Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels Read online

  BORN REBEL and

  THE GUNS OF LIVINGSTON FROST

  Two Short Novels by Ardath Mayhar

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  BORN REBEL

  THE GUNS OF LIVINGSTON FROST: A WASHINGTON SHIPP MYSTERY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2010 by Ardath Mayhar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

  without the expressed written consent

  of the author and publisher.

  Published by Wildside Press

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATED

  TO THE INSPIRED SIGN-PAINTERS WHO LABEL THE EXITS OFF INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS

  THEY ARE THE PROGENITORS OF

  LIVINGSTON FROST

  PROLOGUE

  I had an old friend who periodically took all the leftovers in her refrigerator and popped them into a pot to simmer. This usually became a rich and tasty soup, which her family ate enthusiastically—she called it her “make-’em-eat-it” soup.

  This volume is my literary equivalent.

  In 1999 my world as I knew it came to an end. Joe, my husband of forty-one years, died after a long illness. The next month I had a serious car wreck, which shattered my left foot and ankle and compressed my t-5 vertebra by fifty percent.

  At the time I’d begun several novels, including the third Washington Shipp mystery, only a couple of which I was able to complete. Thereafter, my creativity seemed to be lost, and I have written very little since, though I kept on critiquing the work of new writers. So here are a few “orphans,” which I would have loved to complete in fuller form, but couldn’t—and can’t. I have provided summarized endings to help complete the narratives.

  I hope you enjoy them just the same.

  —Ardath Mayhar

  Chireno, Texas

  November, 2009

  BORN REBEL

  (1825)

  This is based on my own family history—my great-great-great grandmother left on her wedding day to come to Texas with her own choice of a husband. I can only guess what her would-be husband’s (back in South Carolina) reaction might have been, much less her own family’s. The couple did get across the Sabine River and had two children, one of whom was my great-great grandfather, David Cannon.

  —Ardath Mayhar

  CHAPTER ONE

  Judith McCarran

  Judith pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with a sweaty sleeve and straightened her back. Leaning on her hoe, she stared along the corn row toward her nearest sister. Beyond Susan was her mother, and on other rows of the cornfield were the rest of her siblings, except for Lily, who lay in a horse collar at the end of the row, teething on a bit of licorice root, and her two married sisters.

  “Get busy, there,” her father growled behind her. “No time for lollygagging. We’ve got to get this corn thinned so we can go ahead with your wedding. You put your back into it, girl!”

  Biting her lip, the young woman bent to her work again, battling her innate need to admit she hated her father. The preacher said you had to honor your father and your mother, but she had a hard time doing either. Mama was beaten to her knees, all the fight long ago knocked out of her. Pa was right up there beside God, a pair of unforgiving son-of-a-bitch if ever there was one.

  Chopping the pale green shoots amid a fine haze of dust, Judith thought about that wedding. Her wedding, indeed! She had about as much to say about it as little Lily did. Pa wanted his family’s hardscrabble acres hooked up with the adjoining Medlar property’s rich river bottom stretches, and if it took marrying his third daughter to old man Oscar, that was fine. He didn’t have to sleep with the filthy old devil or look after his two mean-spirited sons.

  Judith paused again, wondering if God was going to strike her with lightning for thinking such blasphemy, but he didn’t. Encouraged by the lack of celestial fireworks, she moved forward, both hoe and head busy.

  Her sister Dena had two children after three years of marriage. Angela had one and expected another at any moment. Judith had no intention of bearing fourteen children, as her mother had.

  Old Oscar had a wicked gleam in his eye when he looked at her, though so far she’d managed to avoid being alone with him. What would happen when she was shoved into his hands was something she hated to think about. She had even thought about killing herself to avoid being married to him, but she was too young and bright to carry it through.

  She’d helped deliver Lily and Carrie and Stella and little Jonah, who’d died soon after being born. She knew too much about childbirth to have any great ambition to undertake it for herself unless it was for somebody she really loved and wanted to have a child by. Her heart felt heavy as she reached the end of the row.

  Deep shadows of the mountain to the west already covered the field. Pa yelled, “Quitting time!” and headed toward the house. Once there, he’d wash up and sit on the stoop while the womenfolk added women’s work to a full day of man’s work, kindling the cookfire, frying cornbread and chicken. Once he and George and Thomas and DeLancy ate their fill, the women would eat a bit of whatever was left, wash up everything, and put the dirty clothing to soak for tomorrow’s wash.

  She wished now she’d married David McCarran when he asked. She’d had no desire to be wed to anybody, but David was a far sight better than Oscar Medlar. He was kind, and she’d known him since they were in diapers. Better somebody you liked, she realized now that it was too late, than somebody you hated the sight of.

  But David had taken her at her word, and Pa had forbidden him to come courting anyway. She saw him only at Meeting or when his own Pa sent him over to the DuBay farm on some errand. She wished he’d come to the wedding. At least there would be one sympathetic face in the bunch.

  She knew he wouldn’t, however. He had too much pride, and maybe he’d been hurt more than she thought when she said no. He’d hardly looked at her, the few times they saw each other since.

  Supper over, the dishes washed, the table and floor scrubbed, the weary women went to the spring to bathe in the big wooden tub of water that had been warming in the sun all day. Judith helped her shorter sisters into and out of the spring to rinse off. When her own turn came she was almost too tired to move, but the sweat and dust of the day were pure misery.

  The water felt good to her sunburned skin, and she took a quick dip in the creek, mother naked, after the others went back to the house. With reluctance, she donned her shift and went up to the hot little attic room she shared with Susan, Carrie, and Stella.

