The Seekers (16 page)

The two wagoners had come outside again. Beyond the shifting circle of light from the torch one of them held, Abraham saw only the tethered horses. The Conestoga itself was deep in shadow. But he was sure the cry had come from within the wagon. He heard it again as he pounded across the tavern yard.

“He warned us to stay away,” called one of the wagoners by the doorway. “You better too. He’s murderin’ drunk—”

Hardly hearing, Abraham dodged the bulldog snapping at his boots. From inside the wagon came sounds of a struggle—thumps and thrashing. Elizabeth screamed a third time.

Abraham hauled himself up the wagon’s high raked front, tasted sourness in his mouth as Pell wheezed in the darkness.

“Come on, you sassy little bitch. Jest feel it once. Gimme your hand—”

Abraham bellowed,
“Goddamn you, Pell—”

He started to climb inside, marginally aware of a body falling—Elizabeth?—then Pell’s sudden, strident breathing. With one leg hooked over the end of the wagon, he could still see nothing of the interior. But he realized with quick terror that Pell could certainly see him against the glare of the torch.

Pell laughed again, a flat, wicked sound. A slithering noise warned Abraham to jerk his head aside—

Crack!

Had he not reacted so fast, the tip of Pell’s blacksnake would have put out an eye. As it was, he hung on the end of the wagon with his left cheek laid open, pouring blood.

The pain overwhelmed him in an instant. He fell toward the tongue and the hoofs of the snorting, stamping horses.

The back of Abraham’s head slammed against the wagon tongue. His vision blurred. One of the frightened horses kicked his ribs.

He rolled away, toward the front wheels, just as Pell leaped down, his boots stirring little clouds of dust when he landed.

Abraham couldn’t see clearly. He was dizzy. Blood from the whip cut leaked into his left eye as he groped for the front axle, frantically dragged himself under the wagon bed just as Pell brought the whip down with maniacal force.

Abraham jerked his legs out of the way just in time. The whip raised another dust cloud. Distantly, Abraham heard men yelling and running, heard doors crash open. Residents of the settlement coming from their cabins. Overhead, Elizabeth screamed again.

In a moment of terrible lucidity, Abraham understood that most of the wagoners were too afraid of Pell to interfere. The same probably held true for the settlers. And he was certain Pell meant to kill him.

He shook his head, trying to overcome the dizziness. At the front end of the wagon, Pell dropped into a crouch, gesturing at Abraham with the whip.

“Come out from under there, you yella bastard!”

Pell was silhouetted against the torch at the tavern. His trousers hung around his knees. His suit of dirty gray underwear gaped open at his crotch. Abraham might have laughed at that, except for Pell’s rage.

“I said come out! I’m gonna whip your balls off one at a time—”

Blood glistened on Pell’s cheek; the raking marks of Elizabeth’s nails, Abraham realized suddenly. The wagoner dropped his right wrist close to the ground, intending to lash Abraham’s legs under the front of the wagon. It required a tricky horizontal strike—and by the time Pell stretched his whip hand behind him, Abraham was ready.

The whip shot forward with an explosive pop. Abraham took the cut on his right forearm—raised deliberately. The tip of the snake wound round and round his sleeve like a band of fire. Clenching his teeth, he closed his left hand on the whip, then his right. He yanked.

Pell was jerked forward. He crashed headfirst into one of the iron-tired wheels. Bellowing, he fell to his knees and let go of the whip’s butt.

Abraham still had the end wound around his right arm. He reached upward and to the side, seized the hickory spokes of the left front wheel that Pell had struck. He dug in his heels and pulled himself—and the whip—out of Pell’s reach.

He crawled into the open, stumbled to his feet beside the wheel, conscious of people gathering. Elizabeth’s cries had changed to low, hurt sobs.

He lurched to the front of the Conestoga, the whole left side of his face bloody. For one nauseous moment he thought he might faint. He fought it, then noticed two odd things. Not one wagoner stepped forward to lend Pell a hand. And the bulldog, growling, didn’t attack as Abraham crept up behind the groaning man.

Pell was still on his knees. Abraham wrapped the whip around Pell’s neck, pulled with both hands—

Pell tried to lead. Only gagging sounds came from his throat. He struggled, clawed over his shoulder at Abraham’s fingers. But the fall against the wheel had weakened him. Abraham jammed his knee into Pell’s back, tightening the rawhide noose.

