Crockett of Tennessee Page 6

  “Then you shall see him, and know for yourself. But first, concerning the money … I have gone to expense and much trouble to purchase this man. The Indians, they like him because he is deaf and dumb, and makes them laugh with his ways. Dieu! It was difficult to buy him free. So it is understood, of course, that I will be paid in good faith, even if his identity should prove other than the brother you seek.”

  “What? I’ll make no such agreement,” John said. “That’s a dotey notion if ever I heard one! I’ll not pay you for somebody that ain’t Jimmy!”

  Beaulieu’s brows shot up. His face went red. “No? Then there is no bargain. Retournez! Go back where you have come from!”

  “Fine with me.” John turned and walked out the door. Will gaped in amazement, then followed.

  He caught up with John at the horses. “What the devil are you doing, John? You going to walk away from here and leave Jimmy?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing out here?”

  “Casting my lots to see how they roll.” He flicked his eyes back toward the trading post. “Like I thought. I believe they’ve rolled the right way. Here comes them sneaking scoundrels.”

  Beaulieu and Fletcher appeared at the door. Fletcher came out. “Mr. John Crockett, don’t go riding off. We’ll do this your way.”

  John nodded. “Take us to Jimmy … if it’s really him.”

  Beaulieu, looking sulky, nodded for the others to follow him. They went around the main trading post building and into the unordered clump of smaller structures behind it. Pigs rooted in a muddy pen nearby, sending out a foul organic stench. In another pen were a couple of horses, one sleek and healthy—apparently a recent trade—the other broken-down and thin, being a longer-term possession of the Frenchman.

  Beaulieu went to a log hut on the edge of the clearing. A barked log about the thickness of a thin man’s leg, barred the door shut. John stopped in his tracks when he saw it.

  “You have Jimmy penned in a hut? Penned like a common critter?”

  Beaulieu frowned. “He has been treated well. Better than by the Indians, I am sure.”

  “Lift that log. Let him free now!”

  Beaulieu pushed the log up and dropped it to the side. He reached for the carved handle—and the door receded from his fingers, yanked open from the inside. A thin, ragged figure burst out, shoved Beaulieu backward onto his rump and darted past him. When he saw the three other men, he stopped, legs spread and crouched, hands extended and ready for battle, and made a guttural, frightened sound in his throat.

  “Lord have mercy, Jimmy!” Will Crockett said. “Lord have mercy, what has become of you?”

  John advanced slowly, hand extended. “Jimmy, Jimmy … it’s John. Your brother. John.” He mouthed the words carefully, looking straight into Jimmy’s face in hope he would be able to read the words he could not hear. There was no question that this was Jimmy Crockett, despite the nearly two decades that had passed since he had last been seen. The face, though lined and weathered and lean, was the same; the hair, though thinning on the top and very long on the sides, was the same dark mop that was common to the Crocketts. Mostly it was the eyes—intense, dark, small, keen—that more than any other evidence told the brothers they had found their missing sibling.

  Jimmy frowned, looking closely at John. His eyes flickered over to Will’s face, back to John’s, over to Will’s again. He straightened, murmured, dropped his hands. John ceased advancing, letting Jimmy study him.

  Beaulieu, meanwhile, had come to his feet. “I’ll hold him for you,” he said, coming toward Jimmy from behind. “He will try to run again.…”

  Will’s expression turned fiery. He looked squarely at Beaulieu. “Stand aside, man, and don’t touch him. If you lay a hand on him, I’ll snap it from your arm. I got good reason to smite you down anyhow for keeping him penned in his own filth!”

  Jimmy detected Beaulieu then and moved away from him. John nodded and smiled, and again held out his hand. “John,” he mouthed. “John … John. It’s me. Your brother John.”

  Comprehension slowly but visibly dawned in Jimmy. He made an odd sound and began to shake. Tears began streaming from his eyes, and he mouthed a word, vocalizing as best he could at the same time. Though garbled, the word came through to John: “Brother.”

