Journey Home Chapter Eight

            The innkeeper’s name was Curius Dentatus Cincinnatus Jones.

            Really.

            Adam Fox stared at the man where he sat on the opposite side of the table.  ‘Curious Dent’ as he liked to be called still looked squirrelly, but Adam understood now that it was mostly an act.  Apparently Dent’s tavern drew more custom than any other in the failing town partly because the patrons liked the show.  Before his Uncle Cincinnatus had decided to trade his eastern home for one in the west, Dent had known the old man well.  As he aged, his mother had often told him they had been cut from the same mold.  So, when he came of age, Dent too headed out west – though by that time it was a bit farther west than his uncle had traveled.  After a stint among the Navajo and Apache where he ran a trading post that flourished for a time, he began to long for the green grass of home.  Coming to Kentucky, Dent found his uncle on his death bed and swore to the old man that he would carry on his legacy.

            Hence the second middle name.

            Adam placed his hand over his cup and shook his head as Dent offered more.  He had already had enough hard cider to make him dizzy, but since he was going to bed and not to trial in a few minutes he hadn’t worried about it.  His sister had just risen and bid them both goodnight, returning to the room the tavernkeeper had given her upstairs.  Sunalei had come alone, with none of her children, leaving them behind in their secret home in the woods.

            Adam feared what that might mean.  If his sister truly thought her husband might be hung, would she not have brought his children to see him one last time?

            Was something going on that he didn’t know about?

            “Well, young man, I think it’s time this old man gets his bones to bed.”

            Adam smiled.  Dent was probably sixty.  The eldest son of Cincinnatus’ elder sister.  He supposed to a man of sixty years, one of thirty-nine might appear young.  For himself, today, he felt ancient.

            Sunalei had told him what she knew of Israel’s predicament.  The Jimson’s son, Little Bear, had returned from the city of Philadelphia to bury his parents on the land they had once owned.  Both had died in one of the city’s many plagues.  He carried their remains, mingled, in a single box.  Before Little Bear’s arrival her husband had received a letter.  Israel and the Jimson’s adopted son had known one another when boys.  Little Bear, now known as Bart, asked Israel to accompany him and to assist in the burial.  Her husband had agreed of course, and she had seen him off.

            Two days later Israel had returned alone, bloodied, and bearing the news that Little Bear was dead.

            Removing her husband’s soiled clothing, Sunalei discovered quickly that he had been wounded.  A ball had passed through Israel’s shoulder barely missing the bone. As she bandaged the wound, he explained that the two of them had been ambushed at the Jimson’s old homestead by a group of white men who had accused them of burning down their house and murdering their sons.  Little Bear had taken a ball in the head, dying instantly.  Israel had barely escaped with his life.

            In spite of that, five days later Sunalei found her husband up and dressed and determined to find the men who had killed his friend.  Even though she had begged him not to, Israel had kissed her and disappeared into the dawning light.

            The next thing she heard was that he was imprisoned and accused of killing the man who had killed Little Bear.

            For all she knew, he had.

            “A penny for those thoughts of yours, son.”

            Adam realized the cider had had more effect than he thought.  “Sorry.  I was considering what my sister told me.”

            “About her husband?”

            “Yes.”  Adam shifted back in his chair.  Though he had known Dent only a few hours, he felt he could trust his judgement.  “What do you think?  Do you think Israel killed this man?  He had, by native standards, every right.”

            The older man leaned on the chair-back opposite him.  “I’ve known that pair for nigh on ten years now.  Your sister and Daniel Boone’s son.  I ain’t never seen them do one thing that a man could consider wrong.”

            “But what if Israel didn’t think it was wrong?”

            “That what you’re going to argue in court?”

            Adam shook his head.  “ I don’t know.  I don’t know that I will get a chance.  Those men I met in that barn tonight were ready to lynch me – just because I am part Indian.  Israel chose to become a native when there was no need, and to marry an Indian woman – to father Indian children.  Their hatred for him must run deep.”

            “The folk in this town were just waiting for a reason.  They hate the boy since he’s Daniel Boone’s son.”

            Adam frowned.  “Why is that?”

            “The way they see it, Daniel Boone deserted them.”  Dent shrugged.  “Sometimes I see it that way too.  Once Boone left, this town died.”

            “And you think they might take that disappointment out on Israel by killing him?  That isn’t rational.”

            “Desperate men ain’t rational.  You should know that by now.”