Let him go,
a voice cried in his mind.
Don’t murder him. He’s beaten
—

But he could still hear Elizabeth sobbing. He pulled harder.

His hands trembled from clenching so tightly, trembled and turned white as bone—

Mercifully, he blanked out during the rest.

He felt his fingers being pried loose. He blinked, relaxed his grip, stared down. Several torches showed him Leland Pell, cheeks purplish, tongue protruding. Pell’s trousers were still tangled around his calves. His underwear hung open to reveal a tiny penis as dead as the rest of him.

Abraham felt so ill he almost wept. “Somebody cover him up, for Christ’s sake! And see to my wi—”

The bones in his legs melted. He tumbled to the ground, unconscious. One hand lay across the wagoner’s distended right eyeball.

During the night, a man who claimed to be an apothecary cleaned Abraham’s face in the tavern. He applied a stinging, sulphurous-smelling paste to the wound, then wrapped Abraham’s head with an oval of rags, as though he were a toothache patient.

The man told Abraham he had already administered whiskey to Elizabeth. She was sleeping.

Abraham wanted to go to the wagon and see for himself. But he hurt too much. Exhausted, he let the groggy landlord spread a filthy blanket on one of the trestle tables, help him up, then cover him with a second blanket. In a moment, his eyes closed.

By dawn the other wagoners had disposed of Pell’s body. Where, they didn’t say. Nor did Abraham ask.

The landlord reported that the fiddler boy had been treated by the same fellow who’d doctored Abraham’s face.

“The boy weren’t as lucky as you. Even after the burned skin sloughs off an’ his hair grows back, his face’ll likely be ruined fer life.”

Sickened, Abraham shoved away the fragrant cup of coffee the landlord was extending. He tottered into the frosty air where his breath plumed. He saw Elizabeth peering at him over the front of the wagon, her face as pale as marble.

He started running. But a few long strides set his head throbbing. He walked the rest of the way, trying not to be aware of the horror in her blue eyes.

Stopping next to the wagon, he reached up. She put her hand down to find his. Her fingers were stiff, cold as the dawn air.

“Elizabeth, did he—?”

“He only touched me. Just—touched me, that’s all.” Her voice shook.

Her fingers constricted around his suddenly. “Abraham, let’s leave. Please, please,
let’s leave this place!
”

Alarmed, he chafed her icy hands until she calmed down. He promised they’d drive down to the ford and cross the stream as soon as he made some necessary inquiries about the dead man’s rig.

Staring through him, she said nothing.

He walked back to a silent band of thoroughly sobered wagoners gathered outside the tavern. The smell of their sweat was rank in the crisp air.

“I know the outfit belonged to Pell,” Abraham said. “Did he have any kin?”

One toothless fellow spoke. “A wife and a flock of young’uns in Harrisburg. But the woman turned Leland out a couple of years ago.”

“She still live there?”

“Think so.”

“Still under the name Pell? Not remarried?”

“Not so’s we’ve heard.”

Abraham nodded in a grave, tired way. “I’ll get the rig to Pittsburgh. Make deliveries of the freight as best I can, then sell the wagon and the horses. After I deduct the hundred he charged me for the trip, I’ll deposit the rest at the postal office. There
is
a postal office—?”

“Yes, sir,” said the toothless man.

“I’ll leave the money for Pell’s wife. I’ll leave it in her name. One of you see it gets back to Harrisburg.”

Murmurs of consent. Abraham stumbled back to the Conestoga. Elizabeth had disappeared.

The eastern sky was empty of clouds. But in the west, gray banks promised rain, or even early snow, reminding him of the lateness of the season.

He climbed up the front of the wagon, glanced into the crowded interior. Elizabeth was sprawled on her blanket pallet, hands over her face. She was crying, almost inaudibly.

He thought about going to her, decided she might respond more favorably to the feel of the wagon in motion. As if in penance, the other wagoners helped him hitch up in record time.

Abraham dragged himself into the saddle on the left wheel horse, picked up the jerkline. He didn’t have Pell’s whip. He wouldn’t have used it if he had.

Just as he was maneuvering the rig into the water at the ford, he heard a loud bark. He leaned out to the left, looked behind, saw the bulldog, tongue lolling, wet old eyes red in the dawn.

“Come on, Chief.”

