Davey Crockett 6 Page 2

  Now here they were, fleeing for their lives, thwarted in their attempt to reach civilization by a wildfire. What started it was irrelevant. Maybe a lightning strike miles distant. Maybe coals from a campfire long extinguished. Who could say? All that mattered to Davy Crockett was survival.

  The wind was dying down, a good omen. The Irishman slowed to spare the sorrel from exhaustion later on. He was about to open his mouth and yell for Flavius when Becky stirred and gazed fondly at him.

  “Thanks for saving my life, Mr. Crockett.”

  “Consarn it, girl. How many times must I tell you to call me by my first name?” Davy patted her raven hair, then chuckled. “Saving damsels in distress comes naturally to us knights in shining armor. Haven’t you ever heard tell of Ivanhoe?”

  Becky’s face was blank. “Ivan-who?”

  Davy let it drop. The child was too young to have heard of Sir Walter Scott, or the sensation Scott’s stories had created on both sides of the Atlantic just a few short years before. Davy had never read any of them himself. He tended to treat books as he would the bubonic plague. They were an embarrassing reminder of the all-too-few years he had spent going to school, and how little he had managed to learn during those years. It was largely thanks to an aunt of his, an avid reader, that he knew about Scott and Ivanhoe.

  “My mother says we can never thank you enough for all you’ve done for us,” Rebecca said in her clipped, precise English.

  “Shucks, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” Davy responded. Or, as Flavius would have it, the wrong place at the right time.

  It was strange, Davy mused, how life worked out sometimes. For weeks on end Flavius had insisted they quit the gallivant and light a shuck for home and hearth. If Davy had heeded him, if they had gone back sooner, odds were that Heather and her daughter would be dead, or, worse, under the iron thumb of Alexander Dugan.

  A crackling noise signaled that the flames were gaining again, owing to the fickle wind. It gusted from the southeast now, the sheet of fire advancing in a solid wave of red and orange. He prodded the sorrel into full flight.

  Just then the wind shifted once more. Blustery bursts pushed the conflagration in a wide arc that looped around the Tennessean and the child, threatening to cut them off. Becky cried out as flames more than six feet high swept toward them. Davy slanted to the right, seeking to avoid being encircled, but the persistent wind had a will of its own. Sizzling flames spread in a wide front, barring his path.

  A narrow gap remained. Once it closed, they would be trapped. Davy cut the reins and barreled toward the opening. They were nearly there when the sorrel slowed, upset by the intense heat and the racket. Davy flailed his legs and pumped his arm, but it did no good. The sorrel simply refused to brave the scorching tempest. In frustration, Davy slammed the stock of the rifle down.

  Whinnying stridently, the sorrel plunged into the closing gap. Fire licked at them on both sides. Searing but brief agony lanced up Davy’s legs. Another heartbeat, and they were ahead of the wildfire again, though by only a few yards.

  Fingers of flame leaped high, slashing at the animal’s hindquarters. It was enough to inspire the sorrel to put more distance between it and the fire. Gradually, bit by bit, they covered enough ground to be temporarily safe.

  Davy wanted to let the sorrel rest, but it would be unwise. He held to a brisk pace for more than a quarter of a mile, until Heather Dugan turned, saw her daughter in his arms, and promptly drew rein. Flavius imitated her, his surprise equally apparent.

  “What the dickens? Where’d her mare get to?”

  The last Davy had seen of it, the horse was struggling to stand after snapping a leg in the prairie dog burrow. He had not witnessed the gruesome outcome, which was just as well. There had probably not been enough left of the mare to identify it as a horse. In reply, he shook his head.

  “Damnation. That’s a shame,” Flavius said. It wasn’t that he had grown fond of the animal. He was thinking that now it would take longer to reach St. Louis.

  The mother kneed her bay alongside the sorrel. “Here. I’ll take over,” she offered, and switched Becky to her own saddle. Grime streaked Heather’s features, and sooty black smears dirtied her hair and clothes. She was a far cry from the vision of beauty she customarily presented.