  John went to Jimmy and wrapped his arms around him, hugging him close, ignoring the stench of him and the muck that clung to his skin and clothing. Will joined them, and all three brothers wrapped their arms around each other, weeping like children. Fletcher watched impassively, and Beaulieu eyed them like a rat spying from a hole.

  “Well, my friends, I see all are heureux, all are happy, I should say? This truly is your brother, eh? Bon! So now there is the matter of paiement, no?”

  Will broke free and turned toward Beaulieu. He pulled a sack of coins from under his coat and dug out a handful, which he counted in his palm. He flung them on the ground at Beaulieu’s feet. “There’s your money, Frenchman.”

  Beaulieu gathered the coins. “There is only half the agreed amount here!”

  “The other half you lose out of treating our brother like an animal. That’s our bargain, and there’ll be no other.”

  Fletcher came forward. “I’ve got a say in this! I’ll not be cheated out of what I’m due because you’re mad at Beaulieu!”

  “Take what you can get from Beaulieu, then.”

  “No! This is mine, not yours!” Beaulieu said, yanking his handful of coins back against his chest.

  “You always were a cheat and liar, Beaulieu. I’ll have my money, or your topknot!”

  “You want money, take it from them!” Beaulieu waved toward the Crocketts. “It is them who have not kept the accord!”

  Fletcher produced a pistol, which he leveled at Jimmy Crockett. “Give me them coins, or I’ll kill him.”

  John stepped between Fletcher and Jimmy, reached under his coat and pulled out a small flintlock pistol of his own. He thumbed back the lock and aimed the pistol at Fletcher’s chest. “Drop your pistol. I’m grateful to you for helping us find Jimmy, but I believe you’re a lying rogue who’s been in league with the Frenchy yonder from the beginning, and I’ll kill you dead if you don’t drop that pistol. And if I miss, my brother won’t.”

  Fletcher looked at Will. He had drawn out a hidden pistol as well. The Crockett brothers had come prepared.

  Fletcher dropped his pistol. John advanced and picked it up. “I’ll leave it on the trail, where you can find it easy. And now, we’ll be taking our leave.”

  For a long way up the trail, they heard Beaulieu’s voice, cursing in French, very loudly.

  “If we’re fortunate, they’ll argue between theirselves long enough to give us a good start on them before they follow,” Will said.

  “Maybe they won’t follow,” John replied.

  “They’ll follow,” Will said. “Mark my word. They’ll follow.”

  “I ain’t at all certain we’ve handled this the right way,” John said.

  “Neither am I. But we’ve got Jimmy back. That’s what matters.”

  John Crockett raised his head slowly, looking over the top of the boulders that hid him and down onto the darkening trail below. The sun was edging downward in the west, weakening with the waning of day, and the shadows it cast were long. Soon it would be dark, and there would be no point in keeping watch with the eyes; it would be up to ears and instincts then to let the Crocketts know whether Fletcher and Beaulieu had in fact followed.

  Surely they had, or would. Fletcher and Beaulieu did not seem the type to be shortchanged and simply ignore it. But John didn’t expect them to show themselves until after dark. Fletcher in particular could pose a significant threat. He was an experienced and crafty woodsman, more so than either Crockett brother.

  John rose and went back to the camp, where Will was tightening his rifle flint and Jimmy was huddled beside the hidden hardwood fire, which John had built in a recess at the base of rocks, with a
flat stone jutting over the blaze as a cooking surface. Such a fire could hardly be seen except close up, and the slow-burning hardwood put out very little smoke.

  “No sign of them,” John said. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a packet of jerked beef, bit off some and offered another piece to Will, who declined it. John rose then and made the same offer to Jimmy, who grabbed the food eagerly and began devouring it.

  “Jimmy, I reckon you were right hungry,” John said. “How long did they leave you without food, I wonder?”

  Jimmy, of course, could hear none of this, and made no response. John patted his brother’s thin shoulder and went back to Will. “I sit here and see him, but I can’t get it through my noggin that he’s sure enough alive and with us again. It seems a miracle.”

