The following evening, I entered the public room of the Franklin House in Alton to find that my supper companion had already arrived. He was still dressed for court in his shiny black frockcoat and bow tie, and he was deeply engaged in a thick law book propped open on the table in front of him. At his side rested a tall black stovepipe hat.
“Lincoln!” I called out.
My friend put down his book and smiled. “You condescend to join me after all, Speed. I was beginning to think you hadn’t made the journey.”
We gripped each other’s hands, and I clambered onto the bench opposite him. It had been several weeks since we’d last been together. I had been attending to the business of my general store in Springfield and then traveling to St. Louis to rendezvous with the War Eagle. Meanwhile, Lincoln had been riding the rude roads of southwestern Illinois.
“So how’s life been on the circuit?” I asked.
Lincoln gave a lopsided grin. It lit up his whole face: high-peaked forehead, wide-set gray eyes, lantern jaws. “In a word—damp,” he said. “The fall showers couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
The circuit was a kind of traveling legal circus. Several times a year, during breaks in the court calendar in Springfield, a group of lawyers would pack their saddlebags and, with a judge in tow, ride an irregular, winding path—a circuit—through the outlying towns and villages that lacked a regular court. At each stop, the lawyers would set up temporary offices, usually under a stout old tree on the village green, and persons of the community having legal issues would come to consult. The judge would erect a rump courtroom, and civil trials would be conducted, wills probated, and criminals tried and punished. Then, after three or four days in any one place, the whole group would pack up and move off together to the next stop.
“Have the rains come during your travel days?” I asked.
“It’s not so much the rain falling from the skies that’s bothered us as the swollen streams. We’ve had a devil of a time trying to ford them in our carriage. And we’ve spent more than a few nights sleeping on damp straw beds. There are few accommodations as nice as this one to be found on the circuit.”
I followed Lincoln’s gaze around the brightly lit public room. The Franklin House was a three-story brick edifice that had been erected the prior year, on a slope opposite the steamboat landing, to take advantage of Alton’s prime location on the Mississippi between the mouths of the Missouri and Illinois Rivers. It had already gained a reputation as one of the finest hotels along the great river. “Rooms: Twenty-Five Cents A Night,” proclaimed a sign hanging above the entrance.
“Any news from Springfield?” asked Lincoln.
“I’ve been enjoying having our bed to myself,” I replied. Lincoln and I shared one of the two double beds in the narrow room atop my general store, A. Y. Ellis & Co. “Though Hurst and Herndon stage a competition each night for who can snore in a more ridiculous fashion.”
Lincoln nodded with recognition. Neither Hurst nor Herndon was a drunkard; that was about the only kind thing to be said of them as room-mates.
“Mind if we join you?” came a voice from above.
I looked up and saw Stephen Logan and David Prickett, two other circuit-riding lawyers from Springfield. Each of them had shed his frockcoat and was dressed in his white shirt with rolled up sleeves. Over Prickett’s shoulder I saw the florid face and bulging eyes of Judge Jesse B. Thomas Jr. Lincoln waved the three men onto the benches beside us. Kemp, the red-faced proprietor of the Franklin House, threw another log into the blazing hearth. As he passed by our table, Lincoln grabbed him by the lapels and ordered drinks for the group.
“Have you told Speed about Carlinville yet?” Logan asked Lincoln.
“Or rather, not-Carlinville,” added Prickett.
The three newcomers laughed heartily. I looked to Lincoln for an explanation.
“I was driving the carriage late one evening,” he began, his gray eyes twinkling, “while these three vagrants and Edwards were asleep in the back. Well, we got to a crossroads, and I wasn’t sure which way was Carlinville.”
“You couldn’t wake them and ask for directions?” I asked.
“Not if he didn’t want to be held in contempt of court the next morning,” growled Judge Thomas. He lit a cigar and jammed it into the corner of his mouth.
“Anyway,” continued Lincoln, “I had fair confidence Carlinville was to the west, so I turned the horses right, and sure enough, we got to town an hour later, and I parked us under a big old maple tree and curled up on the driver’s bench to get a few hours’ sleep myself. Next thing I know, it’s light out and the judge here is shaking me awake.”
“Only—”
Lincoln smiled mournfully. “It turned out we were parked on the village green at Carrolton. Not Carlinville.”
“By the time we got to Carlinville, we nearly faced a riot,” said Prickett. “All the men waiting there for justice were about to take matters into their own hands.”
