The Seekers (57 page)

The gray-haired man tossed his hat on the ground and unfastened the buckle of his belt.

Frantic, Jared drove his right hand toward the knife lying in the ashes. Blackthorn paused in unbuttoning his trousers, raised one leg and brought his boot down on Jared’s fingers.

Again Jared cried out. His limp hand flopped into the coals. He smelled burning hair, pulled his hand back as pain seared it—

“Amanda—
run!
”

She tried. But the stranger was faster. He caught her around the waist, laughing. Her shrieks stilled the birds in the nearby thickets. Blackthorn’s horse stamped and blew noisily.

Still laughing, the Reverend tumbled to the ground, the girl trapped in his arms. Jared dragged himself to hands and knees. He tried to move fast but he couldn’t. Blackthorn flung Amanda on her back, fastened hands at the throat of her dress and ripped.

Jared kept crawling toward the big man as he straddled Amanda’s thighs. Blackthorn plucked aside her gray chemise, fondled the small nubbed mounds of her breasts. He bent down, nuzzling her cheek.

“Thy lips, o my spouse
—
drop as the honeycomb
—
honey and milk
—
are under thy tongue—”

Jared realized the crazed preacher was quoting scripture. He careened to his feet, took one faltering step and fell.

Wailing, Amanda pounded fists against Blackthorn’s ribs. But he overpowered her by sheer size and weight, ripping and tearing until her body was bared below the waist.

“—the smell of thy garments is like—”

Jared saw a bruised hand draw out a huge, stiffened penis; press it down on the tiny mound where a few dark hairs had sprouted to signal the start of womanhood.

“—is like the smell of Lebanon—”

Blackthorn wedged a knee between Amanda’s thighs, forced them open.

“A garden
—
enclosed
—
is my sister,”
he grunted.
“My
—
spouse
—
a spring shut up
—
a fountain
—
sealed—”

Blackthorn jerked his hips forward. Amanda cried out and arched her back.

Jared started crawling again, around the fire toward the interlocked bodies. Amanda struggled feebly now that Blackthorn had penetrated her. The girl’s eyes were closed. Her palms pressed against the ground. The tall man’s trousers and drawers hung around his calves. His coat tails flapped over his humping buttocks.

Jared heard the shrill, hurt screams of his cousin, tried to shout, “You—filthy bastard—I’ll kill—”

Pain weakened his braced arms. The ground lifted toward his eyes with a strange, terrifying slowness—then slammed his face.

Time went by. How much, he didn’t know. Once more he fought upward, catching a glimpse of Amanda. Her dark hair was fouled with dirt. She bit her lips and flailed her head back and forth and beat the ground, the cordage bracelet bouncing,
bouncing
—

Blackthorn convulsed. Groaned. Withdrew his dripping, bloodied organ and panted for air.

He pinched Amanda’s chin between his fingers. His green eyes glowed in the sunrise. His yellow teeth bared in a grin. “Now,” he breathed, “now you’re worth something. Many a man won’t pay to pleasure himself with a virgin your age. But once a girl’s torn, that’s another story. You’ll finance my travels nicely—”

The words whined and echoed in Jared’s mind as he pitched onto his side, blacking out. When he awoke sometime later, the gray horse, its owner and his cousin were gone.

Bedraggled and heartsick, Jared ranged the clearing, trying to discover some sign of the trail Blackthorn had taken. On the clearing’s east side he found a few low branches broken off. He knelt over them, gulping air and fighting off tears of rage.

He still could hardly believe the inhuman act he’d witnessed. But there was no denying Amanda had been abducted. By a lecher—a maniac—who called himself a man of God—

Guilt overwhelmed him for a moment. When Amanda had needed him most, he’d failed her. Just as he always failed. He couldn’t excuse the failure on the grounds that he was ill—or that Blackthorn was too strong for him. He was supposed to take care of her—and he’d let her be kidnapped.

Well, now he had another responsibility. To
find
her—

The boy stumbled on through the brush for several hundred yards. He lost the trail. There were too many broken branches, too much brush disarranged by animals.

He shouted Amanda’s name, heard it boom through the stillness of the woods. On the way back to the clearing, he had to sit down once. The physical punishment he’d taken at the hands of the self-styled preacher had left him almost without strength. He sat very still, cursing himself silently—oath after damning oath.

