These Honored Dead Page 3

  I was still thinking about the merry scene as we sat across the table from each other at Johnson’s that evening. “You were kind to those boys,” I said, when she asked what was on my mind.

  “Anything to give their mother a respite in which to do her marketing,” she said with an off-hand shrug.

  “It was more than that, I think. They took to you naturally, and you to them. Do you ever wonder . . .” I looked up and saw her jaw was uncharacteristically clenched, her eyes hard and unblinking.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly. “It’s none of my concern.”

  “In truth, I think about it every night as I lay in bed,” she said quietly. “But it wasn’t in God’s plan for me. That’s evident. So there’s nothing to be done, nor anything to wonder about.”

  I let the subject drop and did not raise it again.

  I continued to live a double life of sorts, one that gave me no small amount of pleasure. For most of the time, I was fully engaged in the business of my store, attending to the counter, procuring merchandise, riding out to nearby towns to visit customers and make deliveries. Our business prospered as Springfield grew; seemingly every week brought a new immigrant, hoping to farm her rich black loam or exploit her central location near the Sangamon River. And in the evenings, the other fellows of Springfield provided company and good cheer.

  Meanwhile, nearly every month, I arranged to spend a night or two lost and found in Rebecca’s arms. For those precious hours, we seemed the only people alive in the entire world. And then, inexorably, the sun rose and I was back on the trail to Springfield.

  While Rebecca and I usually gathered at her cabin in Menard, one summer’s afternoon in 1836 I accompanied her to a village fair in Mount Auburn, a half-day’s ride east of Springfield. A dozen merchants had set up stalls ringing the commons, and farmers from the surrounding area arrived on foot or in small gigs to look over the wares—farming implements, ready-made clothing, small decorative items, and the like. I recognized a few of the merchants as hailing from Springfield or its environs; all of them, save Rebecca, were men.

  I had brought a selection of ladies hats, newly arrived from Philadelphia, which I spread out on a corner of Rebecca’s table. She had been particularly insistent we come to this fair, although from the rough look of the crowd, who were picking through the merchandise with dirt-encrusted hands, I doubted either of us would sell much.

  After a few hours had passed, my eye was drawn to a young woman who appeared oddly out of place. She was sixteen or seventeen years of age, although she moved about the crowd with the self-possession of a much more mature woman. Her delicate face, set off by prominent cheekbones, was framed with long curls of vibrant auburn hair. She was wearing a crimson dress with a loose, revealing bodice that contrasted greatly with the drab garb of the conservative farmers’ wives mingling about the booths.

  As I observed the young woman, it became clear that, whoever she was, she was an accomplished thief. At each stall she visited, she followed a similar pattern. She talked to the merchant about his goods, resting her hand daringly near, or occasionally on, his arm. She’d ask about this trifle or that and bend over to have a closer look. At the moment she was bent over the furthest, when the merchant’s eyes were invariably engaged by her figure, she would reach out far to the side and close her hand over some small item on the edge of the table. Then she’d straighten up, thank the merchant for his time, and walk away toward the center of the commons. Once she was far enough away, she’d dip her closed hand into a burlap bag she carried at her side, secreting away the stolen item.

  When I turned to point my discovery out to Rebecca, I saw she too was watching the striking young woman.

  “It’s quite a contrivance she’s got,” I said. “Works every time.”

  “Their weaknesses are so apparent,” Rebecca replied. “One of many reasons why women merchants can prosper even when the superior sex falters.”

  “Have you seen her around before?”

  Rebecca shook her head, her lips pursed.

  The young woman glanced over in Rebecca’s direction at one point, but when she saw Rebecca’s eyes were on her, she looked away quickly. It seemed clear that she knew better than to try her stratagem at Rebecca’s stall.

  Months after the incident at the market, on a winter’s morning in early 1837, I lay in Rebecca’s bed and listened as a great snowstorm whipped around outside. I had helped reinforce the pitch between the logs of Rebecca’s cabin the prior fall, and the walls held fast admirably against the whistling winds. We’d brought in plenty of wood the night before, and the fire in the hearth glowed. There was no place in the world I’d rather have been.

