Davey Crockett 6 Page 4

  That ought to count for something, Flavius thought. A year or so of no aggravation would be nice. A year of peace and tranquility, where Matilda didn’t nag him, where the cabin did not need any fixing up, and his in-laws did not pay a visit. A year where the crops grew themselves, the cows milked themselves, and ale at the tavern was always on the house.

  “What happens if we can’t find our horses?” Becky asked.

  “We will,” Davy said. Sometimes the girl was too inquisitive for her own good. It was better if she had no inkling of the nightmare they were in store for.

  The rain tapered to a drizzle. To the southwest a rent split the clouds and a dazzling sunbeam penetrated, sparkling like a column of fireflies. A golden glow suffused the clouds around it, lending the scene an angelic aspect.

  Becky cooed like a dove. “Isn’t that pretty?”

  Davy was more interested in locating the horses. The rain had melted much of the hail, but the ground was empty of tracks. Not so much as a scuffmark to give him a clue. Cradling Liz in the crook of his left elbow, he roved in a loop to the southwest. “Keep your eyes skinned,” he said. “There should be some sign.”

  “My toes are all squishy,” Becky commented.

  “If you feel a chill, you let me know,” Heather advised.

  The last thing they needed was for the child to catch her death. Davy wished he could get a fire going to warm her, but there was nothing on hand to burn. The grass would not dry out for hours.

  Which reminded Davy of the time. It was late afternoon. In three or four hours the sun would set. They had no food, no water, no kindling. Unless they stumbled on another wash or gully, they would spend the night exposed to the blustery wind. By morning they would be chilled to the marrow and hungry enough to eat worms. Having gone without before, he could get by. Flavius, too, although he would grumble to high heaven. But what about Heather and Becky? How well would they hold up?

  “Look there!”

  Becky was pointing to the west where a four-legged form was silhouetted against the sky. Davy squinted but could not determine whether it was a horse, a buffalo, a bear, or God-knew-what. “We’ll take a look-see,” he announced.

  The girl smiled, then sniffled. Gamely, she limped along at her mother’s side, the two hand in hand.

  The sight made Flavius more upset. In his opinion, suffering should be doled out to those who earned it. Scoundrels, for instance, bandits and murderers and their ilk, they were the ones who should be afflicted, not decent folk, not innocents like Rebecca Dugan. She had never harmed a soul, yet she was fated to go through life a cripple. Was that fair? Was that right? What sort of God allowed such an injustice?

  Giving a start, Flavius looked around. He had better be careful. Matilda had warned him time and again that puny mortals had no business questioning the Almighty. It wasn’t fitting. Their paltry minds were not able to comprehend the grand mysteries of Creation. To try to do so, to be so brazen, was an affront to their Maker.

  Flavius shook his head to scatter his thoughts. Deep thinking was a habit he had shunned, for his own health. Sometimes it gave him an awful headache. Just as arithmetic did back in school. All that adding and subtracting and dividing had made his head spin.

  The ABCs were no better. One day he had startled Miss Tuttle by raising his hand and asking a question. A question that seemed logical to him. “Why are there twenty-six letters in the alphabet, ma’am? Why not twenty-five? Or twenty-seven? Or fifty? Or seventy-eight?”

  “Each letter corresponds to a sound,” Miss Tuttle had answered.

  “But we can make more sounds than there are letters.” To prove his point, Flavius had swelled out his chest and croaked like a bullfrog, not once but several times, then said proudly, “See? How come we don’t have a letter for that?”

  Half the class nearly busted a gut laughing. The other half rolled on the floor or were doubled over their desks. As for Miss Tuttle, she brayed until she had tears coming out of her eyes. It was the last question Flavius ever asked in class.

  “It’s a horse,” Heather declared.

  That it was. Davy recognized the sorrel, grazing by its lonesome. The dun and the bay, evidently, had gone their separate ways, which compounded the task of retrieving them. Anxious to do so before nightfall, Davy broke into a run. “I’ll fetch him,” he said. But it was not to be. For as soon as he was within earshot, the sorrel raised its head, pricked its ears, snorted, and pranced off at a brisk walk.