The innkeeper Kemp returned with our drinks. He handed glasses of amber-colored ale to all of us except Lincoln, to whom he gave a bottle of soda water. As Kemp moved down to the other end of the long common table, he conversed with several men who had been aboard the War Eagle the prior night. I saw that one of them was the portrait artist, who was balancing a sketch pad on his lap as he sipped Kemp’s brew.
“Not that Carrolton was a complete loss,” said Logan.
“That’s true,” Lincoln added. “A fellow passing on the Carrolton green recognized the judge, and he shouted at us to stay put and dashed off. Thirty seconds later, he returned dragging along another fellow by the scruff of his neck. Turns out the first fellow was a tavern keeper, and the second one was a customer who’d passed him a bad note a few weeks back. Judge Thomas made the tavern keeper’s wife cook us all breakfast, and he considered their case on the spot.”
“All of us except Lincoln,” said Thomas, spitting out his cigar with glee. “I ruled there was no breakfast for him, since he’d gotten us lost.” Lincoln joined his fellow circuit travelers in hearty laughter.
“Why were you driving to begin with?” I asked Lincoln. “Logan must know the roads better. All of these fellows, actually. Surely they’ve been at the circuit many more times than you.”
“First rule of the circuit,” Logan responded before Lincoln could. “Junior man drives at night.”
“Edwards and I are tied on age,” Lincoln added with a rueful nod. “Both of us of twenty-eight years.” Ninian Edwards, the son and namesake of Illinois’s founding governor, was the other Springfield lawyer who’d set off for the circuit with Lincoln three weeks prior. “But he was attorney general years ago, while I myself have only been admitted to the bar earlier this year. So the fellows determined early on that I had junior-man status.” He gave a mock bow. “An honor for which I am most grateful.”
Logan smirked.
“Where is Edwards tonight, anyway?” I asked as Kemp arrived with another round of drinks.
The men looked at one another with knowing grins.
“You know the story of the resourceful bosun from the Royal Navy who’s got a different woman waiting for him in each port?” asked Prickett.
I nodded.
“That sailor’s got nothing on our dear Ninian. He’s got two women to visit in most villages on the circuit, near as we can tell.”
The circuit riders laughed riotously and clinked their glasses together to toast Edwards’s prowess.
“How about your travels, Speed?” asked Lincoln. “Did you sort out the matter of your father’s steamship and the delinquent captain?” My face must have fallen, because he hastened to add, “Or perhaps this isn’t the occasion to fill me in.”
“I didn’t solve the problem,” I said, “but I think I understand its dimensions. More work to be done—but then, a son’s obligations to his father are never finished, are they?”
Kemp arrived at that moment with a platter heaping with fish and fowl. I spent the meal brooding about my conversation with Captain Pound while the circuit riders took turns telling tall tales about their adventures on the circuit. I was pretty sure Pound wasn’t telling me the truth—at least not the whole truth—but I thought it would be difficult to uncover his lie. If only I had a way to speak with someone who could tell me what was really going on with the War Eagle and its finances, I thought, but Pound had seemed awfully confident in the loyalty of his crew.
As we pushed back our benches from the table an hour later, having finished every last bite of Mrs. Kemp’s huckleberry pie, Logan turned to Lincoln and asked, “Fancy a nighttime walk to see the Piasa Bird?”
“The what?”
“It’s a painting high up on the cliffs just outside of town. Some kind of storm bird or thunderbird. The Red Men fire arrows at it as they float down the river, to keep it from flying away with their young. Ignorant devils. I think the moon should be sufficient tonight to let us see it.”
“This isn’t another trick played on the new fellow, is it?” asked Lincoln.
“You have my word,” Logan said, hand over his heart in mock seriousness. “It’s quite a sight. Coming along, Speed? You’ve been quiet all evening. You look like you could use a diversion.”
The booming town of Alton sprawled beside the busy steamboat wharf at the base of a series of steep ravines that rose sharply to perpendicular cliffs. Ten years ago, it had consisted of a ferry landing and a single general store; ten years from now, many local promoters believed, it would surpass its across-the-river neighbor St. Louis as the leading city of the Mississippi River valley.
Lincoln, Logan, and I headed away from the steamboat landing along an uneven path that hugged the riverbank. A cold wind blew in our faces from across the river, and I held my frockcoat closed against the chill.
“Is tomorrow your last day in Alton?” I asked.
Lincoln shook his head. “We’ve got three more before we ride off to Edwardsville. It was supposed to be only three days total in Alton, but when we arrived, there was quite a docket waiting for us, so the judge extended it by another two and took the days out of Edwardsville’s allotment.”
“Better to be busy than idle.”
