The Town Read online

  Seldom had his father looked so good as when that familiar figure turned in from the road. Just the way he walked, you could see he feared neither man nor devil. Powerful and noble as always, he came in the law room, went up and shook hands with his ragged caller, smiling at him like he was his brother.

  “How are you, Little Turtle?” his voice boomed, making everything all right. “Glad to see you. Mr. Abernathy told me he didn’t know if he could get you to come or not. Where is Mr. Abernathy?”

  The Indian didn’t say anything. He just looked haughtily at Portius.

  “Sit down,” Chancey’s father said and got a chair for him. He took his own easy chair, but the savage would not sit down. “Mr. Abernathy has told me very little about your case. Now I want you to tell me all you can.”

  The Indian stood there silent. Only his eyes had life. They looked out black and rude as if to say that he didn’t talk such a low tongue as the white man’s language.

  “Speak up, man! We can’t do anything without speaking,” Chancey’s father cried.

  “Me Injun,” Little Turtle scorned. “Me talk Injun.”

  Now what could his father do, Chancey wondered, for he couldn’t say much in Wyndotte or Shawanee or whatever Little Turtle might be. He felt sorry for his father, but he hadn’t need to, for his father didn’t look sorry for himself. He kept sitting there and the two men gazed measuring each other. Then the white man got up and poured out two cups of rum from the jug. Little Turtle showed his first interest. He reached out a claw and the rum went down like water.

  Seldom had Chancey heard anybody smack his lips as Little Turtle did over that rum. His tongue ran around the inside of the cup like a dog’s.

  “Damn Injun! Me half white,” he said, opening one eye wide for Portius to look at. “See blue eye!” He held out the cup. “More lum.”

  “We’ll have one more, Little Turtle. That’s all,” Portius said. He made the cups barely half full.

  The Indian took his and held it out. He looked at Portius gravely.

  “White preacher say Injun no drink, good man, go up, much happy. Say Injun drink, bad man, go down, much burn.” He lifted the cup to his chin. “Maybe white preacher tell damn lie.” He drank it down and set it on the desk-table with alacrity. “You want me make mark on talking paper?”

  “No,” Portius said, sitting down and back in the calm, relaxed way he had when he was master of a situation. “Mr. Abernathy said that you used to be happy and prosperous. Now, you look poor and wronged. I want you to tell me who wronged you. Perhaps I can help you.”

  “Nobody help poor Injun,” Little Turtle said. “Mis’ Coe up Tateville say him help poor Injun. Say him my broder. Give me lum. Give me whisk. Give cow. Give horse. Say make mark on talking paper. Me make mark. Him constable. Him take away horse. Him take away house. Take away land. Belong Mis’ Coe now, him say. Talking paper say so. Take away pistol white chief give. Now got nothing.”

  “Does Mr. Coe still call you brother?” Portius inquired.

  “Still call broder. I say Mis’ Coe, how broder? He say, we all broder. In Bible. Go back to Adam. I say glad him no closer.”

  Chancey’s father laughed, but the boy thought he saw anger kindling in his eyes.

  “I take it you signed a note, a judgment note,” he said. “We’ll have to see about that.”

  “Me go see long ago. See down Maytown. See white constable. Him say Injun no good. Mis’ Coe good. Mis’ Coe keep horse. Mis’ Coe keep house. Mis’ Coe keep land. Mis’ Coe keep pistol. All belong Mis’ Coe now.”

  “Maytown isn’t the county seat for us any more,” Portius explained kindly. “We have a new county up here and the first court’s being held here in Americus. I think I can help you.”

  The Indian shook his head.

  “White man court no good. One time Injun get drunk. Act bad like devil. What white man court do dan, hah? Tie um all Injun up. Whip um Injun plaintiff. Whip um Injun defendant. Whip um Injun witnesses.”

  Portius smiled.

  “They won’t do it here. Not if I can help it.”

  “White man all same together.” Little Turtle held up a hand with four fingers tight against each other. “Great Spirit make mistake. Take white man out fire too soon. That’s how come him white. Great Spirit leave Injun in. Make him better. Bake him red. Mis’ Coe say Injun come from across water. Come from Tartar. That why him red. I say how you know Tartar across water don’t come from us? Hah!”

