Читать книгу Pale Blue Light - Skip Tucker - Страница 10

Canon prized his palomino, Hammer. The stallion stood eighteen hands tall at the withers. He was “much hoss” as old Buck Canon was wont to say, and Canon meant to have him on the spring day he first saw him. It was a warm Friday afternoon, the kind of day that made the twenty miles from Mulberry Manor to Montgomery a pleasure ride through white honeysuckle and apple blossom.

Hammer was tied to the hitching post outside Canon’s favorite Montgomery emporium, Hospitality House. Even as a two-year-old, Hammer dwarfed the horses hitched beside him. Canon, approaching his twenty-first birthday, found the present he wanted. He took one look and went in search of the owner.

The wiry Texan, Bill Kelley, would not even discuss selling the horse. After hours of coaxing by Canon, he finally agreed to play five-card stud poker for him, his two thousand dollars in chips representing the horse. They played for a day and a night, then Canon found the momentum and ultimately a club flush.

Hospitality House was well appointed. The gaming room chandelier lit the furthermost corners and set the brass and cut glass asparkle. The house drink, Planter’s Punch, was known statewide.

Kelley tried the punch as the two men chose a green baize table and called for cards. He pronounced the drink deserving of its excellent reputation. But poker, he declared, called for bourbon whiskey. He looked inquiringly at Canon, who nodded and then found himself in a drinking match as well as the toughest card game of his life. If Canon won, it would not be right for his genial companion ever to regret his own conviviality. By midnight, Canon was ahead on drinks but down a thousand dollars.

He had rarely been happier than when Kelley called a rest break and headed out back. Canon chose the front door, marveling at the man’s capacity for bourbon and branch water. But as the cool wind off the river began to thin the cobwebs thrumming in his head, Canon looked at the hitching post to which Hammer had been tied Friday. He’s mine!, thought Canon, suddenly certain he was going to win.

Close on the heels of that thought came another. It was a stern warning to himself that there is no such thing as a person drinking himself sober. Canon determined to open up a bit but at the same time to do nothing foolish. Poker was sometimes nothing more than pouncing on another’s mistake.

By daylight, Canon had won back his thousand and fifteen hundred more, thanks to an outside straight he drew against two pair showing. He refused to fall for the bluff that he was facing a full house. Kelley congratulated him good-naturedly.

By noon, word had gotten round about the game. Spectators were lined three deep around the table. Cigar smoke billowed about the players and each hand was played to applause for the winner. More and more often, it was for Canon.

After eighteen hours, Canon was up thirty-five hundred dollars and clearly owned the momentum. It was over soon after. Canon dealt the cards, one down and four up, with bets made after each new card was dealt. Canon held four clubs, Kelley had four hearts. Each man used a thumb to lift a corner of his hole card, peered at it. The fifth fleur-de-lis sat pat under Canon’s hand. He had hit the flush!

Canon showed calm, but his heart was racing. If Kelley had also hit his flush, Canon was in trouble. Kelley’s hand showed an ace up, which would outrank Canon’s hand. His was only to the queen. Kelley smiled as he pushed his remaining chips to the middle of the table.

“Fifteen hundred, Rabe,” he said.

A thin film of sweat gathered on Canon’s brow. He knew that, under strict rules of the game, he could raise the bet and that Kelley would not have enough chips to call. Kelley would have to withdraw his bet.

Canon slowly pushed his chips to the middle of the table. “Fifteen hundred, Bill. I call,” he said. The room, which had been filled with a low murmur, fell quiet. This was perhaps the deciding hand of the game. Should Canon lose, the momentum would shift in a big way.

Kelley grinned widely, grabbed the deck and slipped his cards into it.

“Broken hearts, son,” he said. “No flush, no pair, no nothing. If you have another puppy’s paw, you also got you a damned fine horse.”

Canon flipped over the fifth club, and Hospitality House went wild.

Later, after the crowd finished back slapping, hat throwing and drink buying, Canon walked Kelley to the Texan’s upstairs room.

“Why did you do it, Bill?” said Canon. Kelley looked at him quizzically.

“Don’t play dumb,” Canon continued. “I looked at the deck while everybody was buying you drinks. Canon pulled six cards from his pocket, spread them into a fan. “You not only held a heart flush to begin with, you threw one of them away and then drew another heart. You threw away a winning hand, then you folded a winning hand. Why, Bill?”

The big man blushed.

