Two in the Field Page 28

  No matter. I couldn’t control it.

  Trying not to panic, trying to remember Donaldson’s instructions, I braced myself.

  TWENTY-THREE

  My last recollection was of trees rushing upward. The branches must have eased my fall to the soft loam bordering the lake. I woke up with one foot in the water and blood caked on my face, upper arm, rib cage and abdomen. From an agony of throbbing there, I knew that bones were broken in my right leg. The sky looked brighter than before. I managed to sit up and saw the reason: a three-quarter moon had risen. My pocket watch said three-thirty. Which meant I’d been unconscious several hours. The numbers on the dial swam in and out of focus. Concussion?

  The collapsed balloon and basket were beached nearby. Dragging my right leg, I managed to crawl over and untangle several lines from bushes, then I shoved the whole mass into the water; it floated easily and began to drift off toward the center of the lake.

  “Hallo, hallo,” a voice was saying.

  I looked up. Sunlight in my eyes was filtering through greenery. A very fat man wearing a black robe had pulled back a branch so that he could see me. His hair was yellow and his eyes a merry blue. In his robe and cowl he looked like a Nordic Friar Tuck.

  “I stopped to fish here or I’d never have heard your groans,” he said, “even so near the road.”

  “What road?” I tried to bring his face into sharper focus. “Who are you?”

  “Brother Ambrose.” He bowed slightly. “I was traveling the road to White Sulphur Springs, where I obtain our medicinal water. And you …?”

  I started to tell him my name, then checked myself. “Will Scarlet,” I mumbled.

  “Would you care for me to examine your wounds, Brother Will? I possess some modest skills as a healer.”

  With surprisingly gentle fingers he touched the wound above my eye. When he opened my shirt, I raised my head and saw an oozing, bloody mess above my hipbone. His fingers traced it and moved to the slash on my arm and ribcage.

  “Something ripped you,” he said mildly.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Good clotting,” he remarked. “That’s in your favor.” He pressed gingerly on my ankle, which was now swollen purple. When his fingers probed my leg, I cried out. “Sorry,” he said, “but there’s at least one break. It needs to be set.”

  “I can’t go to a hospital.”

  “Ah, I see.” He sat on his haunches and nodded owlishly. “You needn’t worry on that score. We in the Society do not acknowledge temporal authority; therefore, we naturally eschew doctors appointed by human laws.”

  Given the state of contemporary medicine, I had trouble deciding whether this was good news or bad.

  “I’ll fashion a splint,” he said briskly, “and attend to your wounds.”

  I needed badly to sleep. “Why would you do that?” I said wonderingly

  “We believe that Good Samaritan opportunities are divine gifts.” With closed eyes he moved his fingertips along my throbbing leg, seeming to take in information. “Therefore you are, quite literally, a godsend.”

  He hadn’t pried into my identity. Or asked how I’d been hurt. Or how I’d come to lie in thick brush with no foot-prints or vehicle tracks anywhere around.

  “Who’s ‘us’?” I asked.

  “We simply call ourselves the Society,” he said. “We acknowledge no power before God, and we try to serve others.” He stood up. “Now, Brother Will, shall I take you to our sanctuary?”

  A tremor of anxiety pulsed through me. Morrissey and McDermott would have men looking everywhere. Worse yet, I imagined LeCaron, somehow spared his watery grave, stalking me. The truth was that I feared leaving this place.

  “How many fingers do you see?” Brother Ambrose said when I didn’t answer. He held up his hand.

  “Three.”

  “Hmmm …” he said, and I knew I was wrong. “It’s probable that you’ve bruised your brain. Perhaps you shouldn’t be moved yet. I’ll bring blankets and food. The summer nights are mild and this place is sheltered from the heat of day. I’ll nurse you until you can travel.”

  I found my wallet still buttoned in its pocket, and pulled it out. It bulged with bills from Slack’s big hand and what I’d saved from my wages—over a thousand dollars in all. “I can pay for your services.”

  “We shun monetary rewards,” he said mildly, “and prefer to barter for our worldly needs.”

  “But I don’t have anything.”

  “Don’t fret.” He moved away. “God will provide.”

