The seeds for the ropemaking operation arrived in March in heavy sacks with a rank smell that repelled even the mice in the barn. “They say the Indians used to grind up this stuff for flour,” George Webb said, rolling some seeds between his fingers. “Course, they say that about everything. You’d think the Indians were roaming through the woods eating the bark off trees, like beavers.”
When Thursday came, the day to ride into town to fetch Emile Mercadier from his shoe shop, Marie made a show of begging to go along with Turner. “I have a new jacket for him,” she said, showing a solid-looking garment of heavy brown cloth. “He will be so happy.”
The morning sun was warm on their backs as they forded the river in silence. They worked the wagon up to the ridgetop, still in silence. “It is going to be one of those lucky false spring days, when everyone thinks that spring has really come,” Turner said when they finally reached the top.
“Why lucky?” said Marie.
“Gives you hope. You know that spring is on the way.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I don’t like the false part.”
They did not speak again for a while, although the air between them was heavy with intention. And when Turner passed the Indian camp and turned the wagon down the little-used wagon track, Marie did not ask what he was doing. He took them a hundred yards into the forest and then stopped beside a plum grove. He got down and tied the horse to a tree, and when he turned around, Marie had gotten into the back of the wagon and spread out a blanket. She was lying on the blanket with her dress pulled up to her neck. Turner leaned over the side of the wagon and kissed her.
“Take everything off,” he said. “I want to see your whole body.”
She looked dubious but did as he asked. Turner climbed into the wagon and kneeled above her. Her nude body was pale and slender, small breasts with dimpled nipples, a fuzz of brown hair on her arms and legs.
“I’m cold,” she said, so he lowered himself down and covered her with his body. “That’s better,” she said. He unbuttoned his trousers.
Marie did not appear to enjoy herself, at least not the way Charlotte did. She made a noise at one moment, and Turner pulled back, afraid of hurting her; but her expression was serene.
“Why are you doing this?” he said afterward.
“Because I love you. Charlotte was right. You are a silly fellow who doesn’t often understand the mind of a woman.”
He propped up on one elbow and pulled his coat over her body. “She said that, did she?”
“Not quite. She tries to tell me about men. She thinks I am a child who needs her advice. And when she talks about men, I think she is usually talking about you.”
“So I’m the model? Or the cautionary example?”
“Maybe both.” She returned his frank gaze. Under the coat, Turner could feel her hand between his legs, caressing him. “And why are you doing this?”
Turner didn’t know what to say. “Because you love me. Because you let me.”
Marie looked into his face and then up at the sky. “That wasn’t what I was hoping for. But it will do.”
“What were you hoping for?”
She waved her hand between their faces. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. A hymn to my beauty, maybe.”
Turner wanted to say more to her, to comfort her with his affection. But he had no desire to be dishonest with her. He knew his motives were impure, so why be coy about it? She was young, she was fresh, she was good-looking, and they shared grand ideas together.
They did not linger. Emile would be expecting the wagon before long. But Turner was glad to have time with Marie when he did not have to look over his shoulder or listen for someone approaching. He unhitched the horse and pulled it around, and they headed toward town. Marie smoothed out her dress and sat quietly beside him in the wagon; she held his hand while they rode through the woods but released it whenever they neared a farmhouse. They talked of the next issue of The Eagle, of the hemp field and rope factory, of the other citizens of Daybreak.
Mercadier was surprised to see his daughter, but she was ready for him. “I finished your new coat!” she cried, hopping down from the wagon and flourishing it. Turner hurried to pick up their mail and goods. He did not meet Mercadier’s eye during the ride back and thought he felt Mercadier’s gaze on him a few times, but eventually decided it was his own guilty conscience at work.
Lysander Smith started his ostensible botanical expeditions as soon as the weather got warm, disappearing for longer and longer periods of time. He had been gone for two weeks in May when Turner was awakened from a sound sleep by Charlotte shaking his shoulder.