  Davy ran faster. So did the sorrel. He called out, but the horse ignored him. When he slowed, so did the contrary critter. When he halted, it resumed its interrupted meal. Taking deep breaths, Davy slowly advanced. “It’s all right, big feller,” he said soothingly. “I don’t aim to hurt you. Be a good boy and don’t run off.”

  The horse let him approach within half a dozen steps, then nickered and cantered westward a stone’s throw. Davy should have known. The whole day had been one jinx after another. He would be lucky if he caught the animal by midnight. Calming himself, he moved slowly forward. The sorrel was standing sideways so it could keep an eye on him without having to lift its head, and sure enough, when he was the same distance away as before, it whinnied and trotted to the southwest.

  “Mangy flea-ridden nag.”

  The pattern was repeated so often, Davy was heartily tempted to put a ball into the animal. His patience stretched to the breaking point, he marked the sinking of the sun and the gathering of twilight. Once more he carefully neared his quarry, which had its hindquarters toward him for the first time. He was five feet off when the animal snorted and took a step.

  Davy lunged, grabbing the tail. The sorrel looked back and hiked a rear leg to kick. In two bounds Davy was at the saddle. Grasping the horn, he swung up. The instant he did, the sorrel meekly hung its head, acting like a boy who had been caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Wary of a trick, Davy flicked the reins and turned the horse around. It did exactly as he wanted—no bucking, no biting, no fuss.

  Gazing northward, Davy was appalled to see the plain empty. Intent on catching the horse, he had unwittingly left Flavius and the others far behind. That was soon remedied. Slamming his heels against the sorrel much harder than was called for, he hurried back. At any moment he expected to spot his companions.

  A mile later, Davy wasn’t so confident. He had seen neither hide nor hair of them, and it was now so dark that he could not track them without the aid of a torch. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he bawled Flavius’s name again and again. There was no answer. Baffled, he drew rein and probed the darkness.

  “Now what?”

  ~*~

  Half a mile to the west, Flavius Harris hunkered beside the pitiful pile of partially dry brush he had collected. “Don’t fret,” he assured Heather and Becky Dugan. “I’ll have us warm in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Taking a tinderbox from his possibles bag, Flavius opened it and placed some punk close to the brush. He was partial to bits of dried maple, which he had accumulated on their canoe trip down the mighty Mississippi. Striking his fire steel against a big piece of flint he had brought from Tennessee, he produced sparks. Soon he had puffs of smoke rising from the tinder. Fanning it lightly with his breath, he kindled the brush into flame, then sat back to admire his handiwork.

  They were in a gully that ran from north to south. The east slope was as high as Flavius was tall, the west side half that high. He had not wanted to stop, but Becky had been shivering and chattering like a squirrel having a fit. While Heather did her best to keep the girl from growing worse, Flavius had scrounged for what little dry vegetation there was to be had. He was always on the lookout for Davy, but his friend never showed up.

  Flavius was confident it was only a matter of time. Davy could track a turtle across solid rock. Finding the proverbial needle in a haystack was child’s play for him. All they had to do was sit tight. Presently Crockett would come riding out of the night, and probably scold them for falling so far behind.

>   It was not as if Flavius had planned it. He had been chatting with Heather, hearing her tell about St. Louis, prying her for details of the wild shenanigans for which the city was famous. It had no law, to speak of. But it did boast more taverns, saloons, and sundry dives than any city east of the Mississippi, except maybe New Orleans.

  Heather had been going on about an attempt by the genteel element to bring some order and culture to the city when Flavius happened to glance up and discover that Davy and the stupid horse were gone. He was afraid he had strayed far afield, but by then it was too dark to search for prints, and shortly afterward Becky had taken to shaking something terrible. So when they came across the gully, Flavius ushered them into it. Now here they were, crouched close to a fire that was giving off more smoke than heat. “Any second now it should catch,” he said.

  “I’m so cold,” Becky said.

  “There, there, dear.” Heather held her child to her bosom, stroking Becky’s hair. “You’ll be fine.” Her palm strayed across the girl’s forehead, and Heather stiffened. She looked at Flavius in alarm.

