning to show autumn bloom. It shouldn’t have been there. Pennycress hadn’t been known to grow east of the Rockies, but he’d seen it in the mountains of Europe while on holiday, and this looked for all the world like it.

He was so taken by it, as he reached for a leaf to see if tearing it would produce the familiar, noxious odor, thus confirming its identity, that the jingling failed to capture his focus until it was directly overhead on the rough, rutted wagon trail that had brought him to the Drigger
store. He recognized the sound quite suddenly as what it was: the muleteer’s wagon moving away . . . without him. The mules were tracking at a good pace, causing the brass buckles to ring against the tugs.

What in heaven’s name?

His heart paused a beat before he snatched a leaf from the pennycress, then abandoned the path and dashed uphill toward the wagon road, leaping stands of huckleberry and tumbles of rock. Tree trunks flashed by, his feet sliding in the damp blanket of forest moss. Fortunately, he was both fast and agile, a champion in the young men’s footrace at preparatory academy not so many months before.

Perhaps this business of the wagon leaving was just another of the muleteer’s pranks, but an uneasy feeling had niggled Rand for a time now. With the arrival of the scar-faced man and his two companions, the business inside Brown Horne Drigger’s outpost had turned distasteful enough that Rand had excused himself to walk to the creek. He was more than happy to leave the stench of the rough cabin store behind. He’d had no idea of how long Ira’s dealings here would carry on, but he hadn’t minded it either. There were things to see, and Rand had dried beef in his field pack, should he gain an appetite before they made evening camp nearby. Wandering along the creek, he’d enjoyed both the solitude and the discovery.

Now he feared that his original impressions as to the potential of homemade liquor, illegal activities, and immoral men were correct. The muleteer was clearly in a hurry, the team’s hooves sliding and the steel-rimmed wheels bouncing over the stones and watersheds in the rush downhill.

As Rand cleared the brush and made the wagon road, the lead mule, Curly, spooked and balked, testing the traces and struggling to stop the inertia of the wagon.

“Bleedin’ fool!” Ira managed the reins and the wagon brake, finally bringing the load to rest just after Rand leapt to the side of the path to avoid being run down. “You’ll send us both edge-over. How many times I gotta tell you not ta be runnin’ out, spookin’ my mules?”

“I heard the wagon moving,” Rand gasped, somewhat winded.