The following morning, perhaps as a sign that Tylor had passed some test, Mayette ordered him to the cordelle—the long rope the engages used to physically pull the boat upstream against the current. He took a position just ahead of Latoulipe. Pulling the cordelle was brutal work, and he revelled in it. Through physical exertion, he could avoid remembering. Pushing his body kept his thoughts on the matters at hand; not once did he find his mind drifting to Hallie—to that other life, which now seemed so long vanished in a distant, almost mythic, past.
More than once, Tylor caught Lisa’s eyes on him as he struggled through the marshes, crawled through fallen timber, and sweated in the sun. Speculation filled the Spaniard’s keen eyes. Tylor’s nerves began tingling deep down inside. Could he suspect?
No! Tylor violently shook the sweat from his head, causing Latoulipe, behind him, to bark sourly. No one could know out here. Manuel Lisa couldn’t have put it together.
Tylor threw himself furiously against the cordelle; all the while, Lisa’s eyes kept searing a hole into his back.
The ticks were out, as were the chiggers, mosquitos, and rattlesnakes. They made life a constant misery for the cursing, singing, sweating engages who towed, poled, and muscled Polly and the little boat against the Missouri’s endless flow. They all stank now with the common odor of dirt, mud, sweat, and mildewed clothing, as they pushed, pulled, and dragged their way into the wilderness.
Bathing was frequent with the river close at hand, but the hours were long—sunup to dark—as Lisa had promised. Were Tylor not drowning in his need for penance, he would have found amusement in that. Most Americans would indeed hate this sort of existence. They would want some sort of compensation, but it was fine for him. When he pulled at the cordelle he was suffering for his wrongs, beating his way into a new life.
As evening fell one night, Tylor was washing his clothes on the riverbank when McKeever came to scrub his dirty hands.
“And what do ye think, laddie? Are ye ready to quit this wretched work?” The green eyes were evaluating, seeking . . . What?
“Not at all, Fenway.” Tylor tensed. What gut reaction stirred him when McKeever was around?
McKeever suddenly loomed above him. Tylor felt a sharp sting in the middle of his back—like a knife point in his quivering flesh. “What are you—”
“There! Reckon ye didn’t need him along fer the ride.” McKeever held a bloating tick between thumb and forefinger. The green eyes, however, were steady, measuring.
“I guess . . . Thanks,” Tylor grunted, feeling even more uncomfortable.
“Any time, laddie.” McKeever’s voice didn’t reflect the reservation in his eyes. The man’s thick fingers popped the tick—heedless of the blood it sprayed—before he walked off.
Tylor’s dreams that night were troubled. He sank into the nightmare of his past . . .
Blackness wrapped him in stygian folds. He lay there, listening for the guard to pass the door of his cell. Something scurried across his legs. Tylor whimpered, kicking out at the rustling in the pitch dark. The rats were back! His guts turned, the sick feeling loosening his bowels.
Tiny feet pattered invisibly, and Tylor hunched himself into a ball. A rat moved through the filthy straw behind him. Tylor jumped. How long could he stay awake? Starved as they were, they came when he drifted off to sleep. That’s when they scampered onto his arms and legs and sank their sharp and fetid teeth into his flesh.
Time dragged in the solid dark.
The sharp pain brought him awake—slashing out with his hands—feeling a little furry body scrambling away from his desperate fingers. His breath kept catching in his throat. How long before he slept this time? How long before the sharp teeth reached out of the darkness for his filthy and reeking flesh?
There, above him, in the eternal night, was the iron grate. He could call out to the guard. Confess.
It would be over then. No more rats in inky blackness. No more bowls of half-raw oats and rancid pork. No more sleeping on the filthy straw. He would see the sun again. Even if it was only as he climbed the creaking steps to the gallows.
They’d place the rope around his neck, drape the black hood.
Death would release him from the stinging bites in the night.
Jackson had sworn to hang him.
Tylor cried out at the sting of another rat bite and jumped, striking at the weight of the creature on his leg. There, he caught it. Bite it. Bite to death as the rats had taught him!
He struggled frantically with the violent, monsterous rat.
“Sacre!” Latoulipe’s half-panicked voice brought him wide awake.
Foolishly, he looked at the engage’s hand clenched in his. Cold sweat trickled its way down his cheeks.
Latoulipe’s voice hammered at him: “You were dreaming, Tylor. I reached over to wake you, and you grabbed me. I thought my soul would leap from my body!”
“Jesus!” Tylor whispered, releasing the man’s hand. “Thought you were a rat.”
He shivered and unconsciously fingered the scars on his arms. Places where the bites had festered and drained. The infected bites had left him so fevered, they’d finally taken him out of the hole. Finally sent him—chained and manacled—to Washington and Joshua Gregg.
“A rat, you say?” Latoulipe shrugged. “It depends on who you talk to . . . but I have been called worse. You be all right now?”
“Y-Yes. All right now. All . . .”
“C’est bon. The rest of us would like to get some sleep.”