“I suppose. First up on tomorrow’s docket is a collections case involving a local miller. Me against Logan here. Again.” Lincoln chuckled. “The players get a little stale on the circuit, I’m learning. Not much variety.”
“I’ve bested you six times of nine thus far at Alton,” said Logan pridefully.
“Not that anyone’s tallying the score,” Lincoln returned with a grin.
On the cliff top ahead of us, tall white walls suddenly loomed, a ghostly apparition in the light of the three-quarter moon. “What’s that?” I asked.
“The new Illinois State Prison,” said Lincoln. “The first one in the state—a modern prison to match a modern penal code, at least it’s supposed to be.”
“The bird will be visible just around this bend,” said Logan. “It’s on the cliff face immediately below the prison walls.” We were right on the edge of the stately river now, the walking path nearly in the rushes that trimmed the waters. We turned sharply right around a boulder. “There.” Logan pointed up.
A phantasmagorical monster rendered in green, red, and black shone horribly in the moonlight some forty feet up the sheer rock face. Bloodshot eyes stared out from a man’s face, but the rest of the figure was animalistic. It had the horns of a deer, the beard of a lion, a body covered with scales, and the wings of a griffin. A stream of blood flowed from a wound on its breast. A long tail wound all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs before coming to an end in a fish’s fin.
“Who painted it?” I asked, gaping in wonder.
“No one knows for sure,” said Logan. “Father Marquette first described it here one hundred fifty years ago. The Indians believe the creature actually lived, in long-ago times, and carried off one of their ancestors in its claws every day to feast upon in its lair. Until a band of six young, brave tribesmen decided to attack it. Five of them were killed by the beast, but the sixth shot it dead with an arrow dipped in poison. It’s said the survivor painted the image in memory of his comrades who had perished. Evidently Piasa means ‘the bird that devours men’ in some ancient tongue.”
“I can scarcely imagine how anyone could have painted it,” said Lincoln, retreating to the very edge of the river to get a better look. “Even today, to say nothing of hundreds of years ago.”
“Climbed the rocks hand over hand with paintbrushes clenched in their teeth?” suggested Logan.
A clutch of logs bobbed at the riverbank, snagged by a tiny spit of land that fingered out into the river. Lincoln stepped onto one of the logs, flapped his gangly arms for balance, and then edged out into the swirling current, his eyes still riveted to the painting.
“Careful,” I called.
“It’s a sheer face the whole way up,” said Lincoln, taking another two steps out. “How they managed it I can’t—oof!”
I peered through the darkness. He had disappeared.
“Lincoln?” I shouted. “Have you gone into the river?”
“A little damp, nothing more,” came his muffled voice. “And perhaps a bruised kneecap. The logs shifted in the current.” I saw the shadowy figure steadying himself and starting to rise slowly from the snag. “Only—what’s this?”
“What is it?”
“Something’s caught among the logs. Come have a look.”
“I think you should come back to dry land before you drown,” said Logan, sucking in air through his teeth. “No piece of river trash is worth the trouble.”
“I don’t think it’s ordinary debris,” said Lincoln. “Come help me, Speed.”
Doubtfully, I edged down the riverbank toward the log snag. Lincoln was pointing at a large, oblong object, shrouded in white, which was bobbing next to the snag. A discarded household item, I imagined.
“I can’t see how we’d land it without going into the current ourselves,” I said. “Even if we wanted to. Which I can’t—”
“You stay there on the bank,” Lincoln directed. “I’ll guide it toward you.”
Kneeling on the floating snag, he picked out a log eight or ten feet long. It looked much too heavy to be lifted, but Lincoln managed to hoist one end onto his shoulder, and he maneuvered the other end behind the bobbing object. Using the log as a kind of paddle, Lincoln guided the object toward where I was crouched on the shoreline.
I reached down and, on my second attempt, grabbed ahold of the object’s leading edge. The material felt like canvas, of the sort used to bundle cotton.
“I think we’ve performed a daring rescue of a lost cotton bale,” I said.
“Let’s take a look,” said Lincoln as he scrambled across the snag back to shore and came to kneel beside me.
Together, we attempted to drag the article up the riverbank and onto dry land. It took unexpected effort, and we managed it only on our third heave. Whatever was inside the shroud, it was too heavy to be cotton.
Lincoln looked over at me gravely. “I think it’s a body,” he said.
The canvas was held in place by several winds of twine secured by a couple of knots. Lincoln worked quickly to untie the knots. Finally, he loosed the last piece of string and pulled the covering away. Each of us gasped.
Cast in sharp relief by the moonlight were the doughy face and still eyes of John W. Jones of Ames Manor, Nashville.