  Davy studied the wildfire. The wind had blown the westernmost edge back in on itself, resulting in a backfire that had brought the writhing fiery serpent to a stop. On that front, at least. Far to the south and the north the plain still burned.

  “What do we do next?” Heather asked.

  Their choices were limited. Traveling due east was out of the question. Even if the fire dwindled, hot pockets would persist for days. Swinging northward was likewise impractical. Since that was the compass point that had spawned the inferno, common sense told Davy that they would encounter nothing but scorched earth for countless miles. Their best bet, he figured, was to ride to the south. Eventually the flames would die out and they could continue to the Mississippi. So that was what he proposed.

  “Fine by me,” Flavius immediately remarked. “Let’s get going.” Any delay, however small, he resented. After weeks on end of wandering just for the sake of satisfying the Irishman’s craving for adventure, his desire to see Tennessee again eclipsed all else.

  The rest of the day was uneventful. They stayed away from the fire, and it obliged by not coming toward them. The prevailing breeze coaxed it steadily southward. By evening Davy could no longer see the leading border of blackened land, even when he stood in the stirrups. The flames had outdistanced them.

  Camp was made for the night in a gully that sheltered them from the bracing air. Davy and Flavius took turns keeping watch. Heather insisted on taking a turn, but Davy let her sleep. She had lived through a virtual nightmare the past few days; she needed all the rest she could get.

  First light found them in the saddle. Breakfast consisted of the last of their jerked venison. To quench their thirst, Davy collected dew by spreading out a blanket, then wringing it over their coffeepot. Most went to the horses. Without their mounts, their prospects of reaching St. Louis were slim.

  The grass to the east had been charred to cinders. Hot spots were frequent. Noon came, and still they detected no sign of the end of the burnt belt. Davy was constantly on the alert. He did not say anything to the others, but he was worried. Every mile took them deeper into the grassland, deeper into the realm of the unknown, deeper into country teeming with hostile tribes and savage beasts.

  Who knew what might happen?

  Two

  By the middle of the afternoon Flavius Harris wanted to scream. Every mile they covered without being able to turn east added to his irritation. Circumstance forced them to go farther and farther south, ever farther from where they had cached their canoes, ever farther from the river that was their link to St. Louis.

  Never in his wildest dreams had Flavius imagined a fire could lay waste to so much land. Mile after mile lay black and blistered, smoke rising from sections that still smoldered. He began to fret that the fire had gone clear to Texas, that it would be a coon’s age before he set foot on his homestead again, that by then Matilda would have thrown all his belongings into the trash heap and taken herself a new man.

  Then things got worse. During the previous night the blustery winds had sent the flames to the southwest. Now Davy and the others were compelled to swing almost due west to go around, adding to the delay.

  Flavius fidgeted and fumed. He made up his mind that if Davy ever asked him to go traipsing off on another gallivant, he would shoot himself in the foot so he’d have a valid excuse to say no.

  Along about three o’clock, Davy decided that enough was enough. He turned east. But as soon as the sorrel stepped onto the blackened shreds of grass, it acted up. Shying and nickering, it refused to go farther. Heather’s mount would not even come close to the burnt area.

  Flavius was overjoyed to discover that his animal was not bothe
red in the least by the acrid stink or the tendrils of smoke and soft hissing. He could, if he was so inclined, go on alone and wait at the Mississippi for the others to catch up. But he could not bring himself to abandon them. Also, the notion of being alone in the midst of the wilderness downright petrified him.

  They continued westward. After another hour, they were able to forge to the south again. Davy considered it just their dumb luck that the wind, which usually issued from the northwest, had been blowing out of the north-northeast when the wildfire broke out.

  Twilight caught them in the open, with no water nearby. While Flavius tethered the horses, Davy gathered grass, took the flint and steel from his possibles bag, and soon had a small fire going. Small, because at night the glow from a campfire could be seen from far off and he did not care to advertise their presence to any unsociable Indians who might be in the general vicinity.

  Davy hunted for game for more than an hour but came up empty-handed. The fire had killed or driven off every last creature. There were no rabbits, no snakes, nothing. A few pieces of pemmican sufficed for supper.