“I made up my mind at midnight that I wanted you to have the horse, Rabe. I’m getting on in years, you know, and I care more about that animal than most anything I’ve got, with the possible exception of the old lady that’s waiting for me back at the house.

“It’s just me and her and a few ranch hands. Apaches got my boy years ago. He’d be about the same age as you. So I decided last night to leave Hammer to you in my will. But it’s a long way to Dallas and mayhap a few more years before I pass on. A lot can happen.

“So I set you a test with that flush hand. If you had raised the bet and made me withdraw, I would have probably found an excuse to get out and left Hammer to you in the will. But you showed me you deserve that hoss. He’s yours, quick as I can fill out the papers. You get the saddle, too. Ain’t no Alabama saddle fitten for that palomino.”

Canon had noticed the saddle’s horn, something that most saddles did not have. Mexicans devised it. It was used to anchor the rope when working with tough range cattle. Western cowboys had copied the invention. Canon had heard of the saddle horn, but had never seen one. He doubted he’d have much use for it, but thanked Bill profusely.

Kelley took the horse Canon had ridden to town, for a memento, he said. But he refused any extra payment for Hammer and also refused to see Hammer to say goodbye.

“Couldn’t stand it,” he said with an embarrassed chuckle. Kelley gave orders for Hammer to be saddled and brought around. Canon took leave of the rancher amidst promises to write and to visit one day. He was home with Hammer by dark.

He was up and working with him by dawn, and for many successive dawns.

Canon’s father and his father-friend, Mountain Eagle, were as taken by the stallion as Canon and promised to help train Hammer. They made a formidable team. Canon had traveled, and learned much about European horse training methods. Buck was a pioneer to whom the horse had been the most important equipment he could possess. Mountain Eagle had been a war chief for the Cherokee. Horses, to them, were simply life and death.

Buck Canon carved the sprawling plantation from wilderness bordering the Alabama River, named it Mulberry because of the huge broadleaf berry trees which surrounded and cooled the manor house. He was a pioneer who helped settle the area and usher in statehood. And he paid fair value to the Cherokees for the land, but Buck could not shake a feeling of guilt that he had gotten rich off lands the red man had tended for generations. Worse was the death march the dispossessed Indians were sent on that became known as the Trail of Tears. He also felt some guilt that he “owned” two hundred human beings. Rabe Canon opposed slavery and wanted them freed. His father refused, saying they would be shunned by the other plantation owners. The slaves became the single source of conflict between father and son, as the land had originally been a source of conflict between Buck and Mountain Eagle. The latter conflict had been so severe that it lived on in legend.

Mountain Eagle had been a leader on the Trail of Tears as the Cherokees were pushed from Alabama. He watched his people die on that torturous journey to Oklahoma and vowed revenge on the best known settler in Alabama, whoever he might be. He turned out to be Buck Canon. Mountain Eagle did not know that Buck had favored Indian rights. The Eagle only knew his vow.

Once the limping remainder of his tribe was settled in the West, the Eagle returned. He found Buck clearing land. For long minutes, Mountain Eagle watched his enemy. It was early morning in early summer. The woods were singing with sounds of nature even as the axe rang and fire crackled. The pioneer was stripped to the waist, his long sandy hair swinging wildly as he put all his two hundred pounds into each swing of the blade. Slabbed muscles on his sweating six-foot frame rippled and shone in the morning sun.

As the Indian watched, he also took in aromas born of this beautiful land. The sharp, fruity tang of pine nettles blended with perfumes of wildflower and honeysuckle. Eagle identified the songs of thrush, robin and mockingbird. This land of my forefathers, he thought, taken from me forever. Hatred awoke in him. Three inches shorter than the white man, thirty pounds lighter, he would need rage to win open combat. He would have to be quick, quick, quick. He must kill this white devil.

But should he risk his own life in open combat? This was the choice he had to make. He could strike from his hidden position—there was no shame in it against a sworn enemy—or face death for the greater glory of hand-to-hand fighting.

Spurning ambush, the Indian stepped forward and called out a warning. Buck whirled, reached, and brought up a long rifle. He guessed the Indian’s identity, though he said nothing. Buck had heard that a dangerous Cherokee was on his way back from the west, intending to kill a white leader. Buck knew there was no time to explain, though he spoke some Cherokee and knew most Cherokees spoke English. This Eagle would not believe him, would think him a coward. He also realized the Indian could have probably ambushed him, rather than stepping out as he now did with nothing but breechclout, war hatchet and knife.