  “Well, I won’t rest easy until we’ve got him far from here,” John said. “Maybe we made a mistake, Will. Maybe we should have give them all the money.”

  “Not after the way they treated Jimmy. No sir.”

  Jimmy rose and came to them. He smiled a smile so broad it seemed it shouldn’t fit on so thin a face. Looking around surreptitiously, he patted his side and made a sound—in a voice too loud given the circumstances.

  “Hush, Jimmy, hush,” Will said, putting a finger to his lip.

  Jimmy didn’t seem to understand. He made the same sound, and patted his side again.

  “I think he’s trying to say a word,” John said. Then to Jimmy, mouthing the words precisely: “What is it? Say it again.”

  He did, and still they did not understand. Jimmy frowned, looked around again, and pulled up his ragged shirt, revealing a small pouch bound around his waist.

  “What the devil is this?” Will asked.

  Jimmy untied the strap and removed the pouch. He tugged its ties open and spilled some of the contents into his palm, making the same sound as before.

  John’s eyes widened. “Is that … Lord a’mercy, Will, is that what I think it is?”

  “If you’re thinking it’s silver, by gum, I believe it is.”

  “Silver … that’s what he’s been trying to say, Will! Silver!”

  Jimmy, having read John’s lips, grinned even more broadly, and nodded with vigor.

  “Where’d you get it, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy put the rough nodules back in the pouch and laid it on the ground, then mimed the motions of digging and hauling.

  “He mined it, Will! By the eternal days, he mined it!”

  “Injun silver!” Will said the words in a tone of awe. “Plain as preaching, it’s Injun silver!”

  “I’ve heard stories about Injun silver mines, hid in the mountains. They say there’s some in Kentucky, and down here too.”

  Will looked squarely into Jimmy’s face and spoke slowly. “Do you know where the mine is? Can you find the silver mine?”

  Jimmy shook his head, and made motions as if tying a knot behind his head.

  “They blindfolded him,” John said. “They must have kept him blinded going to and from it.”

  At that moment they heard a noise in the forest, out in the damp brush, and then a faint click, like that of a rifle lock.

  There was no time for words. John grabbed Jimmy and pulled him to the ground as Will hefted up his rifle. From the forest came a loud crack and a burst of flame. A rifle ball smacked into the tree just behind Will, having passed within a foot of his head.

  “Lord!” Will exclaimed. “I was nigh a dead man that time!”

  “Shoot back!” John yelled.

  Jimmy, who could hear none of this but understood what was going on, moaned and wrapped his arms around his head, shoving his face against the ground.

  Will aimed into the gathering dark and fired. The burst of smoke and fire hammered John’s and Will’s ears, and the powder stench was acrid and hot.

  Out in the gloom, someone had grunted loudly immediately after Will’s shot. It sounded like Beaulieu. There was a mad scrambling, a crashing of brush and breaking of sticks and branches, and then silence.

  “Beaulieu!” John whispered.

  “Yes,” Will replied. “And I believe I’ve shot him, sure as the world.”

  Chapter 8

  The night hours were long and tense. John and Will kept a long, tiring watch, made more difficult by a tendency of Jimmy’s to make sudden and startling noises and movements. Several times the Crockett brothers were certain that Fletcher and Beaulieu were upon them again, but each time that fear proved groundless.

  When the first pink light of dawn spread in the horizon, the Crocketts were confident that their antagonists had been put off. It was possible that Beaulieu was dead. The reaction after Will’s shot into the darkness indicated that, at the least, He had been wounded.

  The three men wolfed down a meager breakfast, mounted, and rode. Still concerned about the possibility, however remote, of being followed, they took a route straight through the forest for the first eight miles, paralleling but avoiding the trail. This slowed their progress very much. After they joined the trail again, they traveled with great caution and frequent hiding, and made only another five miles before darkness forced a halt for the night.

