The Story Keeper (6 page)

Chapter 6

The Story Keeper

CHAPTER THREE

“What’n foddershocks you doin’, boy?” Ira thundered up the hill, lugging a bucket in a heavy-legged run. “Quieten that ruckus! The sound runnin’ these hollers the way it do, any man in ten-mile yander’s gonna figure where we’s holt up. Why you reckon I ain’t lit us no fire agin the cold t’night?”

Rand drew back slightly, looking at the mouth harp he’d purchased in a mining settlement that wasn’t much more than two buildings clinging to the side of the hill. He’d seen instruments such as this being played during his three weeks of travels with Ira and had become fascinated with the native music of the mountain folk.

“You’ll git the both a us put on the wrong side a the dirt.” Ira hung his pail near the mules’ picket line. For the most part, they watered the mules and the saddle horse as they went, but tonight, Ira had pressed through every crossing without so much as a pause.

“Surely they’ve gone on their way by now.” The sharp edge of guilt traced along Rand’s skin again, cutting in. So much was wrong in this. Very wrong.

The girl. Yes, he had committed prayer to the issue as he and Ira fled the area, but surely there was more he could have done, even to the point of going back and . . . he wasn’t certain what exactly, considering Ira’s loaded pistol pointed his way, but he wanted to believe he would have done something, given the opportunity.

He had taken out the mouth harp as a distraction, but it hadn’t worked.
Conscience is a formidable and determined adversary. By nature, it strikes the weakest point in a man’s reasoning.
His father or grandfather had told him that at some time past, during one of their many mission journeys to spread the gospel to the unenlightened corners of the known world. As bishop of the diocese of South Carolina, the oversight of such things had been among his grandfather’s jurisdictions. Having traveled often with both men, Rand had learned much before death had taken his grandfather and then his father. Indeed, those recent losses were partially responsible for Rand’s determination to experience the wilderness while he could.

Ira returned to the center of their camp, the place where the fire pit would have been, had they started one. “You listen at me, boy.” He leaned close, releasing the scents of liquor and tobacco and rotting teeth. “They’s gonna be either a killin’ or a blood feud or both on this mountain before all’s been said. Folks make up they minds you got a part in it, you gonna find that pearly hide a yourn peeled and strung
on a tree somewheres t’show ever’body what be done to a feller that gits on the wrong side a the wrong man.”

A dark tingle started under Rand’s ribs and traveled his body end to end, but despite the presence of fear, his hackles rose. “A man who doesn’t stand for what is right dies his own death well before it happens.” This, again, from his father, a man of great, God-given courage, both on the battlefield and off.

Ira tossed back his head, laughing into the night, the sound falling louder than any note from the mouth harp. “A fella what minds his bidness, keeps his bidness. And his hide.” He reached for the poke he’d carried off the wagon before going to the spring for water. “Ye’ll thank me I learnt ya that, some yan day, young’un. Just like ya can thank me for gettin’ us this ’ere loaf a Pegleg Molly’s bread ’fore things gone bad up’n there.” He tore off a chunk and threw it to Rand. “That high moralsome thinkin’ ain’t ruint yer appetite, reckon?”

Rand took the bread but only sat with it, looking into the lantern’s flame and watching the wick burn.

“Let it lay, boy. Ya look like someone done shot yer mule. You git past it, mark my word. Mountain’s breakin’ ya in the way she do ever’ man. Hard life up’n here.
Man’s
life, not a boy’s. Here, jus’ livin’ and dyin’, that’s all they is.” He bit off a hunk of bread, then circled the remainder of the loaf in the air, spitting chunks as he offered up another thought. “Tell me some more a them tales ’bout lions and g’raffes and convertin’ them mangy savages in Afr’ca. That oughta shine yer mood some.”

Rand didn’t oblige. For two weeks now, he’d been sharing those stories with Ira and people they met along their travels, in hopes of
turning eyes to the Almighty. So far, it seemed, he’d done little more than entertain. The people here were as hard and set in their ways as the mountains themselves.

Yet where there is life, there is hope, and he had not yet given up hope that, over the course of the time he expected to spend with Ira, the man could yet be educated in the ways of the faith.

Such an accomplishment would validate this trip as the thing Rand had reported it to be, in order to win both his family’s agreement and financial backing. In the technical sense, this trip was a mission. A good work. Even though he’d never been convinced that he was particularly suited for clergy life, he was expected to accept a pastorate once he was sufficiently trained and of appropriate age.