            “Yes.  Yes, I should.” Adam rose to his feet and was surprised when he staggered.  “What was in that cider?” he asked.

            Dent’s lips twisted with a grin – and it was a wicked one.  “Old family recipe.  Brown Thunder, Uncle Cincinnatus used to call it.”

            “More like brown lightning….” Adam laughed.  “I seldom drink.  It seems that it is a wise choice.”

            “You need help up the stairs?”

            Before he could answer they were both startled by a heavy rapping on the tavern door.  Dent frowned.  It was well into the new day – three o’clock in the morning at least.  “We ain’t open!” he shouted.  “Go away!”

            “You got that Injun in there?” a rough voice demanded.

            “Ain’t no one here but the mice and they’re asleep!” Dent answered as he signaled for Adam to get down behind the table where he would be out of view of the windows. 

He did so awkwardly.

“Open up, you crazy old coot!  We got torches.  You want we should burn the place down?”

“That’d be a crime!” the older man shouted back.

“Harboring a killer is a crime too!”

Dent glanced at him.  Adam shrugged. 

“I ain’t got no killer in here!” he answered back.  Then, in a whisper he added, “Head up the stairs, son, to the attic.  There’s a bolt hole there ain’t never been found.”

“You’re lying, old man,” came the voice from outside.  “My men saw that Injun come here yesterday.  Now send her out!  Ain’t one of them can be trusted.  There’s two more boys been taken tonight!”

Adam had started to move.  Now he froze.

Her?

With sickening horror he realized the truth – the men were not after him, but his sister.  Rising to his feet, Adam reached across the table and caught Dent by the arm.  “They want Sunalei.  Take her!  Get her out of here.  I’ll hold them off.”

“Son, you can hardly hold your head up.  I ain’t leaving you.”

“My sister is a mother.  She has children who need her.  I am alone.  There is no one who depends on me.  You must save her.  Quickly!  There is no time.”

“Adohi?  What is going on?”

He pivoted to find Sunalei on the stair.  She was wearing only her chemise, and her long dark hair flowed across its shoulders.  First stumbling into and then rounding the chair, Adam went to her.  “Dent will take you upstairs to a secret place where you can hide,” he told her.  “You must go!  Now!”

The voice of the men outside had fallen silent, but the noise of their rapping had turned into a steady hard thump that was repeated at regular intervals.  They meant to break in the door.

“No!  I cannot lose you as well,” she protested.  “They will kill you and Israel!”

“Sunalei.  I am a lawyer.  A man of some importance who is known in many places.  They cannot simply kill me.”

It didn’t sound convincing, even to him.

“Brother, no….”  Her fingers found his face.  “I only now have you back.”

“I will see you again.  And Israel will be with me.”  There was another thump, this time answered by a resounding crack.  “Now, go!  There is no time.”

Dent had come up beside them.  Adam placed her hand in the keep’s.  Sunalei, weeping openly, kissed her brother on the cheek and then turned and fled up the stairs.  Adam heard the door of the bolt hole close tightly just as the wood splintered and gave way.

Steeling himself, he turned to face the angry mob that poured into the tavern.  When the men saw him, they stopped.  Several of them were the same ones who had been in the barn.  One of them, an angry obviously intoxicated man of about forty with sandy hair and a long, aquiline nose, pointed at him.  “I told you.  I told you he was one of them.  It’s that uppity Injun that thinks he’s a white man.”

Advancing toward them slowly, Adam did his best to hide his own rather dubious state.  He rose to his full height and affected the persona he often wore in court – one of complete confidence. “You men are drunk.  I would advise you to leave this personal property before the owner decides to press charges.”  He cast his gaze at the door.  “And charges you for damages.”

“If old Dent knows what’s good for him, he’ll sit on the jury and vote for you to hang!  Ain’t that right, Simon?” someone shouted from the back of the crowd.

“Where’s the woman?” another called.  “Bring her out!”

“My sister isn’t here,” Adam said coolly.  “I sent her to a place of safety.”

“Your sister?” Simon repeated. 

“Yes.  I came here to represent her husband in a court of law – ”

“So you’re the lawyer Boone sent for?  An Injun?”

“This is America!,” Adam shouted, loosing his temper at last.  “Indians are entitled to due process under the law.”

“Process this, redskin!” he heard someone cry.

There was a curious sound; a whistle not like a man makes, but like an arrow flying through the air.

Then a fire in his head.

And darkness.

~

 Darkness, and a great deal of pain.