  Two hours later he was back with blankets and a culinary combination that would become very familiar: fresh fruit, jerked beef and Graham Crackers. While I ate, he wrapped my leg in a cloth saturated with vinegar and salt, then strapped on paddle-shaped slats to serve as splints and keep my knee from bending.

  “We’ll watch for mortification,” he said, swabbing my stab wounds with an evil-smelling lotion.

  “What’s in that stuff?”

  “Soap, sugar, beaver oil and castoreum.”

  It was the beaver oil, I suspected, that stank.

  He handed me a squared-off brown bottle. “Drink some of this each day.”

  I took a swig and gagged. “Home brew?”

  “A tonic from barks.” Smiling angelically, he ticked them off on his fingers: “Willow, poplar, wild cherry, white ash, prickly ash, bloodroot—all chopped fine and cured in whiskey. The customary dose is a teaspoon.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” At least it would warm me during the night.

  Promising to return with plasters to apply externally, he remarked that emetics and herb enemas would also be helpful.

  “No enemas,” I told him.

  The next days passed in a feverish haze. Brother Ambrose bathed my face in the heat of the day, changed my dressings, adjusted my splints, brought food and made sure water was near at hand. I left my leafy concealment only at the urging of bladder or bowel.

  “Aren’t you seen coming here?” I asked, when my head was clearer.

  “You needn’t fear, Brother Will. I tarry at various places along this road, both to fish and to pray. Folks are used to seeing my wagon.”

  That afternoon, while he roasted his latest catch of black bass, I said casually, “I heard people talking on the road, something about a balloon and a robbery.”

  “We brothers rarely hear much of the world,” he said. “I don’t know of any robbery, but a balloon was found recently near the narrows, and a man is feared lost.” His tone was matter of fact, his attention on the fish.

  A man … I wasn’t sure what to make of that. But the location was excellent: it meant that the balloon had drifted all the way across to the interlake area between lakes Saratoga and Lonely, a densely forested area perfect for a man in hiding. No doubt every inch of it was being combed. Through blind luck I’d landed here, by a well-traveled road, where I’d least be expected.

  The trouble was, sooner or later I had to come out.

  Brother Ambrose carved a cane of hickory for me. As my vision and balance returned, and my leg ached less, I learned to hobble around with it. Missing human company, I took to climbing a low elevation and watching the daily flow of excursion steamers, private yachts and fishing boats. Nearby stood Snake Hill, on the southern edge of the lake, about a mile from the township of Stillwater. The Kayaderosseras Mountains loomed in distance, the Catskills beyond them. Each morning I watched eagles soar from the treetops. At night the lights of Saratoga Springs and outlying settlements glowed like jewels in the darkness and made the lake luminous.

  I devoured the day-old newspapers Brother Ambrose brought, but got little satisfaction from them. National news was depressing: unsavory new scandals in the Grant administration; Reverend Beecher’s acrimonious adultery trial in Boston; Mrs. Lincoln’s bitter insanity trial in Chicago. Local items offered nothing on the Club House heist. Old Smoke must have squelched all news of it.

  The big question remained unanswered: Had Slack gotten
away with the money?

  “Do you know the legend of Lovers’ Leap?” Brother Ambrose asked. “It happened right up there on Snake Hill.” The story went that during a war between the Iroquois Six Nations and the Algonquins to the north, a young Algonquin warrior was captured by Mohawk tribesmen and condemned to die the following day by slow impalement. The Mohawk chieftain’s daughter brought him his last meal.

  “Moved by his manly form and heroic bearing,” Brother Ambrose said in glowing Victorian style, “she resolved to save him or share his fate.”

  Pocahontas Syndrome, I thought cynically, listening to him. Suckers for enemies in bondage. An occupational hazard for Native American princesses.

  “Near dawn she stole in and cut the Algonquin’s bonds,” he went on, “but when they reached the lake’s edge, a whoop of alarm went up. Their canoe went shooting over the water, the Mohawks’ cries in their ears. They came ashore here to hide on Snake Hill, but the pursuers were too close. Atop the bluff, the young Algonquin, weak from his battle wounds, screamed his defiance. As the Mohawks notched their bows, the girl’s father gave the command to slay him.”