Such was the family business, and though he had often rejected the notion of it, a homesickness settled over him as he stared into the lantern flame, lost himself in it for a time. His mind was back in Charleston, at La Belle, the family home on South Battery, with its beautiful polished floors and welcoming hearths. For a few moments, he sat curled in a chair before a crackling flame, a cup of Old Hast’s special cocoa in his hand. He was enjoying a good book rather than facing a long, cold night in the mountains with no flame to burn away the gathering chill and ward off predators that wandered the forest.

He didn’t, at first, see Ira reach for the rifle and rise to his haunches. “Who be out there nigh’way? You friend ’r foe?”

The words caught Rand’s attention, startled away his daydream. He shifted to rise, realizing he’d left his pistol in the saddle pack
 
—a foolish oversight, given Ira’s warnings.

“Whoever ya is, better git talkin’.”

Ira’s threat was met by the click of another gun.

“Jus’ leave it be where it lay.” The voice pressed from the darkness, and after it, the steps of a man, his boots compacting the carpet of leaves.

Ira stiffened, let the rifle rest, index finger still circling the trigger guard.

“Shuck yer hand off’n it, friend.”

Rand caught a familiar tone in the voice, and the pulse in his neck bolted. The man from Brown Drigger’s store
 
—the one with the pockmarked face? He hoped it wasn’t so, but the thing Ira had feared seemed to be coming to pass.

The intruder materialized at the edge of the lantern light, his ready pistol solidifying Rand’s fears.

Ira rested his elbows on his knees, turning his palms up and squinting over his shoulder, attempting to see behind himself. “No need’n that. Yer welcome to come set-along, if’n you got a mind.” The words were cordial, even relaxed, but the muleteer’s face told another story. His gaze shifted rapidly from the gun to the wagon. “Ain’t offerin’ no troublesomeness. Just holt up fer the night here, then be headin’ on down to Whistler Holler by morn. Keep’ta my own bidness.”

The scar-faced man entered camp, circled, and stood left of the lantern, so as to keep a bead on both of them.

Rand’s breath shuddered inward. Many times his father had told stories of having experienced situations like this during the War of Secession, but Rand had never been involved in anything of the nature.

Now his mind raced. He imagined the consequences of his choices, pictured his dear, sweet mother standing over his grave, wailing alongside his young sisters and his grandmother, the family irreparably broken by an ill-fated decision upon which he’d stubbornly insisted. Or worse yet, his family never knowing his fate at all
 
—his resting place an unfound, unmarked corner of these mountains, his bones scattered by the wind and the weather and whatever creatures would come after these men departed the area.

“When a feller lights off not sayin’ his far’-thee-wells, can’t help to wonderin’ where he might be headed, and who he’s headin’ t’see.” The intruder squinted at Ira over the barrel of the pistol.

What would a bullet feel like?
Rand wondered. What would be the sensation as it tore through flesh and bone?

“Ain’t goin’ to see no-some-ever person. Nosir. Be quittin’ in the country, is all. Ain’t one to git twixt things. Want no part of it.”

The pockmarked man tasted his bottom lip, thoughtfully savoring the salt of his own skin. Sweat beaded there despite the cold. “I’d reckon such a feller might be goin’ to warn some’un. Let the gal’s daddy know I be watchin’ out fer ’im. Maybe git some a her people to come on me whenevers I ain’t lookin’. Rise a blood feud.”

“Said I don’ want no hand in it.” Ira’s voice rose, insistent or desperate or both. “Don’ be knowin’ her people. Wouldn’t have nary’thing to do with it if’n I did. Girl’s a Melungeon. I keep clear a them six-fingered devils, what’s left of ’em round these parts. Give me the all-overs just thinkin’ of ’em.”

“That so, is it?” The man swung his pistol in Rand’s direction,
wiggled the barrel. “And what a this here young sap? Don’ seem he got him much to say of it.”

“He don’ know nothin’. Ain’t none but a kid come up from Charleston-town. A Jasper wantin’ to git a look at the mountain. He ain’t got none t’say.” Ira delivered a glare Rand’s way, cautioning him not to enter the discussion. But Rand could feel the words building inside him, pressing upward, gaining strength, eclipsing even the wild hammer strikes of his heart and the pounding of blood in his ears.