Tylor swallowed weakly and lay back in the blankets staring at stars. In the back of his memory, just behind the veil of darkness, he could still feel the rats. They were waiting . . .
As the first spatters of rain fell, the silty clay of the bank became slick. Then the heavens opened in long stringers of rain, pelting the men and turning the banks into a mess of slippery, sliding footing for the cursing cordellers. One man would brace himself on a fallen tree, while another sought an old burrow into which he could set his foot. Others relied on the bushes, seeking to find purchase in the bending branches. Then the braced men would pull the boat hand-over-hand, while those at the end of the line hustled to the front to seek another brace and continue the process. Not once did the struggling engages miss a single raucous verse as they sang about a man whose daughter was pregnant with the Devil’s child.
That night, after stuffing himself with bread and meat, Tylor watched the flames flicker on the faces of the men. Lisa was walking around the fire and met his eyes. The trader strode over and seated himself on the log next to Tylor.
“I am pleased, Tylor. You are magnificent on the cordelle. You have pulled one before?” Lisa asked casually.
“No, Mr. Lisa. This is the first time I’ve had the honor.” Tylor grinned, feeling his stomach turn sour.
“It is backbreaking work, Mr. Tylor. Are you ready for four more months of the same?” Lisa’s voice sounded smooth, easy, like oil on roiled waters.
“That I am, Mr. Lisa. I’m more than . . . Well, I told you in Saint Louis that I was ready and able.”
“How do you come to be here?” Lisa waved him down when he shrugged. “Oh, come, Tylor. A man of your education does not sign on with a crew of engages for the fun of pulling a boat upriver. Were you a gentleman seeking thrills you would have come and paid for passage like Brackenridge did last year. You are . . . something else.”
“What could I be, but the man you see sitting before you? Just that, and nothing more.”
“As I suspected, you will tell me nothing. I do, however, want to know one thing.” The voice became a deadly, sibilant threat. “Do you plan on harming my expedition? Other than that, I do not care who you are or what you have left behind.”
Tylor pulled the pipestem from his mouth and chuckled, “No, Mr. Lisa. Your boats are safe with me. I have no designs on your expedition or any of the tribes you trade with. I just . . .”
Tylor hesitated. “I’ll give you the pure, unvarnished truth: I have no plans for anyone or anything. Harm your expedition? Just the opposite. My goal is to get as far from men and civilization as possible. Never going back, in fact.”
“Do you not think you will miss the finer things of life, Tylor? A man of your . . . let us say, obvious background has become used to fine food, good wine, excellent conversation, comfortable surroundings, and other amenities. Life in the wilderness is crude in the best circumstances.”
Tylor studied the trader through a sidelong glance. “My past is that obvious?”
“It is hard to hide silver beneath a thin gilding of lead, Tylor.” Lisa slapped a mosquito, as if making a point. “The shine comes through, and the weight of the object gives away the hidden core. Your speech and your manners are hard to hide. It has pointed more than one suspicious finger in your direction.”
“Morrison in Saint Louis.” Tylor pulled idly at his beard.
“You have aroused considerable curiosity on my part, too.” Lisa’s lips curled. “I would not be who I am if you didn’t. There are many who would stoop to anything to see me fail on the river.”
“Did you find anything of interest in the books?”
Lisa shrugged, nonplussed, the black eyes darting to Tylor’s to gauge the reaction. “No. Other than the fact that I was astonished at the scope of your literary abilities. Buying books? Most unsual for an engage.”
Lisa paused, and his voice lowered. “I was very careful; how did you know?”
“Place one end of a hair under the front cover and the other under the back. If the book has been opened the hair comes loose. I learned it from a man who was an intelligencer for Washington during the Revolution. Works with a stack of documents, too.”
Tylor studied the Spaniard. “I spotted Latoulipe first thing. He’s a very good man, but lousy when it comes to following a fellow.”
“You were a spy once!” Lisa’s eyes brightened.
“Such activities do not necessarily indicate a spy,” Tylor pointed out. “Those kind of tricks are valuable in business, too. I was once a . . . a very good businessman, Mr. Lisa. Perhaps I was just not good enough. Perhaps . . .”
Tylor leaned back and pulled at his pipe—the tobacco as dead as his mood. “Well, never mind.”
“Ambition has its price,” Lisa said slowly, “in success or failure. It is gambling with one’s happiness, fortune, and even life. But, without it, what is life but to remain a pawn for those who would risk it all? How much did you wager, John Tylor?”
Tylor shifted his pipestem in his teeth, refusing to take the bait.
Lisa stood and stretched, waving his thoughts away. “Sometimes a man’s silence carries an eloquence more powerful than words.”
“See you in the morning,” Tylor told the trader.
“Sleep well, Tylor.”
Was there irony in the trader’s words? Tylor watched Lisa stroll easily through the quiet camp. He pulled his blanket out and took it to the fire to smoke thoroughly. Then he doused his head in the smoke and went back to lay down, hoping the stench of smoke would keep the mosquitos at bay.