The Indian wore paint, and the single Eagle’s feather in his hair announced his name and status. Nodding his compliments to the Indian, Buck set the rifle aside, drew his knife and picked up his axe.

Eagle had heard stories of the ferocity and fighting ability of this white man. He began to chant his death song as the men closed.

The story of their struggle was still told over campfires. The doctor who treated the men passed the tale through white ranks, and Indians who had been allowed to stay temporarily behind took the story with them when they traveled west. The fight took place a year before Rabe Canon was born, but he prevailed on the men to re-enact the battle at the spot where it occurred. He stood mesmerized as the aging warriors perfectly recalled the scene, and demonstrated tremendous blows exchanged and sustained.

They fought almost an hour, as recollected. Canon chilled at the description of terrible wounds each had inflicted on the other. Anyone would have doubted the veracity of the story. Anyone, thought Canon, not there now to see the scars the men displayed as they told the way of the wounds that caused them.

Finally, Mountain Eagle said, his journey from the west, coupled with loss of blood, weakened him until he began to fail. Neither man had strength to stand, so they continued on their knees to slash at each other. The axes were gone. They stabbed and grappled.

Mountain Eagle said he could feel his spirit begin to leave him, but that he was proud because he knew his enemy could not live out the day. Finally, Eagle said, he was exhausted. He toppled onto his back and called out for the Great Spirit to accept him.

“Your father reached down and took the knife from my hand, and I awaited the thrust of his blade in my breast,” Eagle said. “But this man beside me, he I named Lion Heart, for he threw away the knives and took my hand. He said we would journey together as brothers to the Great Spirit.

“My spirit had darkened so that I could no longer see. The last thing I remembered was the sound of your father’s body falling next to mine.”

Canon knew what had happened then. His mother, worried because her husband had not come home for the noon meal, rode out and found the two men. She stanched their wounds and rigged a travois on which she moved them back to the house. She patched them best she could though she expected neither to live through the night and then fired signal shots until neighbors came. She sent them to Montgomery for a doctor. By the time he arrived, the men had returned to semi-consciousness. The doctor stayed long enough to get the story, patch them somewhat better, and pronounce them both goners. Then he left to spread the story.

“She said we both lived just so’s she’d have to wait on us hand and foot for a month,” the elder Canon winked at Rabe. “Said it was nothing but pure cussedness on both our parts. Might be so. Your mother was a great seeker, knower and teller of the truth, boy. But you watch this here lyin’ redskin bastid. He was fit as a fiddle when he jumped me. Weren’t tired a bit from that trip.”

Mountain Eagle gave a rare smile, clutched Buck by the shoulder, looked at Rabe and shook his head in comic resignation.

A great regret in Canon’s life was that he never knew his mother. Her blue blood went back to the English cavaliers. Her hair was like spun gold.

She died at Canon’s birth. Died holding him, Mountain Eagle said, gazing at him as the light left her eyes. Buck grieved mightily. He had at first, against his will, blamed the infant for his wife’s death. But the Eagle convinced Buck that the baby was Evalena’s last and greatest gift to him. Father, son and Indian friend became inseparable companions.

From his youth, Canon learned love for the hunt and the skills of a master woodsman. Hunting bear taught Rabe courage and coolness. These things were required when a cornered three-hundred-pound black bear turned to fight. Riding to hounds tested Canon’s horsemanship. Long chases on foot for deer built up legs and wind, and hunting the wily raccoon honed his skills of moving quickly and quietly through woods at night.

Buck Canon’s marksmanship was heralded, but Rabe was his equal at age sixteen. Hunts for dove and quail elevated the young man’s snap shot to deadly accuracy.

Their favorite hunt was for wild turkey, an elusive and crafty bird. Alabama enjoyed one of the largest concentrations of the bird Ben Franklin wanted for America’s national symbol.

The domestic turkey is so stupid it will tilt back its head during a rainstorm, open its beak and drown. A wild turkey is its opposite, so cunning that an accomplished outdoorsman might never see one in a state with a wild turkey population of two hundred fifty thousand.

Every turkey hunter has at least one story of a “character turkey” that tricked him, using what seems like supernatural intelligence. These stories are for the most part true. Eagle likened turkey hunting to a game of chess. There are moves and countermoves, thrusts and parries. Stalking a wild turkey is more than just hunting a prey outdoors.

