Chaneysville Incident (63 page)

“But in less than an hour the speculation had ceased to be idle. Because by that time C.K. was standing on the lower slopes of Tussey Mountain, looking down at the cluster of houses that was the town of Rainsburg, and the road in between, and not seeing any sign of Crawley, or Graham, or the wagon. No sign at all.

“He could not imagine what had happened. He went over the reasoning that had led to his being there, and could find no fault with it. He went over it again, changing his assumptions about the route they would follow, but it made no difference—even if they had gone south into Cumberland Valley to Patience and across from there, they would still have had to come up that mountain. But they weren’t on that mountain. And that could only mean trouble, of one kind or another.

“And so he sat down and rested, letting his mind work on the possibilities. There were only three that he could see. First, that something had happened to keep Crawley and Graham from making the trip at all. In that case they would be safe. Second, that they had delayed their departure or encountered some kind of legitimate delay on the road north of Rainsburg. In that case, too, they would be in no danger, for either they would go back because of the lateness of the hour and the imminence of the storm, or they would arrive at the mill too late to be implicated. If the slaves had not been taken by then, there was a chance that the whole thing could still succeed as planned. It was the third possibility that made a difference: it was possible that C.K. had figured wrong, that Crawley and Graham had made no attempt at all to wait on the mountain, but had gone straight to the mill. And if that had happened, all of them—the slaves, Graham, Crawley—would be caught in Pettis’ trap.

“C.K. stood on the mountain above Rainsburg, looking down at the valley, thinking again through the alternatives, reminding himself of all the reasons why he could not take the risks, of all the reasons why he should not have to take the risks. And then he remembered the first time he had seen Crawley and Graham, and the look on the faces of the slaves who had gone to get on that wagon, to ride to freedom, or at least to ride closer to it, and he stopped. Stopped figuring the chances. Stopped guessing at odds. Stopped calculating, stopped thinking altogether, and he turned and ran back up the mountainside.”

I stopped. My voice had started sounding hoarse to me—I realized that my throat was dry. I raised the cup, but it was empty; I set it down again. By the dim glow of the candle, I saw her rise and take the cup and go to the stove. I closed my eyes then, and listened to the wind singing. In a moment she was back, pressing the hot cup into my hands. I raised it and sipped, feeling the warmth on my throat.

“He stayed on the ridges, to keep clear of the dogs. He didn’t know where they were; the mist was too thick for him to see much of anything in the valley, and it deadened sound too. But eventually he had to come down into the valley, even though he had no idea of where those dogs were, because the cove was starting to open out now, and the only place he had a chance to find the slaves was where it was narrow.

“So he came down from the mountain, coming down in a creek bed, using the water to hide his sound and his ground scent, just in case Pettis had bloodhounds sweeping the hillside. He probably came down Pond Branch, or one of the little streams that make up Black Valley Branch. Eventually he ended up on the valley bottom, in the middle of Town Creek. He stayed near it. Not too near—the sound of the water would have covered every other sound, and with that mist the only way he was going to find anything was by sound—but near enough. Because he had to assume that the runaways knew enough to follow the creek to hide trail and scent. And so his best chance of hearing them was there. But it was only a chance. And to make it better he moved too, slipping back and forth through the woods, going silently, but moving.

“I know he moved, and I know why he moved, but I don’t know exactly how he moved, because I don’t know what would have made him move one way and not the other. It could have been the way the land rose and fell, or the way the underbrush had grown, or the movements of the air—it could have been anything. I don’t know exactly how he moved or why he moved in that particular way. And so I don’t know how it was that he came to be standing exactly where he was standing, listening as he was listening. But he was there. I know that. Because I believe that was how he found them, how he heard them, panting in the mist.”

I stopped again, and sipped at the toddy, waiting for her to say something. But she didn’t say anything. She was listening. I waited, listening to the singing of the wind outside, listening eagerly. Because now I knew what it was, knew and believed: it was singing. A song made by land and wind, perhaps, but singing all the same.

“I still don’t hear anything,” she said. Her voice was angry.

“You hear the wind,” I said.

She looked at me. I saw her eyes shining. She nodded.