“There’s a man at the door,” she said. She had lit a lantern and held it up for him to find his pants. Turner wiped his face and tried to shake off the heaviness of sleep.
“Who is it?”
“I didn’t open the door. He didn’t say.”
They tiptoed out of the bedroom, leaving Newton asleep in the trundle. Standing in the yard was Sam Hildebrand. He held his horse’s reins in one hand and grasped his belt buckle with the other.
“Sorry to trouble you,” he said. His narrow face was deeply shadowed in the light of the lantern. “You know a man named Smith? Says he lives here.”
“Yes,” Turner said. “He’s been boarding here since fall.”
“That’s what he said.” Hildebrand swung into his saddle. “You need to get yourself a mount and come with me. This Smith fella is in trouble and he asked for you. I’ll wait for you down past Harp’s house.” He pointed south with his head.
“But can’t—” Turner looked around at the night. “Lives are at stake,” Hildebrand said and rode off.
Turner threw on some boots and a shirt and went to the barn to saddle a horse. In the black of the barn’s interior, he lit a lantern. The horses, sleeping in their stalls, stirred at his movements. He picked a big gray gelding and saddled it up.
Hildebrand was waiting at the narrow place where the road ran between bluffs and the river. As soon as Turner came into view, he reined his horse south again.
“What’s this all about?” Turner called to him.
Hildebrand turned in his saddle as Turner rode closer. “Let’s gab about this when we get farther on,” he said. “Right now I want to make time.”
He took off at a fast trot, breaking into a canter when the splashes of moonlight let them see the road better. Turner’s gray was a strong horse, but Hildebrand’s was clearly more accustomed to long, fast rides, and Turner struggled to keep up.
They followed the road for five or six miles, then Hildebrand suddenly veered off to the east into the woods.
After the first crash through the underbrush along the road, Turner found himself in open forest that was easier to ride through than he had imagined. The shade of the trees made it harder to see, though, so they had to pick their way more slowly. Turner tried to stay far enough behind Hildebrand to avoid getting whipped by limbs, but close enough to follow his path.
They reached the river. Hildebrand rode directly in, looking neither to right nor left. Turner would never have attempted a river crossing by night, but followed Hildebrand’s track precisely, and sure enough, there was a trail of packed dirt that led up the bank on the other side. They climbed up a steep slope a couple of hundred feet or more before the path leveled off, following a ridge.
He lost track of how long they rode like this, working through the mottled darkness of the forest. It felt past midnight, but all Turner knew was that the night seemed to be getting darker.
They kept following the ridgeline. It seemed to Turner that they were heading generally east, but he could not tell for sure. The stars were only intermittently visible through the canopy of leaves, and he had to concentrate on keeping up.
Eventually the unseen path Hildebrand was following opened up into a trail, not quite wide enough for a wagon, but a clear trail nevertheless. Hildebrand slowed his horse to a walk and then came to a stop and looked around. He sniffed the air.
“Here’s where we go down,” he said.
They dropped off the ridge into a long hollow that ended, to Turner’s surprise, on another road. Before Hildebrand rode out onto the road, he stopped again and listened.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Your friend Smith may already be dead, and if he is, you need to deal with that like a man and not act a fool. One killing is plenty.” He urged his horse out into the road. “These men up here are going to want to ask you about him, and you’d be wise not to get caught in a lie.” He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a revolver. He checked its chambers and then put it in his belt.
They rode past the shoulder of the ridge they had just come down. To Turner’s surprise, Hildebrand began to sing. As they rounded the ridge, Turner could see a bonfire in the next hollow, a hundred feet from the road. They rode into the hollow, Hildebrand still singing, and as they got closer a man stepped out of the shadows with a shotgun lowered at their chests. He wore a flour sack over his head with two rough holes cut out for his eyes.
“It’s me,” Hildebrand said. “That’s him.” The man looked at Turner without speaking but stepped out of their path.