  I looked over to say this to Rebecca and stopped short. She was sitting up, a woolen blanket cinched around her naked body, and staring intently into the fire. I noticed tiny red streaks in the corners of her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She gave a shake of her head. “I can’t find the words.”

  “To say what?”

  “To say our stolen season has reached its end,” she said, turning to me with a sad smile.

  I realized I had known from the first this day would arrive. My only hope had been to delay it for as long as possible. Perhaps we had.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “A few women from the settlement have started to make remarks,” she said, her voice restored to its usual firmness. “To ask questions I cannot answer. In fact, they started a few months back, but I didn’t want to hear it and so I ignored them. But I can’t any longer, not if I want to maintain my position.”

  Later that morning, the storm abated. I stood at Rebecca’s door and held her tight one last time, inhaling deeply the scent of the nape of her neck. Then I walked out to saddle up Hickory for the cold ride home. The door closed behind me with a sharp retort.

  It was only two months later that Logan walked into my store, seeking a berth for the newly minted lawyer named Lincoln.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lincoln commenced his law practice with another protégé of Logan’s, John Todd Stuart. From what I could glean, their practice consisted of routine matters: stolen livestock, land disputes, a divorce petition or two. My circle of unmarried fellows, long used to accommodating new arrivals, gladly opened to admit the voluble newcomer. If anything, our evenings were even more filled with great good humor than they had been.

  But there was unease beneath the surface. The business of A. Y. Ellis & Co. was unexpectedly lower in the spring season—typically our busiest—and off by a third by the time summer arrived. All around the square, my fellow merchants were reporting similar declines.

  To make tempers even shorter, the summer of 1837 dawned dry and hot and stayed that way. We hadn’t felt a drop of rain in weeks. The owner of every wooden structure in town—which was to say virtually every structure in town—worried his building might fire any day. Preoccupied by my immediate concerns, I thought of Rebecca less and less.

  Everything changed one day in late July. Lincoln and I were crowded together on a row of rickety chairs in the front room of a two-room shack. The little hovel was owned by a free Negro with the grand given name of William de Fleurville but known to all as Billy the Barber.

  In addition to myself and Lincoln, David Prickett, the state’s attorney, was there, as was Lincoln’s patron Logan and the rotund newspaperman Simeon Francis, publisher of the Sangamo Journal. Young Hay sat hunched over in the dim far corner, knobby knees hugged close to his chest.

  Prickett, raw-boned and supremely self-confident, had been sprawled in the reclined barbering chair that stood alone in the center of the room. When Prickett’s turn was done, Lincoln rose, stretched, and switched places with him.

  “The usual, Billy,” Lincoln said, slapping the Negro good-naturedly on the back. “And make sure you take off all this fuzz that’s suddenly sprouted on my jaw.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Lincoln,” he replied. His singsong voice still contained an echo of the nativ
e island where he’d been raised. Billy dipped his hand, the color of burnt copper, into the tin pot sitting on a table beside the barbering chair, and it came up dripping with a greasy, soapy mixture. The barber proceeded to spread the froth over Lincoln’s prominent chin and cheekbones. Then he unfolded a long, curved razor, wiped it on his apron, and set to scraping Lincoln’s face. While he worked, Billy whistled softly to himself.

  Beside me, Logan turned to Francis and said, “Did I read in your pages this week another bank in Philadelphia has failed?”

  “Two more,” Francis replied in a low growl. “Makes five from that city alone—five we know about. I told you all back in May, when the New York banks first stopped redeeming paper money for gold and silver, that the Panic would be heading our way.”

  “Surely we’re insulated here in the West,” I said, thinking of my own soft sales figures and hoping they would not suffer further. “It’s land that gives people wealth out on the frontier, not gold and silver coins.”

  Francis gave a derogatory “Hrrumph!” and hoisted himself to his feet. The publisher was an immense man, shaped like an egg, bulging in the middle and with a small, bald head. His weak chin was covered, as usual, by about five days’ irregular growth of whiskers.

