Lost Souls Recovered, page 11
He called to Douglas and asked him to retrieve some carrots from his haversack. Douglas pounded the floor with his left hand, as though he were upset that he had to open his eyes. He passed the carrots to John through an opening in the coach. John jumped down from his perch and shoved the carrots in the horses’ mouths.
“Got any more?” he called as loud as he dared to Douglas.
“Just apples.”
“Give them to me.”
“No, we gonna need them later.”
John’s anxiety grew as he looked around for signs of danger. Nothing, but something could arrive soon. “Look, Douglas, we gotta get a move on. Give them to me.” Douglas handed John the apples. “Thank you,” John said, relieved.
The horses quickly devoured the apples. He rubbed the two lead horses on their foreheads, looking them in the eyes, to let them know he was in charge. He climbed back to his perch.
As the driver walked out of the tavern to retrieve more of the family’s luggage, he saw John sitting in his seat. “Hey, you! Get down from there,” he said, running on stubby legs.
Douglas lifted himself slightly off the floor to see if he could see the driver. He couldn’t, and returned to the floor, curling up to make himself smaller.
“I was just playing. I mean no harm, sir,” John said, sounding sheepish.
As John climbed down, the driver opened the left door to retrieve luggage. Douglas kicked him hard in the stomach, which sent him to the ground and knocked the wind out of him.
John climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Giddy-up!” he screamed as he snapped the reins.
The horses moved slowly at first, then began to trot. The driver looked on helplessly, trying to catch his breath as his stagecoach began to disappear.
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Sunset was a few hours away, as good a time as any to stop the stagecoach. They’d need daylight to cover more ground for their getaway. “Hey, wake up,” he said, tapping Douglas on the leg.
Douglas sat upright. “Where we be?”
“The compass is pointing south.”
“I gotta hand it to you. I didn’t think you could do it. You got some pretty good skills,” Douglas said, laughing.
John smiled, acknowledging there were good things he learned working for the Billingslys. His familiarity with Cleveland Bay horses had paid off.
Douglas rifled through the portmanteau in the stagecoach. He found a pistol, a wad of cash, clothes, and two full bottles of Jack Daniel’s. As he held a bottle, he knew it was time to ditch the stagecoach; it would be no match for people on horseback who’d come after them. He put the Jack Daniel’s and two men’s pullover shirts into his haversack. He put the money in his pocket and gave John the rest. He threw his haversack over his back.
“Someone’s probably after us. We need to ditch this thing. Let’s go.”
“No, I’m not leaving them.”
“Leaving what?
“The horses.”
“I told Ann that I’d take care of you. I’d hate to break that promise, but if we don’t leave now, we’re dead men.”
Ann’s name lifted John’s mood; He stroked the left lead horse on the side, then unbuckled the leather belts and rods that bound the Bays to the carriage and to each other. He used some tack at the back of the carriage and put them on the two lead horses.
“Fine,” John said. “We’ll take these two and outrun them.”
John then made sure the remaining two horses were no longer fettered to the stagecoach, so they could be free to roam.
They mounted the getaway Cleveland Bays with their accoutrement secure, as Douglas had no time to argue.
John was confident in his ability to ride such a powerful horse. From time to time, John had ridden Monsieur Billingsly’s Cleveland Bay horses in the paddock area of the estate. Billingsly would tell him to take them out to pasture to feed them with vegetation that dotted Billingsly’s landscape and to ride them to give them exercise.
As John sat with confidence astride the horse he mounted, he looked at Douglas and saw eyes filled with trepidation as he sat atop the other horse.
It was like the dog running and barking at the train and not knowing what to do with it once he caught it. “Douglas,” John said, “It was your idea to steal the stagecoach.”
Douglas said nothing, ignoring the obvious comment.
John gave Douglas a quick tutorial about how to ride, which Douglas acknowledged allayed his fear somewhat.
“You good now?” John asked.
“Think so,” Douglas replied with an air of more confidence.