They rode into the firelight and dismounted. Near the fire were two other men with flour sacks over their heads. One was enormously tall and fat and wore a shirt with the sleeves torn off, revealing huge fleshy arms. The other was a much smaller man who still had on his coat, despite the heat of the bonfire, and because of the coat Turner did not notice for a moment that he was missing his left arm. Behind the fire, Turner could see three horses tethered to the trees.
The one-armed man spoke to Hildebrand. “This the man?” Hildebrand nodded. The man walked up to Turner and stood uncomfortably close, his face about the level of Turner’s breastbone.
“Welcome to the party,” he said. “Your friend’s been here for a while.” He turned and walked back toward the light.
A few feet away from the fire, Lysander Smith was lying on his side on the ground, his hands tied behind his back. He struggled to lift his head as the men walked toward him. One of his eyes was bruised shut, and dried blood covered his face. Turner recognized his yellow vest, but the rest of his body was the universal color of dirt. His hair was thick with caked blood. One ear appeared to be sitting wrong on his head.
“You know this man?” said the small man. His empty coat sleeve was folded up and pinned.
“Yes,” Turner said. “His name is Smith.” His throat was suddenly dry and his voice didn’t come out for a moment.
“That’s what he said too.” The man walked over to Smith and poked him with his toe. “I guess your name is Smith after all. Seemed a little too convenient for me.”
Turner made a move toward Smith, but everyone reacted toward him, and he stopped. “May I?” he said to the small man, showing his handkerchief.
“Suit yourself,” the man said. Turner knelt beside Smith and wiped his face. Smith’s jaw was slack, and saliva trailed out of the corner of his mouth.
“You fellers have been busy,” Hildebrand said.
“We rowed this boy up Salt River for a while,” the one-armed man said. “Ain’t that right, pal?”
“Yeah,” the big man said. His voice was high-pitched and tinny. “We rowed him.”
Turner put his hand under Smith’s head and used some of Smith’s saliva to clean out around his eyes. The look in Smith’s one open eye was terrified. Turner wanted to stand up, get righteous, exercise some rhetoric, but he remembered Hildebrand’s warning and held himself in check. He straightened up.
“Gentlemen,” he said quietly. “What seems to be the problem?”
“What seems to be the problem,” the man said, “is that your friend here is a nigger-stealer and a sodomite. Set him up, how about, pal.”
The fire popped and crackled high into the black sky, and Turner’s face felt hot. The big man propped Smith against a small maple tree.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Turner croaked.
The one-armed man glanced off into the dark at the edge of the fire. Turner followed his glance. Another man lay on the ground, bound and bloody. A black man.
“Wouldn’t have caught him if it hadn’t been for some of our local niggers,” the man said. “Came to their owner, said there was a runaway hiding out in the woods, came to them for food, wanted to get away from a crazy white man who was wanting to hold his dick. Ain’t that right, Cuffy?” He walked over and poked the runaway with his boot. The man groaned and stirred a little. He kicked him harder. “I said ain’t that right?”
“Yes’r,” the man said.
The small man walked back to Turner. “So are you a nigger-stealer too?” The eye-holes of the flour sack were dark and empty. Turner looked into them anyway. “I am not,” he said.
“The shit you aren’t,” said the man.
Turner could see no point in repeating his denial. He stood and faced the man silently.
The third man, still holding his shotgun, edged out of the firelight. “I can’t breathe under this thing,” he said. “I’m going to step over here and take it off for a minute. Catch my breath.”
“Fuck you are,” the one-armed man said, turning toward him. “Anything happens here, happens with all of us. Ain’t nobody going to say, ‘Oh I didn’t see nothing. I wasn’t there. I was off feeding the horses.’ You stay right here.” He turned back and spoke to Turner. “So tell me about this man Smith.”
Turner tried to hold his voice steady. “He’s been a paying guest at our settlement since September. He’s a botanist.”
“What the fuck’s a botanist?”
“A man of science, he studies plants. He’s looking at plants.”
The big man spoke up. “That’s what he said. That’s what he said too.”