In the clearing, he collected the few belongings spilled from the canvas bag. The stranger had found nothing worthy of theft except Amanda. He’d left Jared his knife, his pistol, his clothing—

Stuffing them into the bag, he almost missed the fob partially buried in the ashes of the dead fire. He flung the fob on top of the other things and jumped up—too fast. He swayed, sickeningly dizzy.

When the spell passed, he dragged the bag to the trees along the river. There he sat down again, trying to order his thoughts.

What Blackthorn wanted with Amanda, he couldn’t imagine. Surely the man wasn’t so vile and deranged that he’d do what he said—use her; sell her as a whore to pay for what he called his travels—

Travels,
Jared said to himself.
Start there
—
travels.

The man had left Nashville. There was a strong intimation of trouble connected with the departure. Blackthorn also had a cabin in the vicinity—

Where?

He needed to find someone who could tell him that—without delay.

Another of Blackthorn’s remarks surfaced in his mind. A reference to someone named the judge, living nearby—

He glanced back toward the clearing, trying to guess where the judge’s house might be. Toward the south or in the other direction?

He decided to go the latter way, to the winding Cumberland River. If he found no house, he’d work southward again.

Groaning, he stood up. He stumbled to the edge of Stone’s River and checked the position of the sun. He set off as fast as his bruised, aching body permitted, trying to shut from his mind the images of Amanda’s rape. She wouldn’t be eleven until the summer—and Blackthorn had savaged her—

Better that he’d slain her outright!

No, don’t think of that.

Find the house of the judge.

Someone—
anyone
—to tell you where Blackthorn might have gone.

The trees grew thickly here, screening the source of the sound Jared was too dull-witted to identify. He was weak, damnably weak. The fever and Blackthorn’s pounding made him stagger like a drunken man. Branches stung his face as he stumbled toward brighter light that indicated an end to the dim woods—

He emerged on open grass. He took a few more steps, blinded by the sunlight. He scuffed a boot in dirt. He was standing on some sort of smooth track—

Only then did he recognize the thundering sound on his left. A horse—

In a whirl of dust, a big bay stallion with a black-skinned rider pounded along the track. Jared had walked directly into the rider’s path. The frightened black saw him, frantically reined in—

“Whoa, Truxton! Hol’ up—!”

Jared hurled himself toward the far side of the track. Halfway there, he stumbled and went down.

Sharp front hoofs dark against the sky, the bay stood on hind legs, neighing wildly—

The last thing Jared saw were those hoofs slashing down toward his head.

A
SWEET SMELL DRIFTED
through the dark of Jared’s waking mind. He didn’t know the origin of the pleasant odor then, and it wasn’t until later that he learned it came from the blossoms on scores of apple trees surrounding the two blockhouses.

A passage connected the main blockhouse and a similar one for guests. It was in this last that he opened his eyes, resting on unbelievably clean linen.

He discovered his battered ribs and hand were bandaged. He blinked, saw a slender, sinewy black woman drift into his line of sight and bend over him. Her cheeks glowed. So did the whole room. May sunlight fell through one large window whose shutters had been opened all the way.

From Jared’s right, beyond his range of vision, fragrant blue smoke drifted. The black woman felt his forehead.

“Well, his eyes are open, Miz Rachel. Fever’s gone, too.”

Jared twisted his head to see the source of the smoke: a plainly dressed woman running to stoutness. At one time she might have been quite pretty, but sagging flesh, and strain suggested by her melancholy eyes, had left little more than a hint of beauty. She pulled a corncob pipe from between her teeth and laid it on a small table.

“I’m not so sure the young man will be thankful to be awake when the judge comes home,” the woman said. To Jared: “Truxton is the prize horse in my husband’s stable. You nearly lamed him by dashing out of the trees onto the racecourse.”

Jared tried to sit up. The effort hurt. He tugged the wool nightshirt from under one arm. It itched ferociously.

“I didn’t mean to startle the horse,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened. Is the animal all right?”

“Yes.”

“I was pretty worked up. Not thinking clearly—”

“Sick, too,” said the black woman.

Jared nodded. “I was trying to find help because my cousin was kidnapped—”

The white woman and the Negress exchanged quick glances.