As John was about to snap the reins, he said, “Wait,” he rubbed his horse’s head. “Let’s give them names. My horse’s name is Lightning and yours is Thunder.”
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To make it comfortable for Douglas, the horse thieves started with the horses walking for several miles. To speed up the pace, John told Douglas it was time for their horses to trot, so he told Douglas that he and Lightning would take the lead trotting, and Thunder was sure to follow, which he did. John would look back from time to time to check on Douglas; he seemed to bear it all while frowning, though.
After several hours of riding, they saw a sign that said that Charlotte was fifty miles away. Rick had suggested that Douglas and John go through Charlotte.
They stopped at a lake, where John tied both horses to a hackberry tree. They sat in the woods on soft ground and ate victuals that Rick had given them in Raleigh; they were down to stale pemmican.
John swallowed his last bite, stood, and began to scratch. “Got any more of that crotch powder?”
“Yeah, but use it after bathing in the lake. I think we both could stand to clean up.”
They disrobed and waded into the nearby lake to bathe themselves, a refreshing cleansing they had long needed, removing the dirt and grime that had caked on them ever since they hightailed it out of Richmond. They had found water in nearby streams to wash their faces and hands, and even Carrie had given them a bucket of water to wash. But they had not washed their entire bodies until now.
John floated on his back, looking skyward and wondering about his mother as the soft sunshine caressed his face.
Douglas couldn’t swim, and didn’t care for the lake, so he stayed in only long enough to get clean.
Douglas dressed and waited for John. He yelled that it was time to move on, disturbing John’s quiet contemplative moments while he floated on his soft, watery pillow. John grudgingly complied. He saw a school of tadpoles crowded around a large rock near the shoreline. He hunched down and picked up the rock, revealing more tadpoles. He thought about Blue Pond and how he’d wanted the tadpoles to be free. He realized though he’d brought disorder to those tadpoles and put this rock back. Things were already chaotic enough for him, and he didn’t want any more disorder in his life, just like he wouldn’t bring any to the tadpoles.
John’s experiences at Blue Pond seemed an eternity ago. He was no longer the eight-year-old boy who still clung to his mother’s apron. He was taller, wiser, and had begun to find his own voice, which, as much as he didn’t like it, was attributable in some way to working for the Billingslys. Where he once was shy as a younger boy, he now found his quest to live a bigger life impelling him to take more risks with his young life.
As John donned his clothes, Douglas saw a man on horseback coming in their direction. Douglas sat on Thunder ready to go. “C’mon,” Douglas hissed. “Look like we got company.”
John tied his haversack to his horse’s saddle and mounted Lightning.
“Stop right there!” the man shouted. The man moved in front of them, brandishing a rifle in his right hand. He sat tall on his cinnamon-colored horse, whose coat almost matched the color of the man’s reddish-orange skin. He tilted his black Stetson back on his head, revealing a long scar on his forehead.
“What you boys got in those bags?” the man asked, looking at the haversacks attached to Lightning and Thunder’s saddles.
“We just traveling through,” Douglas said.
“Where?”
“Don’t rightly know,” John offered.
The man kicked his horse with his cordovan boots; the horse edged closer to Douglas and John. “Ain’t you boys got a home?”
“No,” Douglas said.
The man decided to test Douglas and John, to see how they’d act under pressure. “How about if I shoot you right now? Maybe no one will hear the rifle shot out here in the wilderness.”
John was confident enough about his riding skills that he thought about kicking Lightning into a gallop, but he knew Douglas was far less confident, and he just couldn’t leave him in a lurch.
The man ordered John to dismount and to show him the contents of his haversack. “Careful, one false move and your friend dies.” He pointed his rifle at Douglas.
The poke sack was on top in the haversack. John dug below the poke sack that held Billingsly’s flasks, trying to avoid letting the bandit see it. He felt his shirt, and pulled it to the top, causing the poke sack to fall out of the haversack and onto the ground.
“What’s in that white bag?”
“Just a whiskey container,” John said.