  The Tennessean understood. Becky had a fever, a high fever. And there was not a damn thing they could do. Matilda was knowledgeable about herbs and such, but both she and her herbs were a thousand miles away. Flavius had not brought any with him, since he so seldom felt poorly.

  Hot broth would help. Unfortunately, all their cooking utensils were on the horses. Flavius stood and paced, racking his brain. He had no coat to share, no blankets to cover her with.

  “Flavius. The fire.”

  It was sputtering and hissing, on the verge of going out. Quickly Flavius knelt and blew on the strands and branches still ablaze. The flames had to be coaxed to full life, gently, almost tenderly, as a man coaxed a shy animal from out of its den. By slow degrees the fire grew, the welcome warmth spread.

  Becky leaned so near to the fire that Flavius feared she would burst into flame herself.

  Heather was in the grip of stark anxiety. With an arm over her child’s shoulders, she gulped and locked eyes that bespoke mute appeal on Flavius.

  “I’ll check down this gully for more stuff to burn.”

  He had gone fifty or sixty feet when it occurred to him that he should have left his rifle or a pistol. Then again, he was not venturing far. They would be fine. Roving along the murky, winding gulch, he groped every clump of weeds and each cluster of grass to see if they were dry enough to use. Most were not. He despaired of finding enough to last the night. Then, as he straightened from examining a grassy thatch that had sprouted in a niche, he spotted what appeared to be a row of trees to the west.

  Clambering out, Flavius crawled low. He would move an elbow, pause to look and listen, then move a leg, then pause again. The shapes loomed higher, confirming that they were indeed trees. Here was all the firewood they’d need.

  A slender young cottonwood was on the outer fringe. Once behind it, Flavius rose. There had been a time when he would have blindly bumbled on, setting himself up as a perfect target. But traveling with Davy had taught him a thing or two. Creeping from trunk to trunk, he verified that no hostiles were present.

  He also made a comical discovery. Another uneven line of cottonwoods grew twenty feet or so west of those he was in. Weaving toward them, he felt his left foot sink into clinging mud. Flavius jerked free, only to step in water when he shifted. What he had mistaken for a meandering ribbon of shadow was in truth the poorest excuse for a creek he had ever come across.

  Only a couple of feet in width and a few inches deep, it was likely one of those that flowed only part of the year. Davy had told him about these infrequent waterways, how they were fed by runoff from the Rocky Mountains countless leagues to the west.

  Flavius tried to imagine mountains so high they were crowned by snow twelve months of the year, mountains two to three miles in height, peaks so tall that no one had ever scaled them. He couldn’t. The mountains of Tennessee were the highest he’d ever seen, and most of those were more like hills that had grown too big for their britches. They were rounded at the top and covered with forest, not like the jagged, barren peaks Davy claimed were common in the Rockies.

  There was one place, at the eastern edge of Tennessee, that had the distinction of being the highest in the state. More than a mile high, folks said. But now that he thought about it, that mountain was rounded off like all the others.

  Dipping a hand in the creek, Flavius tested the water. It was rather warm and had an earthy taste, but it would do. How to get some to the girl? He could fill his hat, but he couldn’t carry his hat and his rifle at the same time. And he wasn’t about to leave the gun there.

  He compromised. Ranging among the trees, he picked up enough wood to build a sizable fire, wedging it between his forearms and his chest. The rifle went in his right hand. Thus burdened, Flavius hurried eastward. He planned to get the child nice and warm, leave his rifle with Heather, and come back for the water.

  It had been about twenty yards from the cottonwoods to the gully. Flavius paced off the distance—but no gully. Puzzled, he went another ten paces. Still no gully. Suspecting he had drifted to the south, he hiked fifteen yards to the north. No gully. Completely confounded, he rotated to get a fix on his position by the trees. Only, he couldn’t see them.

  “What the hell?” Flavius said aloud. Had he gotten turned around somehow? A scan of the heavens was of no benefit. Enough clouds were left to hide the Big Dipper, the one constellation he could identify. “This can’t be happening.”