  The night passed without incident, and when the Crocketts went on the next morning, they had no more fear of pursuit. Snow began to fall, and by noon was, in Will’s description, “shoe-mouth deep.” The temperature rose above freezing for only a few minutes in the height of the afternoon, so there was no significant thawing of the hardening ground.

  The farther they went from the Indian country, the more interested Jimmy seemed to be in his surroundings. John and Will found him fascinating to watch. And when by the light of the next night’s fire they saw him weeping silently, yet smiling at the same time, they were moved. Clearly Jimmy Crockett had never expected to know freedom again, and was joyful it had come.

  When they finally reached John Crockett’s borrowed cabin in Jefferson County, they were greeted in near silence by John’s children, who were overwhelmed by a cautious curiosity about Jimmy. The smallest ones eyed their strange uncle from a distance, while the older ones came close and extended their hands for a shake. Jimmy chortled and made peculiar noises, putting his hand out to touch their faces and laughing. As best anyone could figure, what had him entertained was the novelty of seeing Crockett family traits in so many new faces.

  David was among the recalcitrant ones, hanging back from Jimmy. He edged over to his father. “That’s my uncle Jimmy? Really and truly?”

  “Yes, boy, really and truly. Look at him! Looks just like your brother Wilson in the eyes, don’t he! It’s a happy day, David. Jimmy’s back among his kin, back where he belongs.”

  David grinned, and screwed up his courage. He walked up to Jimmy and put out his hand. “I’m David,” he said. “I’m tickled to meet you.”

  Jimmy bent over and looked him in the face, very closely, and laughed again. Then he put his hands under David’s arms and picked him up, studying him up and down with a big grin on his face. David, slightly alarmed, dangled in space, looking pleadingly at his family. But they merely laughed. No one came to his aid.

  “I believe he particularly likes you, David,” Will Crockett said. “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you … I don’t believe.”

  Jimmy set him down again, as lightly as if he were a sack of feathers. For a lean fellow, Jimmy Crockett had more than his share of strength, developed in long hours of labor in a silver mine no other white man had seen.

  For the rest of the winter and into the early summer, Jimmy Crockett remained with David’s family. Over that time a bond of friendship was forged between boy and man. More than any other of the Crockett children, David came to love his unspeaking, unhearing uncle, and relished every moment he spent with him. Jimmy’s handicaps had hindered him from fully joining the society of men, and so he retained a boyish quality of mind that made him a congenial and happy companion for eight-year-old David. Will had been correct: Jimmy clearly favored David above all his other nieces and ne
phews.

  As time passed, David discovered something remarkable: despite his physical limitations, Jimmy managed to communicate fairly well, using a mix of vocal sounds that approximated words, and hand and body movements. Sometimes he would draw intricate story-telling pictures in the dirt. Over many days, David was able to gather with reasonable certainty some of the facts of Jimmy’s troubled but interesting past.

  He drew several conclusions based on the things Jimmy managed to convey. First, just as his handicaps had kept Jimmy from escaping the 1777 Indian raid that had killed his parents, so too had they helped him escape death. Apparently, Jimmy’s original captor had found him interesting, perhaps pitiful, and had treated him relatively well, keeping him for several years within his household. At some point Jimmy had been conveyed to another man in payment of a debt, and there his treatment had been worse. He had been put to work in the hidden silver mine, to which he was taken almost daily, blindfolded going in and coming out. On the homeward treks he would be laden with the ore his day’s labors had produced. David tried to picture what it must have been like for Jimmy: unhearing, unspeaking, and with the blindfold, unseeing; trudging some unknown trail with a heavy basket of ore on his shoulder and a gruff Indian captor at his back.

  The silver that Jimmy kept in his little pouch, David ascertained, was some he had managed to sneak for himself. Jimmy was quite obsessed with his treasure, and often played with the nodules of silver like a child toying with pretty pebbles. David would sit and watch him, envying him for the silver, but never daring to ask for any.

  At night, David noticed, John Crockett also would watch Jimmy and his silver. At those times the look on John’s face was not pleasant to see, and David would be reminded of the Crockett family’s continuing poverty.