Soul Catcher (50 page)

^{She'd gotten dressed and was sitting on the bank, her shoes off, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them.}

^{"Do you feel better?" he asked.}

^{She threw him a sideways glance and frowned.}

^{"It take more'n a little water to wash this foulness off a me."}

^{He nodded. He didn't know what to say, didn't know what a woman felt after something like that. "How's the baby?" he asked again.}

^{She sighed. "It kickin' up a storm."}

^{At noon, they came upon a small hill settlement--livery, Baptist church, gristmill, a general store, a few unpainted shacks that perched on the steep banks of a fast-moving creek. Cain pulled up in front of a dry goods store, and they dismounted. Before he headed into the store, he shackled her. Once inside, he bought cotton cloth for bandages, a new shirt, a bottle of whiskey, some foodstuffs, gunpowder, miscellaneous supplies.}

^{"You have any laudanum?" Cain asked the clerk.}

^{"Don't carry it. What in blazes happened to you, mister?" asked the clerk, who chuckled as if Cain's wounds were a source of amusement to him. He was a slight man missing both front teeth, no doubt, Cain guessed, from someone's fist. As he spoke, he had a habit of permitting his tongue to slide into the open space, so that his speech had a wet, lisping quality. "That blood on you?" he asked Cain.}

^{Cain nodded. "You got a doctor here?"}

^{"Did. Doc Bryerly."}

^{"He's not here anymore?"}

^{"One of his patients shot him dead last fall." The man paused for effect, wanting Cain to ask why. Cain could see he was not going to get anywhere until he did.}

^{"On account of?"}

^{"On account of the feller caught him operatin' on his wife, if you catch my drift." The man leaned conspiratorially toward Cain and then snickered at his own joke. "Yep, ole Doc Bryerly was near on to eighty, but he was still a spry old devil. Back up in the hills they's all sorts of young'uns with his stamp on them."}

^{"Is that so?" Cain said.}

^{The man nodded smugly, proud of their local doc.}

^{"You got any live doctors?"}

^{"Closest is Hagerstown."}

^{"How far is that?"}

^{"Day's ride. In your condition, I'd figure on two. They's Black Maddy," the man offered.}

^{"Who might she be?"}

^{"Nigger midwife does some doctorin'."}

^{"Where does she live?"}

^{"On the pike west of here. You come upon a swamp. Her shack is just beyond that in the woods."}

^{As he paid the man, Cain asked him, "You see a short fellow in a big caravan come through these parts?"}

^{The man threw his head back and laughed, his tongue flickering out like a corn snake's.}

^{"Uppity little fellow with a hunchback? Yeah, he rode through here a couple days back. Selling his medicines and such. I could see right off he was nothing but a charlatan."}

^{"Was the caravan pulled by a chestnut stallion with a blaze?"}

^{"In fact, it was. Right fine horse. You have cause to be after him?"}

^{"You might say."}

^{Cain collected his supplies and left. After releasing Rosetta, they mounted up and headed out.}

^{Midafternoon they stopped to water the horses at a small creek in a notch between two mountain peaks that looked like the profiles of a pair of old men arguing. Cain's mouth was parched, and he knelt near the water and dipped a hand and drank. His hand, though, was trembling so much that little of the water reached his mouth, so he bent and put his face right into the creek and drank liberally. He removed his shirt and lifted the soaking bandage to check on the wound. It was swollen considerably, the flesh around it turning a dark purple color like uncooked calf's liver.}

^{"Here, let me look at that," Rosetta said to him, pushing his hand away and inspecting the wound herself. "Lordy. Whyn't you tell me you was shot this bad, Cain?"}

^{"Nothing to be done about it."}

^{"Could a found us a doctor."}

^{She stood and went over to his saddlebags and got some clean rags. When she returned, she soaked them in the water and washed away the dried blood.}

^{"Easy," he cried at her rough touch.}

^{"Stop your bellyachin'," she replied. Then she put her face down to the wound and sniffed. She wrinkled her nose and said, "That there's infected, Cain."}

^{"Since when did you become a doctor?" he said to her.}

^{"I done enough doctorin' to know that needs tending to."}

^{"I'm all right."}

^{"You ain't all right." She placed her hand to his forehead. "You feel like a skillet."}

^{"We should get going," he said.}

^{Rosetta shook her head. "You fixin' to kill yourself, Cain? We need to get you to a doctor right quick."}

^{"The fellow back at the store said the closest was in Hagerstown. A day's ride."}

^{"You ain't gonna make another day in the saddle."}

^{"He said there was a midwife by the name of Maddy. Just past a swamp along the way. She did some doctoring."}