“He almost caught them,” I said. “He waited a few moments, still listening, checking their backtrail to be sure that nothing was there. When he was sure, he went after them, moving as quickly as he could, keeping silent, trying to listen as he ran, wondering if the sound he had heard had been brought to him by a weird echo or a chance eddy of wind, wondering if they were there at all, and not a quarter of a mile away. And then he heard them ahead, the sound of their panting drifting back to him through the mist, and he ran faster, but even more silently, not wanting to alarm them, to make them run faster, more quickly to the dogs. He began to think how he could stop them without making noise, realized he would have to pass them entirely, circle around in front of them, head them off, and do it all in the gray mist, with only sound to guide him, and started to do it, slipping off to the side and running faster now, making a little noise now, having to, because he was winded too, was panting too, and hoping that if they heard it they would think that it was just another one of them running in the mist. He heard the sound of them slipping back, heard himself running with the sound of them all around him, and knew that in a minute, or two minutes, he could stop and whisper softly to them. And then knew that it was too late. Because from somewhere ahead he heard the hounds.

“He heard sounds around him, heard the gasps of panic, the shufflings and slidings as the runaways tried to stop, and knew that he should stop too. But he didn’t. He ran on, straight towards the dogs, until he heard the sound of the runaways fade behind him. Then he stopped, waiting, listening again, but listening now to the dogs, yelping as they came upwind, looking for ground scent, looking for trail. When the sound of the dogs was close, he turned and doubled back, still going slowly, wanting to be sure. In a moment he was sure. The yelping stopped, turned into full-throated barking.

“He broke off then, and headed off to the west, still not moving too fast. In a few more minutes he heard the dogs turn. Then he knew that they were on his trail, and no one else’s. Then he ran as fast as he could.

“He went hard for a while, putting space between him and the dogs, angling just a bit to the south in order to keep clear of any flankers. When he felt the land begin to rise, he turned and drove straight up the slope, using the momentum he had built racing across the valley bottom to carry him up. When that impetus was gone he slowed, catching his breath, listening to the sounds of pursuit. It sounded as if every hound in the South County was back there. But they didn’t worry him; he had lost hounds before, better hounds than South County hounds, hounds as good as Pettis’. But losing them was not the question. What he needed to do was keep them, and take them with him as long as he could, perhaps decoy them up over the ridge and into the next valley, and lose them there. If he could do that, the runaways would have a chance. For they had surely heard the dogs turn aside, and would stop and turn back to the north, and be safe.

“So C.K. trotted up the slope, keeping distance between himself and the hounds, but not too much, slipping through the mist, across the carcasses of cornfields, over the fields that sloped too much for planting, that were good only for pasture, through groves of birch and pine. In half an hour he was high above any kind of cultivated land. He was tired, he longed to slow down. But he dared not. For even though the temperature was falling, and would fall more quickly when the sun set, eventually making it all but impossible for the hounds to trail him, there was plenty of light left, enough light to see a trail. And there was no way he could not leave a trail. Because now the snow was falling, falling just quickly enough to leave a cover over the ground, to clearly show his footprints, but not quickly enough to cover them from his pursuers. And so he could not slow down; he had to go faster, putting more distance between himself and the men, giving the storm time to cover his trail.

“That was what he had to do. But he could not do it. He simply did not have the speed. He had covered nearly forty miles since daybreak, and he was in no shape for sprinting. He listened carefully to the hounds, trying to gauge distance, not an easy thing to do in the mist. He was six minutes ahead of them, he judged. Maybe half a mile, at the speed that could be managed over the hilly ground. Not distance enough.

“And so he tried to run faster, and, at the same time, started thinking again, going through all the tricks of the trail that he knew. He found none that would help. And then he recalled a day, years before, when he had been hunting and reconnoitering, not on this side of the mountain, but on the other, and had come across a stream. He had noticed it because it ran south instead of east or west, its natural tendency to go straight downhill being arrested by the configurations of rock. It was not a large stream, but it was an old stream, and over the centuries it had cut down into the rock, creating a gorge, a jagged gash in the mountainside nearly three miles long. The gorge was deep, a hundred feet or more, but not wide—four or five feet at the bottom, opening out to nine or ten at the top—and C.K. had thought that if a man was desperate enough and strong enough, he could use that gorge, leading his pursuers to the center of its run and making the leap, leaving them with the choice of following and perhaps failing to make it, or of going around, a mile and a half to the end and another mile and a half back, to pick up the trail again. A man could make a lot out of a three-mile lead. Or so he had thought at the time.