“Oh, shut your ass and let me think,” said the little man. “Of course they’d have a story cooked up.”
All this time, Sam Hildebrand had been squatting at the edge of the group, twirling a leaf between his thumb and forefinger. The one-armed man turned to him.
“What do you think, Sam? Think this man’s telling the truth?”
Hildebrand continued to twirl the leaf. “This ain’t my concern,” he said. “You asked me to fetch this feller, and I did it. Everything else is your ball of yarn.”
This just seemed to make the one-armed man angrier. He stomped back to Smith. “Plant man, eh?” He shook the young tree that Smith was propped up against. “What kind of tree is this, Mister Plant Man?”
Smith arched his head back stiffly a couple of inches. “I … I can’t—” He faltered. “I can’t see. I can’t tell.” The effort of speaking opened up a crack in his lip, which began to bleed again.
“He’s got little drawings in his book,” the big man said.
“Yeah, and he had a nigger down on the creek bank too.” The small man went over to one of the horses and brought back a looped rope. “It’s a maple tree, you piece of shit. How do you fancy the idea of getting hung from a maple tree? Will that suit you?” He put the loop over Smith’s head and tightened it, then tossed the other end of the rope over the nearest branch.
Turner started for the small man. The big one got between them, grabbing Turner by the shoulders and flinging him backward like a child. Turner hit the ground, gathered himself, paused in a crouch, tried to think of his next move. He had a knife in his pocket. But..
His thoughts were interrupted by the click of a revolver’s hammer locking into place. All eyes went to Sam Hildebrand, who had stood up and was facing them, his revolver pointed at the ground.
“Calm down, boys,” Hildebrand said. “You want to scrap, go someplace where you can charge admission for it.”
The silence that followed was finally broken by the small man. “Sam’s right, boys. We’re here on business.” He squared off toward Turner again. “Paying guest, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Who paid you?”
“He did.”
“Oh yeah?” The man thought for a moment. “Where’s he from?”
“Philadelphia.”
“And you know anything about this nigger-stealing?”
Turner did not move his gaze from the hollow eye-holes. “No. I do not.”
They faced each other in silence. Finally the one-armed man turned to Hildebrand. “What do you think, Sam? Think this bastard’s telling the truth?”
“I told you I ain’t in this business. I fetched him, you got him.”
“Well, ain’t that convenient, Mister, Mister—” The man’s voice sputtered and came to a halt as his attention once again settled on Hildebrand’s revolver. “So you can’t vouch for him?”
“I don’t vouch for him nor accuse him either,” Hildebrand said.
“You think he’s a truthful man?”
“I got no reason to think he ain’t.”
The man faced Turner again. “Will you swear? Swear on the Bible that you and your people ain’t got nothing to do with this man?”
“Like I said, he’s our guest, and he’s made himself welcome.” Turner swallowed, trying to keep his throat moist. “He’s never said a word about stealing slaves. And yes, I will swear.”
Hildebrand interrupted again. “An oath made under threat ain’t valid. Everybody knows that. You just got to take this man at his word or not.”
The little man seemed to take this as a vote of confidence. “Well, since Sam here vouches for you—” He paused. “—says you’re an honest man, that’s good enough for me. Good enough for you boys?” The other two men muttered unintelligibly. “Just so you know, we ain’t letting no Underground Railroad start up around here. You bear that in mind.”
Lysander Smith’s voice croaked up. “I didn’t mean—”
The small man walked over to him. “Well, the Philadelphia lawyer wants to make a speech. Speak up, Nancy.”
Smith looked up at him and tried to smile. “I didn’t mean anyone—I didn’t mean any harm.”
The man punched him square in the face. “Fuck you, Nancy. This may be how you do things back in Philadelphia, but they ain’t how we do things out here. We’ll take this nigger back south, because he’s worth money plus a reward. But you—” He picked up the end of the rope from the ground. “You are a worthless Nancy-ass piece of unnatural Eastern shit.” He walked to one of the horses and whipped the rope around its saddle horn several times. “And we’re going to hoist you up.”