^{She rinsed the bloody cloth in the water and dabbed his forehead with it. Then she gathered some moss from nearby trees and applied it to his wound.}

^{"That'll draw out some a the poison. But that bullet's got to come out. The sooner, the better."}

^{Before he saddled up, he put on the new shirt he'd bought and then got the bottle of whiskey from his saddlebags and took a long sip. The wound still pained him, so he took another, without bringing much relief.}

^{They continued on for the rest of the day, heading up into the mountains. Toward sunset, the road entered a dense forest of tall hemlocks, majestic trees whose limbs hung out over the road, forming a kind of tunnel. As they headed into it, Cain was put in mind of the beginning of
The Inferno,
where Dante is entering into Hades:
I found myself within a forest dark.}

^{The road appeared to him to waver and undulate, to be a thing not made of solid earth. Cain had grown progressively worse--his skin pallid and feverish, and he shivered so hard his teeth chattered. However, if he leaned forward over the pommel, he found that the pain in his side was to some degree lessened, so he dropped the reins and rested his head against the horse's warm, lathered crest.}

^{When Rosetta saw him slumped over like that, she rode up ahead.}

^{"Cain. Cain!" she called, nudging his shoulder. Yet her voice arrived in his brain garbled, as one heard from underwater. She got down off the mare and led both horses into the woods at the side of the road. She helped Cain from the saddle, and he leaned on her for support as she guided him over to a cushioned bed of hemlock needles where he collapsed in a heap. "I'm cold," he said. So she fetched his bedroll and spread a blanket over him. She squatted above him, looking down at him with a scornful look on her face.}

^{"What?" he asked.}

^{"Tole you, you needed to get that bullet out."}

^{"You like to be right, don't you?"}

^{"You're in a fix now," she said.}

^{"I've been in them before," he replied stubbornly.}

^{"So how you gone get yourself out of this one?" she said, smiling almost vindictively.}

^{"Don't you worry, I'll figure something out."}

^{"How 'bout I ride on ahead and get help in Hagerstown."}

^"No."

^{"Why not?"}

^{"Too dangerous," he explained, his voice hardly above a whisper.}

^{"I'll be careful."}

^{"Somebody catch you on a stolen horse, what do you think is going to happen?"}

^{"I can tell 'em my massa sent me to fetch help."}

^{He shook his head. "They'll suspect you're a runaway making up some story. I can't let you go."}

^{"If I don't, you gonna die."}

^{"I can't let you."}

^{She stared down at him, searching his eyes. "What's the matter, Cain? You worried I'll take off and leave you?"}

^{He just stared up at her.}

^{"That it, ain't it? You worried I won't come back. That you'll lose the re-ward money."}

^{A fresh wave of pain shot through him then, turning his body rigid as the ache stiffened his muscles.}

^{"I can't let you go," he repeated.}

^{"Huh!" she scoffed. "How you fixin' to stop me, Cain?"}

^{"I'll stop you," he said. He reached under the blanket for his Colt, but she easily wrested it out of his hand and pointed the big gun at him. Then she looked down at him and laughed cruelly, a side he'd not seen in her before.}

^{"How it feel, Cain?" she said.}

^{"How's what feel?"}

^{"You bein' at my mercy now. The high-and-mighty soul catcher don't look so big now."}

^{He just looked weakly up at her.}

^{"I ought to put a bullet in you, after what you done. You and ever' other one like you."}

^{He saw that pent-up rage flare up again, the sort he'd seen when she'd taken the hatchet to the blackbirder's face. The sort he'd noticed in other Negroes, silent, deadly, waiting to get a taste of revenge on the white man.}

^{"Like I tole you before, you didn't have to come after me," she said. "You
chose
to."}

^{"I didn't want them selling you downriver."}

^{"I ain't talkin' 'bout that," she snapped at him angrily. "I mean, you didn't have to come after me in the first place. You didn't have to bring me back to that man. You
chose
to do that, Cain."}

^{He started to say something, but she cut him short.}

^{"And I don't want to hear 'bout your blasted word. 'Bout honor or any a that bunkum every white southerner talks about like it was gospel. Ever'body got a choice," she said, her voice taut as a bow string on a fiddle. He thought of their conversation that night on the riverbank back in New Jersey, about everybody having a choice. "You made your choice to come after me and you got what you deserve. Ain't got nothin' to do with me." When he remained silent, she said, "By rights, I ought to leave you here to die." She stood and walked a few feet away, staring off into the darkened woods. Then she turned around and came back over to him. "Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't get on that horse and take off out a here and never look back. And don't go sayin' you saved my life. We'd neither of us be in this fix if'n you'd minded your own damn business."}