“And so he thought now. Because he was desperate. His strength was going, more quickly than he would have thought possible, far more quickly than darkness and snow were falling to give him concealment. It would be that desperation maneuver or nothing. He only hoped he knew where he was, that he could find the gorge at all.

“He turned to the south, running along the mountainside. He was out of the forest now; the ground was almost pure rock, uneven enough to make him stumble, smooth enough to hold the snow, and dark enough to make his trail stand out like newsprint. But it was the kind of rock that lined the gorge. He stopped then, and listened, and heard the sound of water rushing over granite, a white rush of sound deepened by resonance. He moved towards it, not running, trotting, in order to keep his footing, mindful of the fact that to slip here could end everything, but mindful, too, of the fact that there were men behind him, men who were not as tired, not as afraid of falling, men who had a clear trail to follow, who were moving faster than he. The snow was heavier now, and the light was going; he hoped those things would cover his trail and slow the men up. But when he looked back he saw that the snow was not falling fast enough, the light not fading fast enough—his trail was clear.

“And so he rushed, a little, as much as he dared, turning his trot into a sort of desperate skating, a slipping and sliding over the snow-covered rock. The land turned upward, the grade grew steep. Low outcroppings of rock appeared on either side, weird dark fingers groping at him out of the mist. Suddenly a barrier appeared before him, a sheer wall of rock thirty feet high; he twisted desperately to keep himself from smashing into it, but his momentum was too great; he hit and bounced and fell, the back of his head slamming into the rock, stunning him.

“For a moment he lay there, trying to hold on to consciousness, barely succeeding, not even knowing that he had succeeded, because the gray mist above him could have been the mist itself or a film before his eyes. And so he closed his eyes and listened to the dull rumble of the stream, focusing on the sound, holding on to the sound. For long minutes it was vague, fleeting; the volume rising and falling, the direction shifting, spinning; then he knew how close he was to unconsciousness. But slowly the sound grew steady, the volume even, the direction constant. He focused then on another sound, the sound of his own breathing, controlling it, slowing it, listening as the sound of it responded to his will. When the response was perfect, he began to feel that he would not lose consciousness, that he could risk opening his eyes. But before he could do that he heard another sound, the scrabble of shod hooves on hard rock; first one set, then two, then four. Then there was no time for cautious eye-opening, or even for listening.

“He staggered to his feet, pumping his arms to gain balance, then groping around for the Wall of rock that had stopped him, finding it, turning then and running along it, feeling, looking for some kind of opening. Behind him he heard the hooves and the jingling of harness and the heavy breathing of animals; the horses were winded from the climb. That gave him hope, and he ran more quickly than he thought he could, hands still groping. And then he heard another sound, a sudden scream from a human throat and a soft, almost gentle sound of the impact of flesh on rock. Then the mist was alive with cursing and the excited neighing of horses, one horse’s neighing louder and full of pain; someone had galloped into that wall of rock. Someone had given him a chance.

“He made the most of it. He reached down into his guts and found a little more will, a little more determination, and turned that into a little more speed. He forced his mind to think, to make decisions; he had a lead, he dared not waste it—a hundred more steps and he would try and climb that wall of rock. He forced his mind to focus on the task of counting, forced his lungs to pump in cadence with the counting. Thirty steps. Forty. Fifty. And then his groping right hand felt empty air. Only for a second; then the rock was there again. But it was enough. He stopped, scrambled back, felt for the opening, found it. At his feet he saw a path, rough and rocky, choked, now, with a foot of snow, but a path. And a narrow one, far too narrow to allow a horse to pass. He started up it, feeling his strength return. The path had evened things: they could not run him down with horses now; it was man against man.