The man took the horse’s reins and led it forward a few feet. The rope lost its slack almost immediately, pulling Smith to his feet. The loop around his neck tightened. His cheeks bulged, and he flailed from side to side, trying to find air.
“Please!” Turner cried. “This man’s worth something. He comes from a wealthy family. I’m sure they’d pay—”
“God’s shit!” said the one-armed man. “What do you think we are, kidnappers?”
Turner turned to the two other flour sacks. “Please! You can’t kill this man.” The men shuffled their feet.
The one-armed man spoke up loudly. “We are deputized to do whatever it takes to find and return runaways. And I say this is what it takes.”
He gave the horse’s reins another jerk, pulling it forward a couple of feet. The little maple tree swayed downward under the extra weight of Lysander Smith being lifted off the ground. His feet dangled in the air, kicking wildly.
“If he tries to help his friend, shoot him,” the one-armed man said to the man with the shotgun.
“You heard him, mister,” the man said to Turner in a weak voice. He waved the shotgun in Turner’s direction.
Turner thought about testing the man’s resolve, but the big man stepped toward him too and picked up an axe handle from the ground. The end was matted with blood and hair. “If he don’t stop you, I will,” he said.
Smith thrashed wildly, and a trickle of blood ran from his nose. The young maple tree from which he was dangling bent further; it was too small to support a man’s weight. Smith’s feet touched the ground. Straining against the rope that bound his hands, he balanced on his toes.
“Shit,” the one-armed man said. “Hold his feet up, pal.”
The big man looked nervously at the struggling man. “I ain’t holding nobody’s feet.”
The tree drooped lower. “Goddamit, one of you bastards hold up his feet!” He pulled the horse another few feet, and Smith lifted off the ground again. The tree swayed under the struggle, and for a moment Turner thought the limb might break. Smith’s face was purple in the firelight. His toes scraped the ground. He tried to bounce up and down to give himself some slack in the rope.
“You should have tied his feet,” said the man with the shotgun.
“Just take the fucker’s fucking feet and hold them off the ground!” said the one-armed man. “This won’t take more than another couple of minutes.”
“That’s bad luck,” said the big man.
“Bad luck! I’ll make you think bad luck, you waste of shit.”
“Oh you will, will you? I’d like to see that!” Smith was still thrashing and it seemed to Turner that he might be getting one of his hands loose.
Sam Hildebrand stood up abruptly. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he said. He walked up to Smith, put his pistol to the base of his skull, and pulled the trigger.
The roar of the pistol shot seemed to have made them all deaf and mute. All Turner could hear was its echoes in his ears. Everyone stood silent. Smith’s body twitched and trembled a few times and then hung still.
Hildebrand put his revolver in his belt and walked to his horse. “You can let him down now, you ninny,” he said. The little man backed up the horse, letting Smith’s body sink to the ground.
Hildebrand mounted up. “You boys better get the hell out of here. That shot might wake somebody. Don’t forget your nigger.” He looked at Turner. “He’s all yours now.”
He rode off into the dark, leaving the men in their flour-sack masks silent. Then in a frenzy of activity, they gathered themselves and disappeared, tossing the runaway slave over the neck of one of their horses. Turner could hear them cursing and arguing as they rode away.
Turner untied Smith’s hands and carried his limp body away from the fire. At the base of a tree, he found Smith’s coat and pocketbooks. His horse shied away when he tried to lift the man’s body over its neck, but after a couple of attempts he managed to heave it up. He led the horse to the road and climbed into the saddle.
The road was unrecognizable to him in the dark, and even if it had been daylight he wouldn’t have known it anyway. It seemed to run east and west, but he had no idea where from or to. He went back the way he came, and when he saw the knocked-down brush where he and Hildebrand had come through, turned the horse into the woods again.
He gave his horse a loose rein, and it worked its way up the slope until soon they were back on the ridgetop. Turner let the horse find its way, urging it forward whenever it wanted to stop, and after a while he began to think it knew its way home.