  A quiet night ended in a cold dawn. A little coffee was left, which Davy rationed to make it last longer. Flavius was as grumpy as a bear just out of hibernation, while Heather complained about needing a bath.

  Only little Becky did not grouse. She greeted each of them with a warm smile and kind words. They could take a lesson from her—and from all youngsters, Davy reflected as he assumed the lead. Children naturally took setbacks in stride, more so than adults, who were supposed to be more mature.

  Toward the middle of the morning, Davy was lost in memory, recollecting the last time he had gone bear hunting with his prized hounds. Of all life’s pastimes, of all a man could do, he most enjoyed taking his rifle and coon dogs and heading into the hills or the deep cane after bruins. An uncle with a lick of education once called it his “abiding passion,” which was as good a way as any of describing how he felt.

  Davy made no bones about it. First and foremost, he was a hunter. He always had been. Ever since he was knee-high to a calf, roaming the timber and swampland with a gun in hand thrilled him as nothing else could. Hunting was in his blood, in his bones.

  It had gotten him into no end of trouble when he was a boy. All because he had the habit of treating himself to days off from school so he could hunt. His brothers had covered for him, telling the schoolmaster he was sickly. But one time he overplayed his hand.

  It happened that an older boy had taken to picking on him, and pushing him, and doing what bullies generally do. So he had lain in wait for the culprit in a patch of bushes. When the bully came along, out Davy sprang to give him salt and vinegar. He had clawed the boy’s face all to a flitterjig, and won the day.

  But since the boy was bound to tell the schoolmaster, who was partial to a hickory switch always propped in a corner of the schoolhouse, Davy elected not to go to school the next day. Or the next. Or the next. He had started to believe he could go on deceiving both his folks and the schoolmaster forever, when the latter played dirty—he wrote a letter to Davy’s father.

  That did it. The wrath of the Almighty descended on the Crockett cabin. Incited by a few horns of liquor, Davy’s pa warned him that if Davy did not go to school the next day, there would be hell to pay.

  Any boy with a lick of sense would have gone. Davy knew that. He knew what was best. Which made it harder to explain exactly why he went against the grain. For the very next morning, as promised, there stood his pa, righteous wrath incarnate. “Off you go,” his father commanded. And off Davy went—in the opposite direction.

  His father snatched up a switch and gave chase. For more than a mile Davy held his own. Then he hid, and soon his father went huffing and puffing by, like a steam boiler about to burst.

  Unwilling to go to school, and even more unwilling to be beaten, Davy took the only course he felt was open to him. He ran away from home, hiring on as a cattle drover on a drive to Virginia. For more than two years he made do as best he could, often with little more to his name than the clothes on his back and few coins in a poke. And all because he would rather hunt than learn his ABCs.

  A snort by the sorrel brought Davy’s idle musing to an end. Glancing up, he saw an enormous basin to his left and moved to the rim. Below was the same buffalo herd that had nearly trampled him to death. Or so he assumed, since there had been no trace of any other.

  They were all dead.

  Apparently, the herd had stampeded into the north end of the basin, down a gradual incline, and come to a stop. Probably, at the time, they had been well in front of the fire. Being tired and hungry, they had milled about, grazing.

  Down there they could not see the wall of flame creeping closer, ever closer. From the evidence, the wildfire had raged right up to the north rim, then along the east edge and around to the south. The grassy slope had given the hungry flames access to the basin floor. Trapped, the bison had sought a way out, but only to the west was the prairie untouched, and the west side of the basin was a sheer wall more than ten feet high.

  At its base, the fire caught them. They had scrambled madly to get out, their hooves leaving deep gouge marks in the dirt wall. No doubt many had been crushed in the press of heavy bodies. The thick, lush grass, so sweet to their taste, was the instrument of their destruction. Dry as tinder, the whole bottom of the basin had ignited, roasting the bison alive.