With a bound and another bark, the bulldog shot to his customary place beneath the bright blue bed. Abraham smiled, but the smile was empty. It made his face hurt.

He started the six horses into the purling stream. Listened—

Inside the huge wagon there was only silence.

T
HE BRIM OF ABRAHAM’S
hat and the shoulders of his thick wool coat were as white as the sugared buns he remembered with longing from breakfasts in Boston. Tonight, as he climbed the unlit stairs of the Pittsburgh rooming house in sodden boots, feeling thoroughly downhearted, he thought of all the splendid meals he had quite taken for granted as he was growing up.

What a contrast between the luscious aromas memory conjured and the stenches of this old building that creaked in the winter wind. He smelled tobacco. Unwashed linen and unclean bodies. The ghastly fish stew served by the bad-tempered landlady for the evening meal—

Elizabeth hadn’t eaten the wretched stew. She hadn’t felt well enough to go downstairs with him. Poor health did have its blessings—!

Ah, that was a shameful thought. He should be, and was, desperately worried about his wife. Of late she’d been unusually pale and fatigued. He supposed it was the result of living cramped in a single combination bedroom-sitting room for most of the winter—and eating the landlady’s swill when hunger overpowered good sense.

Even Chief, laboring up the rickety stairs behind him, looked bedraggled, moved with rheumatic slowness. The old bulldog acted as tired as he felt.

On the second floor landing, a single lamp shed a feeble light. Abraham paused, his attention captured by sounds from behind one of the closed doors. With bleak eyes he listened to the unmistakable rhythm of a bed being strained up and down. He heard a woman’s strident moan—

At least one of the transient couples paying the landlady’s gouging prices while waiting for winter to loosen its grip on the Ohio was managing to take comfort in each other.

The reflection was more sad than angry. Elizabeth had retired early every night for six or seven weeks. She seemed incapable of any affection save a prim, dutiful kiss now and then. How long had it been since they’d last lain in each other’s arms? Centuries! he thought, though the truth was less melodramatic: early January—

He climbed on toward the third floor, Chief panting behind him.

Abraham blamed the dead wagoner for the apprehensive look in Elizabeth’s blue eyes whenever he tried to touch her. She still refused to tell him exactly what Pell had done that night. But it was obvious that scars remained.

He blamed himself a little, too. He lacked the ability—the right words, the proper degree of tenderness—to cut through her moods, her aura of remoteness.

His failure in another area didn’t help either. He had been totally unable to find a way for them to leave cold, crowded Pittsburgh with its heartless profiteers and its hordes of gray-faced immigrants who wore their hope like a badge. Again today he’d tramped the docks along the Monongahela, kept making inquiries and returning to the notice board even after the snow began to rage out of the northwest.

Yawning and shivering, he tapped the door of their room, murmured a few words to identify himself. He heard Elizabeth’s slow, shuffling tread as she came to lift the latch.

The room was unbelievably small. They’d moved the ancient bed against the wall to make room for their trunks. Little extra space remained—and two scarred chairs, a plain table and a washstand took up most of that.

As usual, the plank floor fairly radiated cold. Elizabeth was already robed for bed. He shut the door after Chief lurched in, flung off his snow-soaked hat and coat.

“Still no luck,” he said, sinking into a chair. “Every man I approach seems to have a full load by the time I get to him.”

“Nothing new on the notice board?”

“Nothing. We may have to buy another wagon and go along Zane’s Trace after all.”

Abraham referred to a new road cleared the preceding year. It ran from Zane’s Station, on the Ohio’s northeast-southwest salient, to Maysville, where the river flowed generally westward again. Traveling by land part of the way to their destination would be possible, if extremely difficult.

Abraham and Elizabeth had arrived in Pittsburgh in the late fall, just as the first snows fell. After disposing of Pell’s horses and wagon and seeing to the delivery of his goods, Abraham and his wife had agreed to make the remaining portion of their trip by riverboat. It was relatively safer, for one thing. The great number of boats shuttling upstream and down had sharply reduced the danger of Indian attack.

But even after recouping the hundred dollars paid to Pell, Abraham couldn’t afford to buy his own flatboat. More important, the arks that plied the Ohio required more than one man to handle them, particularly if the boat was going on past Cincinnati to the shallow but treacherous rapids at the falls of the Ohio. A shared-cost, shared-labor arrangement was the only solution.