  “Land’s creating wealth only if acreage prices keep appreciating,” he said with an impatient wave of his short arms. “But that’s not happening anymore. If there’s less gold and silver in circulation, there’s nothing to support the land prices. And the moment they stop rising, they’ll fall as if lashed to a paving stone.”

  Logan nodded next to me and said, “That’s what’s at the root of your Dr. Patterson’s problem, Lincoln.”

  From the barber’s chair, Lincoln turned and grunted his assent. Billy yelped.

  I saw a spot of red start to blossom on Lincoln’s cheek, where Billy’s blade had been held a moment earlier.

  “Lie still if you please, Mr. Lincoln,” the barber said, resting his long fingers on Lincoln’s shoulders.

  “I thought you said Patterson was trying to sell some property, not buy it,” I said. Allan Patterson, one of the handful of doctors in town, had become Lincoln’s first substantial client. Like most men with a profession these days, the doctor turned out to be an avid speculator in real estate.

  “Patterson’s trying to get out of an agreement he made,” said Logan. “It’s a bold play by Lincoln. We’ll see if the judge lets him get away with it.”

  “I’d like to make a play for his daughter,” sniggered Hay from the back corner.

  “It’d be an awfully short one, boy,” Lincoln returned. “The doctor wouldn’t let you near enough to his precious Jane to touch her with a ten-foot barge pole.” The men laughed, and Hay drew himself up tighter.

  Billy shoved his razor into a pocket of his pantaloons and said, “That takes care of you, Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Logan, you’re next I reckon.”

  Lincoln stood up from the reclining chair and stretched. His forearms grazed one of the wooden beams running the length of the low ceiling. He moved aside and Logan settled into Billy’s chair. The barber took out his shears and resumed his low whistling.

  “So how’s the crime business, Prickett?” Lincoln asked. As state’s attorney, Prickett was the prosecutor for Sangamon County, responsible for bringing all criminal proceedings.

  “Well in hand.”

  “I heard that—”

  At that instant there was a great crash and the door to Billy’s shack was flung open. A thick-chested man barged into the room, his broad-set shoulders barely clearing the narrow doorframe. The shoulders unmistakably belonged to Humble Hutchason, the sheriff of Sangamon County. Hutchason had led a column of local volunteers into the Winnebago War a decade earlier, and the legend of his successful leadership, as well as his unsurpassed bulk, ensured his subsequent election as sheriff.

  Hutchason was heaving for breath and perspiring heavily. “Prickett—at last I’ve found you,” he shouted, his booming voice much too loud for the small chamber.

  “What’s happened?” asked the prosecutor. He was at attention at once, looking at the sheriff with interest.

  “A girl’s been killed.” A great outcry greeted this pronouncement. “Stabbed in the neck from the sound of it. She was found by her aunt.”

  “Who?” demanded Prickett.

  “Where?” called Francis, who had pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and was scribbling away in a small notebook.

  “I’m not sure of the girl’s name,” the sheriff said. “She’s new to the county—at least I think she is. She recently moved in with her aunt up in Menard. The aunt’s the widow storekeeper there.”

  I gasped, although in the general hubbub it seemed only Billy noticed, as he inclined his head toward me slightly while he continued to whittle away at Logan’s whiskers. My heart raced. Rebecca had never mentioned having a niece, or any other living family for that matter, but I knew for certain there was only one widow storekeeper in Menard.

  “The aunt sent a messenger boy to alert me,” the sheriff continued. He was leaning against the doorframe now, his breathing slowly returning to normal. “Her note says she found the girl yesterday morning, out in the hay barn.”

  “Why’d she wait so long to summon you?” asked Prickett.

  “Don’t know. You can ask her yourself. I’m on my way right now to have a look. Thought you’d want to be there.”

  “I’ll accompany you,” barked Francis, on his feet and halfway to the door. “We can ride in my double-team victoria.”

  “What’s the aunt’s name, Humble?” asked Lincoln.