“Show it to me.” As John opened the haversack, the bandit said, “Careful,” while keeping aim at Douglas’s chest. John held it up for the man to see. “Okay, now toss it to me.” John complied. The bandit caught it, looked at it, admiring the etching on the front. He put it in his vest pocket. “What else is in that bag?”
“Just another whiskey container.”
“Take it out and toss it to me.”
John removed the other flask and allowed it to fall to the ground.
“Pick it up, boy, and toss it here,” the bandit demanded, annoyed.
As John bent down to pick it up, he grabbed a dollop of sand in his right hand, swung his right arm back, dropped the flask to his feet, and aimed the sand at the bandit’s horse’s nose and eyes.
The horse snorted in the sand and reared high and violently off his front legs.
The bandit fired off a shot at John with one hand as he tried to control the horse with the other. The bullet whistled near John’s head.
The bandit did his best to hold on, but fell off to a hard landing, hitting his head on a nearby boulder. He lay on the sandy ground in agonizing pain, grimacing.
John saw that the bandit’s rifle was a few feet away from where he’d landed. He walked up to the man, who was moaning low, and his eyes were flickering like a burning candle trying to give one last burst of fire.
John picked up the rifle by the long barrel and swung it hard into the lake. He bent down and retrieved the flask from the bandit’s vest pocket, saying, “I think this belongs to me.” As he stood up, he saw the bandit’s Stetson a few feet away on its side. He stepped over the bandit, picked up the hat with his left hand, and dusted it off with his right. He stepped back over the man and looked the bandit in the face, whose eyes were still flickering, and donned his new hat, which fit as if made for him.
John turned to walk to Lightning, but the bandit reached out and grabbed John’s left leg. John shook his leg from the bandit’s feeble grip, turned and looked at him, shook his head as to say he wished it all could have been avoided. He picked up the other flask from the ground and restored the flasks to his haversack.
“John,” Douglas said, “check his pants, jacket, and saddle to see if there is something we can use.”
John complied and extracted some bills and coins and a couple of pewter mugs. They figured he must have been a bandit roaming around looking for the next victim.
John threw himself on top of Lightning, leaned forward, and stroked the bridge of Lightning’s nose, which caused Lightning to nicker.
John sat confidently atop Lightning wearing his new chapeau, a blade of grass protruding from his lips as though he had just defeated the enemy in battle. He looked over at Douglas and nodded, kicked Lightning with his heels, and said, “Let’s go.”
13 — Summer, 1887
The woods finally thinned and a commercial center appeared. They sat astride their stolen Cleveland Bays, staring at people moving around. The town was bustling with activity. All seemed so ordered: colored and whites walked the same streets, and people waited their turn to purchase goods from the abundant pushcart vendors.
Douglas jumped off his horse first, followed by John. They tied their horses to a hitching post near a sweet gum tree and sat under the tree’s wide canopy. The shade of the pine trees in the woods was good while it lasted, but for the last hour, they had lost that cover and had ridden exposed to the open sun, sucking them dry. They were parched; their mouths felt like they were eating cotton. The last of the water-filled apples Rick had given them had been sacrificed to get the Bays moving.
The Bays drank from a lake, or a creek here and there, and chewed on vegetation here and there; they were ready to go for another few hours before needing to refuel. But not John or Douglas.
John stood up and panned his surroundings. He locked onto a toddler boy drinking from a cup of water. He thought about his mother’s smile, and he smiled back at her.
“Be right back,” he said to Douglas. “I need to wet my tongue. Don’t wander too far. We don’t know no one around here.”
While standing at the water fountain for whites only, John removed a flask from the poke sack and used a narrow dipper to fill the flask with water. He put the cap on the flask, then filled the other flask. As he put the flasks back in the poke sack, a dog barked. He dropped the poke sack to the ground.
A well-fed brindled canine snarled at John in a low rumble. John maintained eye contact with the predator, worried he’d soon sink his teeth in the fleshy part of his legs.
A man behind the dog bellowed, “Boy, you can’t read?!”