  Portius laughed heartily. Little Turtle, gratified, went on.

  “Long time ago Injun have beaver. Take um to White man town. White man say price. Say can’t buy now. Must wait. This Great Spirit day. Must go church. Be good. Keep still. Shut eye. Listen what Great Spirit say. Injun sit outside Great Spirit house. Wait. Hear sing. Hear talk. After while white man come out. Can’t pay like him said. Price go down. Go to other white man. Him say same. All trader say one like other. Can’t pay. Price go down. Then Injun know. White man don’t go church so hear what Great Spirit say. Go so can put heads together. Think how cheat poor Injun.”

  “Well, I won’t argue that with you. It’s a good story,” Portius said and Chancey thought from his father’s quiet smile that he had heard it before. “But if you have any principle and courage left, you won’t let Mr. Coe defraud you and your wife and children out of what rightfully belongs to you.” He said it with such force and fire that the Indian stood fascinated.

  “You get talking paper back? Get land back? Get house back?”

  “I’m not certain,” Portius declared. “But I can give your shyster friend, Mr. Coe, the dressing down I’ve always wanted to in public.”

  “Whip um lash?”

  “No, not with the lash,” Portius regretted. “However, I can promise to give the gentleman and his thieving practices a whipping with the tongue that will let him stand naked and bleeding a long time in the sight and memory of his fellow citizens.”

  His words seemed to feed a hunger deep in the gaunt frame of the Indian. His eyes fastened on the white man as if to search for any possible fraud to this promise. He stood motionless a long time. When he spoke it was with a kind of rude secret gratitude.

  “What matter your boy? No run. No fish. No throw stone. Sit all time.”

  Chancey felt his father’s troubled gaze run over him.

  “He’s delicate, Little Turtle. Doesn’t eat enough. He’s not strong, was born sickly.”

  “Keep um on stool all time, him stay sick all time. Him need run. Give um Little Turtle. Little Turtle make um run. Take um long march. Make leg hard. No give anything eat one day, two day, three day. Make belly hard. Make um sleep on ground summer time, winter time. Make um sleep on snow. Him get hard then, hah. Like iron.”

  Chancey gazed quickly at his father who offered his pouch of tobacco to the Indian, then filled his own pipe and lighted it.

  “I’m sure that’s fine for an Indian boy,” he said equably. “But I don’t know how it would work out with a white boy.”

  “No hurt um,” Little Turtle said quickly. “But might die. Better die than sick all time. Better in ground than sit stool.”

  “Well, I’m grateful for your kind offer, Little Turtle,” Portius said, taking long quiet draughts on his pipe. “We’ll think about it.”

  “No need think,” Little Turtle promised. “You go court. Whip um Mis’ Coe. Get um back house. Get um back land. You my friend. Me take boy. Raise him Injun. Make him strong like iron. Make him heart hard like stone. Won’t die. But if die, go to Great Spirit. Great Spirit make him over better next time.”

  The Indian turned his head majestically and gave the boy a long look. It was a keen appraising and not unfriendly look, but Chancey felt the blood in his heart thin and chill like snow water. He looked up and saw his mother standing at the door. A great passion rose in him to run to her but the look on her face stopped him, a strong, bitter look. Could it be that she would give him to Little Turtle? He wouldn’t put it past her. She had
too many to feed and sew for and wash for as it was, Aunt Genny always said. And more than once Huldah and Dezia had told him that he was the odd one and made his mam more trouble than all the rest put together.

  The worst was that old half-blind Jonathan Penny had to stump in their kitchen that night.

  “I ever tell ye how I was brung up by the Injuns?” he asked in his high voice that gave Chancey the feeling it had been split by an arrow. “They took me when I was just a little tyke, not much bigger’n Chancey ’ar, and my brother Abel about the size of Massey. We was prisoners and had to live with them and do what they said. Abel was good on his legs and tried to run home. One of the yaller black-guards caught him and run his spear through him. I was ’ar and asked him if he was hurt bad. He said he was. He couldn’t walk where they wanted him to, so they finished him off. I was ’ar and had to see it. Then they started whetting their knives and I knowed I was next. I told them, I didn’t like it home. I said my mam was mean to me and I was glad to get away from her. Oh, I hoped my mam would forgive me lyin’ like that, for I reckoned the sun riz and set on her. But that stopped them a while. They asked me which way was home, and I told them the wrong way every time, so they put up their knives. I knew I was safe then for a while from losin’ my hair, but hardly could I stand it for longin’ and pinin’ for home, I was no bigger hardly than Chancey ’ar, and nights when they couldn’t see me, I cried like a baby.