  Brother Ambrose paused dramatically.

  “And …?”

  “The princess threw herself before him as a shield!” He said it as if this were a surprise twist. “Then, with the Mohawks closing around them, they locked their arms and threw themselves in a terrible fatal descent to the rocks below!

  “A fine tragedy,” he finished contentedly. “Don’t you agree?”

  I mostly thought it was maudlin and corny. Nonetheless, it stuck in my mind, and that night I imagined the heavy splash of the canoes’ paddles, the Algonquin’s defiant challenge, the girl’s pleadings. And found myself missing Cait more than ever. I cursed my helplessness and wondered if she thought I’d vanished again. How could she not? And this time with the colony’s money. I wondered how Andy and Tim were doing. And I thought, too, about Hope and Susy. I missed them. I missed everybody. Had I made the mistake of a lifetime—hell, two lifetimes—in striving to come back here? We were each allotted only so much time. Far too much of mine had been spent alone.

  “You’ve come to resemble us,” Brother Ambrose teased, indicating my bushy whiskers. “If you but manifested the slightest spiritual leanings, I’d recommend you for the Society.”

  Suddenly I saw a way out of hiding. “Could you bring me a robe,” I said, “and a broad-brimmed hat like yours?”

  He smiled. “You wish to judge your appearance before joining us?”

  “I wish to travel,” I said. “How far to the Hudson?”

  “Only some ten miles, but over rough hills.” He shook his head. “You’d have to sit in the wagon bed, I’m afraid. Your splinted leg would fit nowhere else.”

  “I can stand it.”

  “Brother Cecil wishes to obtain more of Dr. Graham’s Crackers,” he said. “And we require fish meal for fertilizer. If you wish, you could accompany us to Albany.”

  We looked like an Amish visiting committee. The brothers manned the driver’s bench; I sat behind in the bed. Brother Cecil was a pale, lumpen individual who reeked of the cabbage soup he drank for “dyspepsia”—which I gathered meant ulcers—and said little the entire trip other than how much he wanted his Graham Crackers.

  Brother Ambrose tried to handle the two-mule team carefully as we set out from Snake Hill, but the pounding of the thin-springed wagon bed sent fiery pangs through my leg. After traveling almost all day across rugged knolls, we arrived at Bemis Heights, where the brothers arranged stable keep for the mules. From there a shuttle buggy carried passengers down the slope to a steamer dock on the broad river. Descending crazily in a series of bounces, I thought it might be my last ride.

  Nobody paid particular attention to the three weird religious types buying tickets. Still, I breathed easier once we were aboard. A mirror in our room gave me the first view of myself since the Club House. I bore a passing resemblance to Haystack Calhoun, a wrestler from my youth, my hair a tangled mess, my beard ragged and overgrown. Next to me the brothers looked almost dapper.

  Traffic on the Hudson thickened as we steamed downriver. At Albany we debarked and set about locating fish meal and Dr. Graham’s Crackers in bulk quantities. The brothers let me pay for it, the only compensation they would accept.

  Back at the terminal I watched them walk up the gangway, robes swaying. Brother Ambrose stood waving from the stern until he was far distant. A true Good Samaritan.

  Maintaining my Brother Will persona, I got my hair and beard trimmed, then took a room at Delavan House near the Albany train station. Being there again was a pointed reminder to stay alert. McDermott had once arranged my shooting outside the Delavan’s entrance.

  I sent off two telegrams. While waiting for replies, I paid a visit to the Merchants Trust Bank on Pearl Street. Its exterior was elegantly fitted with polished wood and gleaming brass. Its interior was hushed, as befit a cathedral of finance. I thought that my robed and hirsute presence would strike a favorable chord there, but I was ignored until I announced that my society was looking to deposit its considerable funds. With comic alacrity I was referred to a paunchy junior officer whose collar was so stiffly starched that I wondered it didn’t slice into his jowls.

  “Yes … sir?” he began tentatively.

  “Brother,” I corrected. “Brother Will.”

  “And you represent …?”