  “The Widow Harriman,” I said before the sheriff could answer. All the men turned to me in surprise.

  “You know her?” asked Prickett.

  “The widow, not the girl,” I replied.

  “How?”

  “Through the trade, of course. Fellow storekeeper.” I hoped mightily the dim light coming through Billy’s dirt-streaked windows was insufficient to show my reddening complexion.

  “Let’s be off,” Prickett said, taking Hutchason’s beefy arm.

  “I’ll come along too,” I said, rising from my chair. “And why don’t you attend as well, Lincoln. I think Simeon’s carriage should have room for us all.” My room-mate gave me an inquiring look, which I ignored and instead added, to the group, “As I said, I’m acquainted with the widow, and she with me. Perhaps I can add something to your investigations.”

  CHAPTER 6

  When the group of us arrived at the familiar one-story cabin by the stream, Rebecca was waiting at her front door. She was dressed in black from head to toe. I had rehearsed to myself various forms of salutation on the ride up, but as it turned out, none of them was necessary. Rebecca greeted me with a polite nod and a look in her eyes making it clear she wanted to maintain the notion we had never been anything more than business acquaintances. I nodded blandly in return.

  She led the sheriff to the barn at the rear of the house, as the rest of us trailed behind. A dingy blanket was draped atop an inert form in the center of the barn. Rebecca took a deep breath and pulled back the blanket. I stared with revulsion.

  The mortal remains of a young woman reclined in horrible repose against a large bale of hay. Her legs splayed outward; her hands rested helplessly at her side, palms up. The corpse was stiff and liverish in color. Lifeless, wide-open eyes stared impotently toward the raftered roof. In life, the girl had possessed attractive, prominent cheekbones, but the corpse’s skin was already shrinking away, like wax exposed to the flame, making the cheekbones protrude unnaturally. Her pallid face was framed by curly auburn hair, the vibrant color of which was the only aspect of her appearance that was in any way life-like.

  The bone handle of a “Bowie” knife jutted out of the girl’s neck just above the collarbone. Only about an inch of the dull silver blade was visible before it disappeared into her skin. A dried wash of dark blood stained her neck and the bodice of her housedress and had pooled by the s
ide of her figure.

  Next to me, Prickett swore quietly. Simeon Francis, whom I had never known to have a religious impulse, made the sign of the Cross. Lincoln sucked in his breath. Sheriff Hutchason bent down beside the body and gently prodded at it. Rebecca watched us all impassively. The lines around her eyes seemed deeper than I remembered, and her black mourning bonnet seemed more faded.

  I recognized the victim at once as the young woman whom Rebecca and I had observed at the village fair the prior summer. And Rebecca’s interest that day immediately came into new focus.

  “What was her name?” asked the sheriff.

  “Lilly,” said Rebecca.

  “When did you find her?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “When yesterday afternoon?”

  “Midafternoon, perhaps later. The sun was getting low.”

  The sheriff looked up from the side of the prostrate figure. “You didn’t have reason to come out to your barn before then?”

  “Not on a Sunday.”

  “And you hadn’t had any reason to go looking for your niece before then?”

  “I figured she was off on her own somewhere,” Rebecca replied, after a slight pause. “Girls her age are hard to confine.”

  The sheriff grunted and continued his close examination.

  “You hadn’t heard any type of disturbance out here the prior night?” the sheriff asked a minute later.

  “No.”

  The sheriff carefully moved the corpse to the side, and her head flopped from one shoulder to the other. I saw he was examining the pool of dried blood. “She must have been right here when she was stabbed,” he said, talking mostly to himself, “because the blood flowed straight down. There’s none anywhere else. Why didn’t she fight back? Only—what’s this?” He leaned down, his nose only inches above the dirt floor of the barn, then looked up at Rebecca. “Is it possible someone lay their head in the blood? A portion of the stain looks like it was matted by hair.”

  For the first time, emotion showed on Rebecca’s face. “Jesse was lying there when I found her,” she said. She blinked.