Turner’s mind was numb. He sensed danger lurking behind him, as if the murderers might change their minds and pursue him as well, but he didn’t hasten home. Logic told him that they had been just as shocked and scattered by the sudden end to Smith’s life as he had, but logic was not what made him plod through the dimness. It was the overwhelming sense of failure, the recognition that he had led the colony into a dangerous place with no clear way out. He felt a deep foreboding that the limp body bouncing across the horse’s neck was simply the first of many, and that he should have known their adventure would come to this. What had he been thinking, taking dozens of bookworms into the woods? They would be lucky if the place didn’t kill them all.
Daylight seeped into the air imperceptibly until at one moment Turner noticed that he could make out the bark on the trees. And sure enough, by full dawn his horse had led him to the river crossing.
Turner stopped to let the horse drink and took Smith’s body down. He dipped his handkerchief in the river to bathe his face. The body was still warm, though cooling fast, and the caked blood came off with a little wiping. The handkerchief wasn’t much good on his hair, though, and Turner ended up dipping the back of Smith’s head into the river to wash out the blood. It trailed downstream, a pink tendril that disappeared into the common flow within a few yards. Blood lost in the water, a life lost in the night. Everything vanishing downstream. He smoothed out the hair as best he could, but it still looked like a stringy knot.
An hour later he was at Daybreak. He had tied Smith’s coat around his head to try to make less of a spectacle, but with the man’s arms and legs dangling halfway to the ground on each side, it was still a gruesome load to bring home.
As he passed the Webbs’ house, Harp came out onto his porch. “Told him not to drink that shit from downriver,” he said. Turner looked up at him silently and kept riding.
A dozen or more people had gathered around Turner’s door, alerted no doubt by Charlotte, and watched as he arrived. George Webb and a couple of others helped him take Smith from the horse and carry him inside.
“Did he drown?” someone said. “His head’s all wet.”
But when they laid him on the table, face up, and everyone could see the burnt-looking bruise across Smith’s neck and the wound in the back of his head, no one asked any questions for a moment. Charlotte picked up Newton and took him into the back. Adam Cabot drew in a sharp breath and left the room.
Smith’s hair had fallen across his face. Webb lifted it with his thumb and examined the marks of the beating. “How many were there?” he said.
Turner didn’t feel like talking quite yet. “Three,” he said.
“Hildebrand?”
“Sam wasn’t one of the three. Three plus Sam is what I meant.”
More people arrived as the news spread. Turner knew he should go out and say something to them, but was too tired. He didn’t know what he would say anyway. Go home before it’s too late, perhaps. He went into the back room and lay on the bed, where Charlotte was curled up with Newton playing count-the-toes. He kicked off his boots and rolled over on his side, embracing her. Newton squirmed between them with delight.
“You’re home,” she said. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.”
She said nothing, simply placed her arm over his head and drew him to her. There was a quiet knock at the bedroom door. “Adam Cabot’s saddled up a horse,” a voice said.
Turner rolled onto his back and didn’t move any further. Let him go if he wanted to play hero. He wouldn’t even know which way to ride. Who knows, maybe Cabot knew Smith’s little secrets himself. At this moment he didn’t care.
“I’ll go see,” Charlotte said.
He heard her voice outside the window, hailing Cabot as he rode down from the barn. “Adam, where are you going?” she called. “Fredericktown,” Cabot said. “What on earth for?”
There was a pause and a rustling. “To fetch the sheriff. Charlotte, we are not outside the boundaries of civilization here.”
“Of course. Godspeed.” The sound of a horse riding off.
Turner closed his eyes. The sheriff. Good luck. All he wanted to do was let the night’s events vanish for a while. He kept his eyes closed as he heard Charlotte come into the room and take Newton away, leaving through the back door and shutting it behind herself quietly. The image of Smith’s dangling body and kicking feet lingered in his mind. Then blackness swept over him, and he was asleep.