The expert hunter must be able to move through dawn’s half-light without snapping a twig. His patience must be such that he can sit immobile for hours. He must be a dead shot, for one shot is all anyone gets. To be an expert turkey hunter, one must be expert at many things.

All this Mountain Eagle explained to Canon. One of the initiation rites into the Eagle’s band of Cherokees was to catch a wild turkey with bare hands. It took Canon two months to accomplish the feat. By the time he was nineteen, Canon enjoyed a statewide reputation among turkey hunters. At twenty-three, his fame had reached regional status. And it was that fame that brought about Canon’s meeting with Professor Tom Jackson.

A letter for Canon arrived on a bleak Monday afternoon in the winter of 1860. The weather, which had been low and threatening for several days, unleashed itself the previous night. Winds lashed and moaned, filling the gutters with debris and terrifying the house servants. Finally the storm passed, but the skies were still gray and black, and occasional showers of sleet pelted down.

Canon’s mood, as he received the letter, matched the weather. He puzzled over the return address: Major Tom Jackson, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington. The name rang no bells, yet Canon felt somehow hesitant to open the letter. It felt heavy to him, much heavier than it was possible for so thin an envelope to be. There is portent here, he thought.

Seconds later, Canon was laughing at his own timidity. It was as straightforward and innocuous a note as he had ever received.

Dear Mr. Canon:

I make so bold as to write to ask you, whom I have yet to meet, a favor. My sole justification in doing so is that I have it on good authority that you and I are afflicted by the same pernicious disease, namely, the American Wild Turkey.

We also share a mutual friend, whose name I shall not divulge for fear of getting him in trouble with you. It is from him I learned your address.

He tells me you are the perfect turkey stalker and often succeed where others fail. That is why I am inviting you to visit me in Virginia. There is a veritable demon of a gobbler here that has proved totally beyond me. I enjoyed a reputation similar to yours until I ran across Old Scratch. Both my reputation and mind are now largely gone.

If you have any plans to be in Virginia in the near future, please plan to spend a few days with me and we shall pursue this demon. All I can promise you is a good hunt, a decent larder and an excellent cook.

Our friend also told me you are a student of military history. If this is so, we have more common ground as I am a professor here at Virginia Military Institute. We can talk turkey and also discuss the noble profession of making war.

Please come if you can.

Sincerely,

Major Tom Jackson (retired)

Canon smiled again at his misapprehension. He looked at the gray day outside and was suddenly bored with the sameness of his life. Though pleasant, the distractions he normally enjoyed were beginning to pale. Even the finest of routines, he decided, can become jaded.

The second reading of the letter decided him. A turkey that roamed in winter, while not rare, was unusual. And Canon for some time had wanted to visit the South’s new war college. War both fascinated and repelled him. He was sick of hearing about the Confederacy, sick of hearing about the Union. But mostly he was sick of being trapped indoors. He rang for pen and paper. A week later he was on a train to Virginia.

The train ride from Montgomery to Virginia was grand. Flat from Montgomery to Atlanta, the dirt rich and red, the land begins to give way to the loamy soil of the Appalachian chain.

Gentle hills roll higher and higher until, near the North Carolina border, peaks loom in the distance. Past that point, the skyline is dominated by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Canon had made the run before, in spring and in the fall. Each trip seemed to overshadow the previous. Spring brought myriad shades of green from mountain glades, offset by high meadows with varicolored wildflowers. In autumn, the slopes fairly shouted with a cacophony of color, flaming and bursting within the brilliance of dying leaves.

But Canon had never seen the Blue Ridge in winter. He realized that spring’s beauty and autumn’s majesty had hidden, or at least disguised, the mighty grandeur of forbidding mountain peaks. Now, denuded, as if a prize fighter had thrown off his velvet cape, the mountains were barren, stark and awesome. They awaited their covering of snow.

Canon drowsed. But he finally gave up the notion of real, restful slumber. The pullman chamber beds were not adequate for his frame, and the hard passenger car benches were almost as cramping.

The bit of thin sleep Canon managed was interspersed with nightmare images and alarms, staccato glimpses of gray men mingling wildly with blue men, of shouting and the screams of dying horses.

Shortly before dawn, the conductor announced the Lexington stop. Canon gathered his gear and made arrangements for the unloading of his luggage, then returned to his seat.

Through the window, as the train slowed, he could see a few blurred lights twinkling through night and mist. The train stopped. Canon stepped out into the dark and fog.