Adam moaned as he returned to consciousness. 

“This ain’t exactly what I intended when I had Sunalei send you that letter,” a voice remarked with wry amusement.

Adam shifted his head.  Regretted it.  And then moved again so he could look up at the speaker.  It was a man, a little younger than him, with pale blond hair near white going whiter at the temples.  The man’s lightly-tanned skin was bruised where he had been struck with some blunt object on his temple, but otherwise he looked sound.

“Welcome home, Adohi,” Israel Boone said as he offered him his hand.

Adam didn’t move.  “It’s been a great many years since I have heard that name.”

“It’s yours, ain’t it?”

“Not anymore.”  Shifting gingerly, Adam locked his fingers in the other man’s and allowed Israel to pull him to his feet.  As the room began to spin, he felt his golden skin turning green.  “I think I’m going to be ill.”

“Ain’t no room in here.  If you lose your supper, we’ll eat it for days.”

“Just let me sit down,” Adam said as he dropped onto a flea-infested cot. 

Arms crossed over his linen shirt, Israel studied him for a minute.  “You been drinkin’, barrister?”

“A gift from my host,” he explained, placing a hand to his head.

The other man laughed.  “Not old Curious Dent?”

Adam glanced at him.  He nodded.

“Criminetly!  Here I thought you educated university types were smarter than that.”  Israel rose and returned shortly with a filthy rag that had been dipped in tepid water.  “Here, put this on your head.”

That hurt too, but after a moment it actually calmed the steady thump in his head.  “Did you ask me out here just to insult me?” he replied a moment later.

“Sure enough did.”  Israel’s smile had developed over the years into an uncanny imitation of his father’s.  The other man laughed, and then sobered quickly as he took a seat opposite him.  “Is Sunalei all right?  She talked about stayin’ with Dent.”

“She was there.”  Adam held up a hand to calm him.  “And yes, she is safe – for the moment.  Dent is holed up with her in his bolt-hole.”

“That old man has enough squirreled away up there to survive Noah’s flood,” Israel sighed with relief.  “Still, knowin’ Sunalei, she’ll won’t stay put long.”

“She is worried about you.”

Israel leaned back against the wall.  “She’s got a right to be.  When we sent for you, I thought there was a chance.  I’d heard you were in Lexington and knew you could get here in time.  I’m sorry now we did.”

“Why is that?  Because I am a drunk Indian?”

Israel laughed.  “No.  Because now they will probably hang you too.  These men ain’t interested in justice.  They ain’t even interested in vengeance.  They just want every Indian left in the territory dead.”

“Did you kill this man, the one who killed Little Bear?”

“You asking as my friend, or as my attorney?”

Adam shifted the cloth to the spot where the flung stone had struck his forehead and wiped away a trail of blood.  “Both.”

“I wanted to.  To be honest, I went there to.  But Pa’s words kept comin’ into my head.  The law’s all we got to keep men from becomin’ animals.”  Israel shook his head.  “I don’t want to be an animal.”

“What happened then?”

“I’m not rightly sure.  I remember standin’ there, lookin’ at him.  The next thing I knew I woke up with a bloody knife in my hand and Peter Keller was dead.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yep.”

“So we can’t prove you didn’t do it through eyewitness testimony.  Can they prove you did by the same means?”

“Did anyone see me slit his throat?  Heck, no.”

“Does anyone claim they did?” he asked quietly.

Israel shrugged.  “That’s a different story.  Half a dozen maybe.”
            “Half a dozen!  Eyewitnesses?  But no one tried to stop you?  What’s their excuse?”

“Ain’t got one.  Don’t need one.”  Israel rose and walked to the window.  Taking hold of the bars he stared out.  “Even when Pa was here, Boonesborough was a wild place.  He always had trouble controllin’ the settlers.  When he left, somethin’ died – its spirit.  Maybe theirs too.”

“A town can’t just be lawless.  What about the officials?  What about your constable?  There has to be a judge.”

“There is.  One man.  Constable, judge, and jury.   His name’s Keller too.”

“Don’t tell me, the dead man was his brother.”

“Nope.  His son.”

Adam found himself wishing for another mug of Brown Thunder.  Anything to numb the pain exploding in his head.  “We have to get the trial moved to another venue.”

“Venue?”  Israel’s pale eyebrows arched.  “What’s that?”

“Another town.  Where the people of the jury will be fair and impartial.  Somewhere like Lexington.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Injun,” a familiar voice remarked.