  “Oh, that’s somethin’ you got to go through to know about, kept by the Injuns and sick for home. One time they took me along to the old Sciota salt works and ’ar I seen a white woman I knowed back home. Her name was Mrs. McNally and she was a prisoner like me. She looked at me and I looked at her, but we hadn’t dare to let on we knowed each other. The next day I come on her in the woods and she asked was it really me and how did the Injuns treat me and didn’t I want to get back to my mother and sisters? I told her I should be glad to but never expected to see them again. Then she set me on a log and combed the lice out of my hair. Just doin’ that made her cry and she pulled out some pieces of dried scalp she kept in her clothes and showed ’em to me. She said they was her little girl’s hair, just the trimmings the Injuns cut off the night after they killed her. She said she picked them up and intended to keep them as long as she lived. She sat there a smoothin’ out them pitiful pieces of her little girl’s scalp on the log, a strokin’ ’em and cryin’ and tellin’ me this was all she had left of her family now. By that time we was both cryin’ and holdin’ on to each other. More’n once after that we had a good cry together at the salt works. When the Injuns I was with left, I give her goodby, and never did I see or hear of her again.”

  Chancey couldn’t hear any more. He looked at his mother. Her face was twisted up as cruel as he ever saw it. He felt he couldn’t expect any pity there. Desperately he made his way to the front room and then to the loft where he could be alone. Gloom so steeped him that he never noticed how his heart kept shaking his small frame like a hammer. All the tales of Indian capture and torture he ever heard came out now from the dark recesses of his mind. Most of all he couldn’t forget the story and fate of Nilum. Without hope he threw himself face downward on his bed.

  —

  Shawanee County’s first court of Common Pleas was held on a Tuesday morning in early fall, and Portius couldn’t help observing the look that Chancey gave him when he left. He told Resolve it was a look a dog might give you when you took it out to shoot it. What could have got over the boy, Portius asked. Especially on such a momentous occasion. You couldn’t ask for a more auspicious day for bringing the refining boon of the courts to this fast growing backwoods town. The sun was out, the air bracing. The county in its entirety seemed to have come abroad for the great event. Long before father and son crossed the footbridge over the race, they could see Water Street filled with horses and men. A sense of gratification as the original author of this improvement to the people came over Portius, and he greeted expansively all he met, stopping here and there with dignity to exchange a few words, to introduce his son, to harken a grave ear to troubles and pass them off with some humorous story. He and Resolve hadn’t proceeded half way down Water Street when the bell rang and they could hear the voice of new Sheriff Collier.

  “Oh ye! Oh, ye! Court’s about to set!”

  —

  Back on the bench outside the cabin, Chancey heard the bell, too, and it went through him like a clock’s stroke to a doomed man. He knew it came from the Central House where court was to set. The Central House was the largest in Americus and more than once had he seen its sign swinging on Water Street and showing the British frigate Guirrere, being whipped by the Constitution. The inn had a wing on Buttonwood Street with a bell and small belfrey on the roof, and every day from the cabin you could hear it ring. Guests rang it when they wanted the hostler to come and take their horses. The cook rang it at meal time, usually twice. The first time, his father said, was a warning to wash up and be ready, and the second time told that hot dishes were being set on the table. On all such occasions it would ring short and furiously. But now for the holding of court, it rang in slow majesty as if tolling for somebody’s death. At the sound of it, Chancey shuddered and pulled the sides of the quilt over his ears.