John raised his eyes and saw a short white man who was dressed like a country squire; he wore a brown Norfolk jacket and short baggy breaches. The predator growled as if to tell John not to look away from him. The county squire gave a quick tug of the leash, and the canine calmed down a bit. The squire pointed to the WHITES ONLY sign above the cooler.
“Sorry, sir,” John said, tipping his Stetson to the squire. He picked up his poke sack and skedaddled to the sweet gum tree, happy that the squire was only a Billingsly ghost.
As John approached the tree, Douglas was looking in the direction of a buxom, walnut-colored woman dressed in a dark green empire waist dress that hung just above the ground. She was strolling, as though looking for a target. Douglas stood against the tree, his back resting against the trunk, right leg firmly planted on the ground, and the sole of his left foot resting against the trunk just below his buttocks.
“Hi, good looking,” he said, smiling broadly, revealing long, gapped front teeth. He was ready to make nice.
She returned the smile, then looked at John drinking his water. She winked at him and batted her eyes at him, but it was Douglas’s more mature face that demanded her attention.
“Hi, yourself, handsome. What’s your name?” the harlot asked as she stood about a foot away from him, well within range for Douglas to smell her mingled scents of tantalizing perfume.
Douglas’s eyes were as dreamy as his mind. “Whatever you want it to be,” he said softly.
She inched closer, close enough for him to see the scales on her rouge-colored full lips. She stood tall and confidentially emitted an urbane smile as though she possessed a grand delightful secret. “Know what I’m thinking?” she said.
Douglas was distracted by looking at her high-rise bosom.
“How abouts I call you Lucky?” she said, stroking Douglas’s lips with the underside of her left index finger.
“That’ll be right by me.”
She jiggled her jugs for him and said unctuously, “You wanna play? I know a place we can go.”
“Go?”
She moved closer to Douglas, pinning him up against the sweet gum tree, then whispered “You know.” She grabbed his crotch, an effort to give him a bit of an appetizer before the main course. Her tongue scraped Douglas’s left earlobe. She said, “Got anything for me?”
Douglas felt the moisture on his ear and the warmth of her breath. “Like what?”
“A girl needs something to help pay her obligations,” she said.
“I can’t offer you no money.”
She refused to give up. “How abouts your friend?” she said, looking at John who was smiling and looking strikingly handsome in his trophy hat.
“He’s with me, and I know he got nothing.”
She looked at Douglas in his soft, dreamy eyes, able to see her reflection. Her mouth moved closer to his. As he closed his eyes anticipating a kiss, she grabbed the bulge in his pants with her right hand, then squeezed hard, digging her fingernails into flesh; Douglas hollered and winced. As he bent over in pain, she flounced away and sashayed off to another target.
John laughed at the sight of Douglas massaging his genitals. He was relieved Douglas did not give her any of their lucre, which he knew they’d need to last awhile for the long, arduous trek ahead.
“Be on the lookout for women like her, pretty and all. They can mess you up,” Douglas said, sounding winded as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Here,” John said handing Douglas the other flask that he had filled with water.
Douglas removed the cap from the sterling silver flask, took a swill of water, and another, and another, until all the water was gone.
No sooner had they stopped in town than two omens had greeted them. After John’s encounter with Billingsly’s ghost, and Douglas’s painful experience, it was time to move on.
Onward to Alabama.
14 — Summer, 1887
The sun’s brilliant rays were at their peak at high noon, but abundant heat didn’t stop the shoppers who abounded in the streets, bargaining with hucksters selling a spread of fruits and vegetables, pastries, bread, and other edible sundries. They had made it to Greenville, South Carolina, a few weeks after their brief stay in Charlotte. As John dismounted Lightning, he observed a colored man draped in tattered overalls sitting atop three pallets next to a wagon topped with fruits and vegetables. He and Douglas scurried over to him carrying their haversacks. Douglas surveyed the people milling about. John quickly surveyed the produce, settling on a bushel of peaches, hoping they’d taste as scrumptious as the peaches he had weeks ago in the peach orchard.