  Fighting a tide of panic, Flavius put himself in Davy’s boots. What would the Irishman do in the same predicament? The answer: walk in ever-widening circles until he found the trees or the gully. Tickled with himself, Flavius started to do so, but first he set a log down to mark where he had started. His delight was boundless when he completed the first and ended up next to the log.

  “Once again,” Flavius said, only this time he walked in a much larger loop. In due course he completed it, or believed that he had, but the log was nowhere around. “It has to be here,” he muttered at the night. The dark made a liar of him. He searched and searched and could not find it.

  “Damn, damn, damn.” Annoyed, Flavius moved at random. Far to the right, far to the left, at sharp angles one from the other. He must have gone twice the distance necessary, yet no cottonwoods, no stream, no gully.

  The notion of being lost and alone set his heart to fluttering. Flavius was not a coward, not by any standard. He had fought bravely in one of the fiercest battles of the Creek War. He had stood by Davy’s side again and again against overwhelming odds. But, like a stallion, he was easily spooked by certain things. Snakes, for one. He despised them, the mere sight being enough to make his skin crawl. Heights were another. Once he had climbed to the top of an enormous tree and nearly fainted when he looked down.

  Becoming lost was another experience Flavius could well do without. He spun this way and that, then commenced running. To one side, to another. Back and forth. In circles. Panting, sweating, he dashed around like a madman. He flung the firewood down, then tripped over one of the logs a minute later when he ran past the same spot.

  So unnerved was he that when he ran past a tree, it was several seconds before the fact sank in. Digging in his heels, he spun and sprinted back. He had blundered on a cottonwood. Grasping it as a drowning man might grasp a bobbing object that would keep him afloat, Flavius willed his nerves to steady. The creek must be close by, and he was thirsty enough to drink it dry.

  Always keeping an eye on the cottonwood, Flavius took five steps in one direction, then five in another, and five in yet another. Inexplicably, the creek was not where it should be. At a loss to explain it, he looked for the rest of the trees and was shocked to learn that the one he had found was the only tree in his vicinity. The rest were nowhere around.

  “I’m going insane,” Flavius said softly. Now he had not only lost track of where the gully was, he had no notion of where the two rows of cottonwo
ods and the creek were. He had lost Davy, lost Heather, and lost Becky. The final insult to his dignity was that he had lost the firewood as well.

  “My pride be damned,” Flavius declared, upset that he was talking to himself but more upset at having no one else to talk to. Throwing his head back, he bawled, “Mrs. Dugan! Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?”

  A coyote did. It yipped long and loud. Flavius hefted his rifle, hoping the varmint would draw closer. As famished as he was, even coyote meat sounded appetizing. Then he was jolted by a disturbing suspicion. What if it hadn’t been a coyote? What if it had been a hostile warrior, signaling others?

  Darting to the tree, Flavius crouched with his back to the slender bole and cocked his long gun. They would not lift what little hair he had left without a struggle. As Davy was so fond of saying, it was root hog or die.

  “Davy,” Flavius whispered. Where in tarnation had Crockett gotten to? Had the hostiles already disposed of him?

  The coyote yipped again.

  Four

  Davy Crockett had been through runs of bad luck before, but none of them, not a single, solitary one, rivaled this latest string. He had recovered the sorrel but could not find Flavius and the others. For hours he crisscrossed the prairie, without result. His fertile imagination leaped to several conclusions: they had become lost and wandered astray; they had been attacked by a grizzly or a pack of ravenous wolves; hostile Indians had taken them prisoner; or, the one he favored, the one he prayed was the case, they had holed up somewhere, in another wash maybe, in which case he would not find them until daylight.

  So, reluctantly, along about midnight, Davy reined up on the lee side of a high knoll. Stripping off the saddle, he securely hobbled the sorrel, and as an added precaution he tied a rope around its neck and the other end around his leg. He would not risk losing the animal a second time. Exhaustion dulled his worry. Curled up in a blanket, he was soon asleep.

  Davy slept fitfully. He dreamed of harrowing clashes with animals and men. One involved a band of Indians who ate human flesh. They had captured him and were dragging him toward a huge black pot filled with boiling water, when he woke up in a cold sweat.