  “Society of the Willow Bark,” I said expansively. “You don’t know of us? Well, it happens we have petroleum lands and are thinking of diversifying our investments.”

  He pulled out a gilt-edged prospectus that detailed the bank’s assets and virtues. It answered one of my questions immediately, for listed among the trustees was John M. Morrissey.

  “Did you say willow bark?” he said.

  “Yes, we drink it as tea. A wonderful tonic for the whole system. Care to order a few cases?”

  “Um, perhaps at a later time. You mentioned petroleum—”

  “Dr. Graham’s Crackers,” I said, “is another foodstuff we venerate. In fact, those two form the basis of our liturgy. Ha! But I’m not here to proselytize. How is Merchants Trust on western territories?”

  He blinked several times. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, we might wish to exchange our petroleum holdings for land where our group could resettle. We’ve had promising reports about the Nebraska and Dakota lands. Do you offer title deeds or stock certificates in communities there?”

  He blinked faster and glanced toward the entrance. “Not any longer.”

  Which answered my other question. They’d obviously taken heat for McDermott’s scam.

  “Well in that case,” I said, “I suppose we must look elsewhere.” I leaned closer. “How much fresh fruit do you eat? Would you care to attend one of our meetings?”

  MR FOWLER

  ANDY PLAYING ST LOUIS NOW

  RETURNING TIM NEBRASKA

  COMING BACK ALONE IN 2 WKS

  It was from Alice Leonard. I hoped her message meant that Tim had decided to go home for good. In any case, Andy, bless his heart, had taken him back. All that the grand family reunion on the Elkhorn lacked was me. I’d been away for over three months, and it seemed much longer.

  I intended to be back very soon.

  “I can’t keep Rupert home,” Mrs. Bodell said over a clatter of framing hammers.

  Rupert? Slack had never told me that one. We stood before her small house on tree-lined Spring Street, in Rochester, where carpenters were busily adding new rooms.

  “Even while fancying things up here with all his new wealth,” she said wistfully, “he still goes out traipsing around the country.”

  She appeared apprehensive as she looked down at my cane. On arriving, I’d removed my splints and bought a suit to replace the robe. But I’d kept the beard.

  “Rupert said that you two hit lucky on a big lottery.” Her tone made it a question. It also conveyed a healthy skepticism regarding her son�
�s activities.

  “Yes, ma’am, we hit real lucky.”

  She sighed. “He’s not in trouble again?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “He told me, ‘Ma, don’t ask him any questions. Just give ‘Frisco Sam’ this parcel when he shows up.’ ”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  She went inside and returned with an envelope. Inside was a draft for $20,000 payable to me from a Rochester bank. I wondered how much Slack had gotten. Our deal was that everything in excess of that amount was his. From the amount of remodeling going on, he looked to have made out okay. Was he riding the cushions now, I wondered, instead of the rods? Probably not.

  “Thanks, ma’am,” I said, and set out up the street, my leg feeling strong, my spirits at their highest point in weeks. I’d been delayed in my mission, but I’d succeeded. I decided I didn’t need the cane any longer, now that I was heading west.

  Noola and Catriona looked considerably different from when I’d last seen them in their drafty house in Minersville, Pennsylvania. Now they were outfitted for travel, warmly but cheaply, in bonnets, overcoats and long plain skirts. Two trunks sat beside them on the busy Scranton platform, their belongings for a new life.

  “Oh, Mr. Fowler, it’s you!” Noola smiled nervously and crossed herself. She hadn’t recognized me with my beard.

  Catriona, seeming infinitely more alive than before, said, “Will we see great buffalo?”

  “Probably be some along the way,” I told her. “Prairie dog villages, too.”

  “And real Indians?”

  “Definitely Indians.”

  That brought giggles as she hid her face in her mother’s skirt.

  I purchased sleeping compartment tickets, which shocked Noola. She’d expected to spend the trip on third-class benches. Leaving the station, she cried a bit. “That was for my time with Jack,” she said, drying her eyes, “but not for that horrible valley. It wasn’t until your wire came that it sank in how desperate I am to put all that sadness behind. God help them, the strikers are turning on each other now. I fear it’s near the end for them.”