Adam spun to find Simon Keller had entered the small brick building they were confined in.  Adam walked straight up to the bars, gripped them and faced him down.  “I demand that you release me.”

“That’s mighty brave of you, Injun, demanding anything.”

“I have done nothing wrong.  Release me.”

“Oh, you done plenty wrong.  You’re gonna stay right where you are until tomorrow morning after this one is hung.”  Simon indicated Israel with a nod.  “Then we’ll hear your case.”

“What are the charges against me?”

“Being drunk.  Breaking into an establishment and threatening the tavern-keeper.”  Simon Keller brought his face close to the bars.  “Being born an Injun.”

“No jury will convict me on that.”

Keller pointed to his own chest.  “This one will.  And there ain’t a man in the state who will help you.  We’ve had enough Injun killings in these parts.  It’s time we do the killing.”

“Then you’ll be just as much of a murderer as the man who killed your son,” Adam snapped.

Keller’s hand shot through the bars and caught him by the collar.  “An eye for an eye.  Ain’t you ever read the Bible, Injun?  I kill the man who killed my boy, it ain’t murder.  It’s righteousness!”  And with that Simon Keller shoved him so hard that Adam fell to the cell floor.

A moment later, as the door slammed shut behind the enraged man, Israel loped over and lifted Adam up.  Brushing off his coat, he asked him, “That an example of how you perform in court?”

“Oh no,” Adam said, growing hot.  “I am only just beginning….”

Israel stared at him a moment as if deciding whether or not to voice what he was thinking.

“What?  What is it?” Adam asked.

“You ever read Machiavelli?”

The barrister was startled.  “Yes.  Have you?”

“Mingo gave me a copy of The Prince.  That the one you read?”  When Adam nodded that he had, Israel added, “What’d you think of it?”

“The end justifies any means to attain it?  As a lawyer I find the concept abhorrent.”

Israel wrinkled his nose.  It still had one or two of the freckles Adam remembered from his childhood.  “I was afraid you were goin’ to say that.”

“What are you planning?  Not a jail-break.  Israel!”

“Me?  Nah.  The only thing I’m plannin’ is to get a good night’s sleep.” 

Israel walked to the cot he had occupied earlier and flopped on it.  Adam waited a few moments and, when his old friend said nothing more, did the same.  Minutes later as his eyes closed he heard Israel add softly.

“But if you hear a whistle in about an hour, followed by two wolfs’ calls, I’d suggest you set aside your high ideals and duck.  And then run like Hades when the wall comes down.” 

~

 Curius Dentatus Cincinnatus Jones shifted the square portion of the wall that served as a door into his bolt-hole out and away and listened.  Everything seemed quiet.  He hesitated to allow the young woman he kept safe there to follow him, fearful that the men who had attacked his establishment would have left someone behind to watch.  Against Sunalei’s protests, he replaced the square trapping her within, and then cautiously made his way down the stair into the common room of the tavern.

It was a disaster.

The tables and chairs had been overturned.  His bottles broken.  Near every window had at least one pane missing and a good many of his stores had been either deliberately ruined or taken.

The message was loud and clear.

His mother had hated Indians.  She had good reason to.  Indians had murdered her family.  But his Uncle had told him that there were good and bad men among both the red and the white, and the one time he had visited Boonesborough as a boy and met Daniel Boone’s friend, Mingo, he had seen what a good red man could be like.

            Dent had never forgotten Mingo.

            This young one, Adam, who had come to help Daniel Boone’s son reminded him of the Cherokee in some ways.  And just like his uncle had told him Mingo always was, it seemed Adam was also a magnet for trouble.  Dent knelt and placed a finger on the floor.  Lifting it, he tested the red liquid he found there with his tongue.

            Yep, it was blood.

            “Pig-headed fool,” he said to no one in particular. 

            Rising to his feet, Curius Dent headed for the door to see what he could do about making it secure.  Just as he reached it, he realized he was too late.  Within the shadows at the back of the common room, a figure stirred.  He looked for his uncle’s blunderbuss, Bessie, but remembered that he had left her in the bolt-hole with Sunalei.  Nonchalantly reaching down – as though he had an itch to scratch – he palmed a good-size board left behind from the mob’s attack and wielded it like a club.

            “Whoever you might be, show yourself!  But be careful, I’m armed!”

            The shadow stirred and the figure walked confidently forward. 

“Good, old man.  Then you can join me on the warpath,” Rebekah Boone said.