  Davy looked down on a jumbled mass of burnt carcasses. Skulls and rib cages littered the ground. A few of the great beasts had not been entirely consumed. Charred patches of hide and rotting meat clung to darkened skeletons. The reek of burnt flesh was overpowering. Covering his mouth and nose with a hand, Davy rode off.

  No one said anything. Becky averted her eyes. Heather showed no emotion. Flavius, though, lingered, searching for a carcass worth eating. As famished as he was, he would settle for a lump of partially cooked flesh. But none of that incinerated mass appeared appetizing enough. It was either too burnt or too putrid.

  As Flavius nudged his horse on, he gazed skyward to note the position of the sun and spied large birds circling overhead. Buzzards. Not many, but that would soon change. Vultures had an uncanny knack for knowing when a feast was handy. He toyed with the idea of shooting one for supper, but he did not lift his rifle. Buzzard meat was the most godawful any man ever ate.

  The sun climbed to its zenith and commenced its descent. Flavius mopped his brow, commenting to no one in particular, “This will learn me to buck my wife.”

  Becky faced him. She was riding behind her mother, her arms around Heather’s waist. “How’s that, Mr. Harris?” she politely asked.

  “My missus warned me not to go on this trek,” Flavius informed her. “She boxed my ear, and told me the only reason I was going was to get out of work. There was this stump that needed pulling, and a field that needed plowing. And the chicken coop leaked something dreadful.”

  “In other words,” Heather said, “your wife knows you well.”

  Flavius nodded. “She was as right as rain, ma’am. I hankered for some time to myself. Figured a short gallivant couldn’t hurt none. So I packed my bag and cut out, Matilda giving me the evil eye from the doorway.”

  “You must love her a lot.”

  The statement so shocked Flavius that his mouth dropped open. No one had ever accused him of that before.

  Heather grinned at him. “No need to act so surprised. You talk about her all the time, and no man would unless he was profoundly in love.”

  “Love, is it?” Flavius countered. “I wish I’d known sooner. I wouldn’t have been so upset all those times she walloped me on the noggin with her frying pan.” He tapped a spot where she had hit him shortly before he left. “Maybe you have something there, though. If lumps are a sign of affection, then I’m up to my neck in romance.”

  The mother grew somber. “Be thankful you have a woman who cares for you. Both of the men I loved are gone, and I doubt I’ll be smitten by Cupid a thi
rd time.”

  “You never know” was Flavius’s philosophical reply. “A pretty woman like you is bound to attract more menfolk.”

  “Oh, that’s never been a problem,” Heather conceded. “The trick is to attract the right kind of man. Drunks and women-beaters and the like, I can do without.” She sighed loudly. “I used to think that true love was as common as sand on a beach, but now I know different. It’s a treasure, as rare as precious gems, as pure as the finest gold. When a person finds it, they should hold on to it for all they are worth. Relish every moment of happiness, because we never know when fate will deprive us of it.”

  Flavius opted to change the subject. “I’ve been meaning to ask. With your stepfather gone, who takes over his business empire?”

  “Not me, if that’s what you’re thinking. Alex had two sons who will likely fight for control. They’re both chips off the old block, mean and spiteful and money-hungry.” Heather stared eastward. “Frankly, I doubt my stepfather even mentioned me in his will.”

  “So what will you do? Leave St. Louis?”

  “I have relatives in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love, it’s called. Sounds like a real nice place to raise a child. And at this point in my life, rearing Rebecca properly is more important than anything else. I want her to have a chance at the happiness that has eluded me.”

  Becky patted her mother’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter where we live. Just so I’m with you.”

  Davy Crockett had been listening with half an ear. Over a shoulder he remarked, “My grandma used to say that when life is treating us poorly, the best medicine is some tincture of time.”

  “Time heals all wounds. Is that it?” Heather responded. “I’m sorry, Davy. But there are some hurts that never heal, not if we live an eternity.”

  That put an end to their conversation for a while. Davy paralleled the burnt expanse, marveling at how the ground continued to give off smoke so long after the fire had gone by. It was well past noon when a stiff breeze from the southeast heralded the appearance of a slate-gray cloudbank.