  At noon peering from the loft window, the little feller watched his father with Resolve and Little Turtle come up the lane for dinner, Chancey would rather have died than gone down. He told Massey he was sick, he couldn’t touch anything on the table. His mother came up to take a look at him, but he must have looked bad as he felt because she told him he better stay in bed. Not till he saw his father and Little Turtle and Resolve going back to town did he feel relief and that was far too short. As the afternoon waned, so did his well being. Any minute now, he knew, the case might be over and Little Turtle come for him. When on toward supper he saw Resolve returning alone, he was too frightened to go down and too anxious to stay up. When he came to the kitchen door, Resolve was telling his mother and the girls about it.

  “Oh, it came up,” Resolve said. “First were some applications for store and tavern licenses. Then they granted letters of administration to Mrs. Luckenbach, that widow from Tateville. Then Little Turtle’s case was called. They drew lots out of Judge Maidenford’s hat to impanel the jury, and Papa got up to present his case. Just as he got started, Judge Brown got up and went out. I don’t know if he’s a friend of Mr. Coe or if he just wanted to mortify Papa after what Papa did to him at the hay scales. Anyhow he stayed out and stayed out. They couldn’t have a quorum without him, and Papa had to wait till he got back. You know, Judge Brown likes to ride into town on that white horse of his, and he came today with his saddle bags bulging with law books. He brought those saddle bags into court to show everybody he knew the law and laid them on the floor under the poplar table we call the bar. Now when he stayed out so long, Papa got mad. He dragged out those saddle bags and set them up on the bench in Judge Brown’s seat. He said that if Judge Brown didn’t come in, they’d have to go on without him. He said the saddle bags knew more about law than Judge Brown did anyhow. Then Papa started his talk, but mostly he’d address the saddle bags. ‘Your Honor this,’ he’d say to those old leather bags, and ‘Your Honor that.’ The people began to laugh. The jury had to laugh. Even the other judges couldn’t keep their faces straight. When Judge Brown did come in at last, he was so mad he threw out the case.”

  Chancey was trembling with excitement so he could hardly talk.

  “What does throwing out the case mean?”

  “It means like when you throw something out of the window. Papa has to take it to a higher court now and that will take months.”

  All the girls had laughed at the picture Resolve made of Papa arguing his case to Judge Brown’s saddle bags. Now after the girls had quieted down, Chancey suddenly began to shriek and laugh.

  “Wasn’t that funny, Papa talking to the saddle bags!” he cried.

  Resolve looked pleased and a little surprised, for it
was something of a feat to make sad little Chancey laugh.

  “Something else happened that struck us funny,” he said. “That back room of the Central House was so packed that the lawyers and judges could hardly get in. When Papa and I got there, men were standing on the window sills and hanging on the wall and rafters like Madagascar bats. First thing Judge Brown did was get up and order the sheriff to remove them, and the sheriff went around pulling down by the leg anybody who wouldn’t get down himself. Well, a big farmer named Junkins from Spring Valley wouldn’t come down. He kicked at the sheriff. He said, ‘I pay my taxes and I got as good right here as any man.’ ‘Come on down,’ Judge Brown ordered him. ‘You’re creating a disturbance.’ ‘Oh, hesh up, jedge,’ Junkins said. ‘You’re making a sight more disturbance than I am.’ ‘You come down,’ the judge told him, ‘Or I’ll send you to jail.’ ‘There ain’t no jail and you know it,’ Junkins said. ‘There is at Maytown,’ the judge said. ‘Sheriff, arrest that man.’ ‘Let him come,’ Junkins said. ‘I’ll stand a hitch with him like I did the damn thief that stole my hogs. I broke his arm and his ribs and half-broke his neck.’ ‘Stop!’ the judge said. ‘You’re incriminating yourself. You have no right to take the law in your own hands.’ ‘Why, jedge,’ Junkins said, ‘I’d a licked you too, if you’d a come and stole my hogs.’ ”

  At every fresh sally from Junkins, the girls laughed and Chancey with them, louder and more uproarious than they. Resolve looked still more pleased. Never had he had a more appreciative audience. Now what had come over the little feller, he wondered. This morning when he and his father left, Chancey had looked like it was his last day on earth, This noon he felt so bad he couldn’t even come downstairs and touch dinner. And now he looked good and healthy as anybody, laughing and jumping and shouting his merriment louder than the rest. He sure was a singular young one, and it took a smarter mind than his to make him out.