The pockmarked man caught the exchange of silent warning. “Might be you done tolt ’im to mind his lippin’. Might be he’s afraid he’d give ya away. Could be he got some plans a his own.”

“He ain’t got nary a one.” Again Ira raised his voice.

The man swung the pistol in the trader’s direction. “He ain’t got no tongue, neither, do he?”

“I’ve got a tongue.” Rand’s temper thundered now, so much so that he expected his voice to shake with it, but the sound was steady.

The man appraised him silently, head cocking back. “That be good. ’Cause we gon’ta settle here the night long, have us’ns some jaw together. Me and the boys, we need us a mite a convincin’ you’uns ain’t got plans agin us. That be fine at you, young Jasper?”

Rand clenched his fist at his side, willed himself not to react in the impulsive way he might’ve had any man offered such a threat to him in a place governed by law and order. “Don’t suppose I have much choice in the matter.”

“Don’t s’pose you do.”

Men emerged and then horses. Two men. Four horses. Another
sound followed as the horses stilled. Chain rattling, a man’s growl, a woman’s gasp, her outcry of pain.

Rand stiffened, drew up, began rising to his feet. The men’s attentions were focused on the woods. Their backs were to him. He outsized all but Jep, but three with guns and another still out of sight? What were his chances?

His mind churned. Grab the lantern? Throw it hard enough to splinter it, spread fuel and flame over the men, hope for enough panic and distraction? Or rise silently to his feet, steal toward the wagon, toward the pistol in his saddle pack? Or bolt toward it and hope he could reach cover before someone turned his way and took deadly aim?

He imagined himself bleeding out on the leaf litter, his life wasted, the girl still no better off.

“Be still ’ere, pup.” The pockmarked man seemed to sense his thoughts. “Revi? What you doin’ out’n them trees? You be usin’ her, I’ll skin yer body’n wrap yer neck in it. Woman’s mine. Troublesome as she been, I’m gonna carve my brand on ’er, right off, t’night. Don’ mean I ain’t got mind t’ share, but she gonna know whose she is now.”

Rand could only picture his darling sister Lucinda, trapped in such a gruesome predicament. The horror turned his stomach, pushed bile into his throat. He looked to Ira. The old man shook his head and dropped his gaze to the lantern, elbows still resting on his knees. He made no move toward his weapon.

“I got ’er,” Revi yelled from the woods. “She done tried scattin’ off again. Good that Brown Drigger hanged the chain on ’er.” Revi materialized from the shadows, a ghost in the dim light at first, then a
lanky, half-grown youth as he entered the lantern’s circle. He’d tossed the girl over his shoulder. Her hair hung in blue-black waves, catching both the lantern light and the illumination of a full moon that had finally risen high enough to find lea of their camp.

The girl fell hard as Revi tossed her to the ground. She landed in a heap, the heavy chain clinking link by link as it settled around the irons clamped to her wrists and ankles. Rand recognized the abomination as what it was. Slave irons still hung in carriage houses and cellars in and around Charleston, the relics of a world that no longer existed.

“Ain’t a-havin’ me no more t’do with ’er, Jep.” Revi stepped away, dusting his hands in the air, ridding himself of any remaining contact. “Heared ’er talk hoodoo out ’ere in the dark. Speakin’ spells and devilment lang’edge. Ain’t havin’ me no more doin’s with her.”

“Yeah, you is.” Jep’s tobacco-stained smile lifted his scarred face, reflecting his anticipation as well as his confidence in his mastery of the group. “We all a us is. Her kin come agin us, ain’t gonna be none of you’uns can say you done nothin’ at the gal.”

Revi’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The captive began to drag herself from the ground and Revi stepped away, lifting his hands higher.

Jep’s laugh drifted upward into the night. “Ain’tcha a spookish thang, cousin? Think she gonna rise somethin’ from the dust that’ll git’cha? She can’t do nothin’ in irons. They can’t call up spirits when they’s bound in chains. And I got this’ere key, right’n my boot. She can’t git’cha. But she’d like to now, wouldn’ she? Don’ look in them eyes, boy. She’ll draw the life out’n ya.”

Jep laughed again as the girl threw back her head, tossing the length of thick hair over her shoulder. A bruise had swollen one eye shut, and a mat of dried blood lay crusted and peeling near a split lip. But she was beautiful even so, Rand realized. Almost otherworldly, her uninjured eye a bright, silvery blue against dark lashes, her hair as black as the night shadows deep in the hollows.