“Where’bouts?” asked the latter.

“We were stopped at a clearing on your property. Near the river, south of your racetrack. How did I get here?”

“Grooms brung you in. You were mutterin’ something fierce,” the black woman said.

“Early yesterday,” said the white woman.

“Yesterday—!” Jared started to struggle upright again. The white woman pressed him back. She had strong hands.

“Last evening, the judge fetched the doctor from Nashville to look you over. The doctor said you weren’t to get out of bed for three days.”

“I can’t lie here!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to find my cousin!”

“What’s your name, boy?” the Negress asked.

“Jared Kent. My cousin Amanda—”

“A girl?” the white woman interrupted.

He nodded. “She’s not yet eleven. She and I met a man in a clearing—”

The black woman raised a hand. “Hold on, you’re sashayin’ way too fast. You and this cousin—you’re not from these parts?”

The white woman picked up her pipe! She tapped cold dottle into her palm, walked to the window and let the dottle blow away in the pouring golden sunlight.

“I should think that’s obvious from his speech, Clara. Where do you come from, Master Kent?”

New England.

He said it carefully. He didn’t know the identities of these people. Yet there was something about the white woman’s name that struck a responsive note in his mind. What was it?

They were watching him. He finished his thought. “We have no relatives left back there, so we were heading for New Orleans—”

“You’ve relatives in New Orleans, then?”

“No, not a one.”

A growling in Jared’s belly told him it was empty. But food didn’t matter—nothing mattered except the horror of what had befallen Amanda. And he’d been sleeping a day and a half! Who could say where Blackthorn might have gotten to by now?

“I just can’t do what that doctor said,” he told the white woman. “I don’t mean to act ungrateful, but I can’t, Mrs.—”

“Jackson. Rachel Jackson.”

Jared was startled. Of course that was. it. The judge whom Blackthorn had mentioned was Judge Andrew Jackson, the Tennessee soldier. He should have guessed that was who Blackthorn was talking about. He remembered an account in the
Republican
that stated Jackson’s home was near Nashville. It was the name Rachel that had almost brought the memory to the surface. From pressroom gossip, Jared knew a few things about this woman who was Jackson’s wife.

“Mrs. Jackson,” he went on, “I have to go after the man who—attacked my cousin.”

Clara frowned, glanced sharply at her mistress. Mrs. Jackson asked, “How was your cousin attacked?”

“She was raped.”

The woman turned pale at the forbidden word. “And, as you said, she was then carried off—?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“By whom?”

“A man who claimed he lived in a cabin near here. A man with part of his right ear torn out. He pretended to be a minister. Acted friendly. That was a trick, so he could catch us off guard and steal our belongings—”

Quickly, Jared searched the puncheon-floored bedroom. He spotted the canvas bag sitting in a corner. The Negress noticed his concern. “Everything’s there. We took your clothes out, though. Boiled ’em good ’cause they were crawlin’.”

“Tell me the name of the man,” Rachel Jackson said.

“He called himself Reverend Blackthorn.”

“Exactly what I suspected,” Mrs. Jackson whispered. “That trash—!”

“You know him?”

“Sure we do,” Clara said. “William Blackthorn isn’t any more of a preacher than I’m a broodmare in the judge’s stable. Only way Blackthorn got the title reverend was by givin’ it to himself.”

Jared looked puzzled. “Why would he do that?”

Rachel Jackson said, “Visiting evangelists who hold camp meetings are popular up in Kentucky and Ohio. Blackthorn has a certain talent for eloquence, and if he rides into a hamlet a hundred miles from here and identifies himself as a preacher, it’s doubtful anyone asks to see his credentials from a divinity school. I’m afraid he found that masquerading as a minister could pay handsomely. The evangelist keeps the offering money after expenses are met, you see. Blackthorn leaves several times a year and comes home with enough cash for three or four months. The Nashville clergy have sent out circulars to the larger towns, but it isn’t possible to warn every settlement in two states. I pity the poor people who’ve been taken in by his sham piety.”

“Around here, nobody’s fooled,” Clara said. “Why, just this past year, Blackthorn’s been in the stocks for fightin’ and raisin’ hel—the devil. Like Miz Jackson says—trash.”