  She could hear Lily’s plaintive wails as she neared the stoop, and she hurried in with a bit of fresh root for the baby to suck as she went to sleep. Suddenly she hated everyone here, from the teething infant to her father, now reading the Bible aloud in his sonorous voice.

  Judith realized suddenly that she hated the Bible, too. Now she really did expect to be struck down in her iniquity, but no blast came, not even a rumble of thunder. For the first time in her seventeen years, Judith DuBay wondered if there was any God at all; or was he something used by men to keep their women afraid and biddable?

  Feeling incredibly sinful, she slipped past the door and climbed the porch post to cross the narrow roof and enter her bedroom through the window. She’d used that route in and out of the house since she was a little tad. Sometimes she’d gone out with David to follow, very stealthily, the men’s possum hunts or to listen to the hounds belling through the woods after a coon.

  She opened the shutters as wide as they’d go, le
tting the night breeze through the unglazed window. They were lucky to have a window at all; others sweated out their nights, she knew, in windowless boxes of rooms. At least Pa let Ma persuade him to cut openings into all the rooms.

  If he’d known how much more comfortable it made his daughters, doubtless he’d have refused. He claimed suffering was a woman’s lot in life, and nothing that eased it was acceptable to God or Man. The curse of Eve was on all women, he claimed, and the more they did penance, the better it was for their souls.

  He and almost every other male she knew believed the same thing and seemed set on doing his part to make that suffering acute. And the day after tomorrow she’d belong, body and soul, to Oscar Medlar, whose reputation regarding treatment of his slaves was terrible and whose mouth had a cruel twist. The thought made her sick.

  If she had a horse, she’d light out over the mountains toward the west. People she knew told of kin who had gone to Kentucky or Mississipp’ or even to Texas. By now there ought to be fair-sized communities in those wild parts. Surely she could get on as a farm worker or such, if she only managed to escape.

  But she knew better. Even there she’d be considered only female flesh, to be used and disregarded like her mother and most of the women she knew. Her father’s horse and his mules were better regarded than she and her mother and sisters, and nobody ever pretended anything different.

  David’s mother was the only woman she had ever known who held her head high and spoke her mind. Her husband listened to her, too, as did others when there was a matter of importance that needed clear thinking. Elizabeth McCarran did not put up with any nonsense, even from the preacher.

  It would have been wonderful if Caroline DuBay had possessed her spunk and intelligence. Maybe, if she had, Pa wouldn’t have been so highhanded with other people’s lives.

  * * * * * * *

  Despite Judith’s dread, the day of the wedding arrived. Her white cotton dress was starched, ironed stiff with hours of backbreaking labor with flatirons, and hung from a hook in the wardrobe chest. Guests had already arrived, her aunts’ families coming on a two-day journey to see her married. The house was full of small cousins.

  Judith was up before dawn, busy with last minute cooking, packing up her few items of clothing, trying her best not to think of what would come after today. When Susan went down to the spring after water, just after sunrise, Judith was already tired and out of sorts.

  She was glad when her mother motioned for her to go to her bedroom and begin getting ready. From now on, she must be out of sight of arriving guests and the bridegroom, for tradition was respected among their family.

  She was leaning on the windowsill when she saw Susan run across the back yard, trying not to slosh water out of the wooden bucket. Strange—Susan seldom got into a hurry. When her sister’s voice called at the door, after a few minutes, Judith wondered what might be afoot.

  “Jude...Jude, go down to the spring and say goodbye to David. He’s got...”—the girl paused to catch her breath—“...he’s got his slaves Joseph and Cassie with him, and horses, and they’re going to Texas. He wants to see you before they take off.”

  There was an almost audible thump beneath Judith’s breastbone. Was this the chance she had been praying for (yes, even though she now had grave doubts as to the existence of any god except Pa)? Had some miracle sent her the opportunity to escape her dreadful destiny?

  Without pausing to think, she caught up the packed carpetbag and tossed it out of the window. She put on a pair of breeches George had outgrown, which she kept for working in the fields, took her shawl out of the wardrobe chest, and dragged her boots out from under the trundle bed where Carrie slept.

  Then she climbed out that old familiar window, down the porch on the side screened by honeysuckle vines, and sped away toward the spring. Everyone, she knew quite well, was in the front parlor, making false faces and falser conversation, and not a single voice rose to call her back.

  The path was crooked, overarched by huge hardwoods and edged with fern and stickery vines, but her stout boots crashed over any obstruction. David heard her coming, she knew, for he was standing at the end of the path, waiting for her, his ruddy face alight with sudden hope.

  “David, you still want to marry me?” she panted, as she skidded to a stop. “If you do, let’s hurry and leave, because there’s going to be a ring-tailed twister of a fuss in just a few minutes, when Ma and the girls come to help me dress for the wedding and I’m not there.”

  He caught her in a mighty hug. Then he led the way across the foot log and boosted her onto Old Jess, his sorrel mare. Joseph and his wife were grinning, their teeth and the whites of their eyes shining in the shadows of the forest, as she turned to grin back.

  Then they were moving single file through the thickly growing trees, following a game trail leading west. There lay more mountains, swamps, Indians, criminals of all stripes, rivers that drowned the unwary, and all sorts of unforeseen dangers. Judith felt ready to confront any or all of them. Compared to the prospect of being the wife of Oscar Medlar, facing perils in the wilderness seemed eminently preferable.

  She turned in the saddle and smiled at David, who rode just behind her on Blue Roan. “How did you know I’d come?” she asked. “Or did you just hope?”

  “I’ve been knowing you since you were knee high to a duck,” he said. “I been thinking about you and old Oscar, and I could just about read your mind, even so far away. You’d never marry that old bastard if you had any choice in the matter. So I gave you a choice, that’s all.”

  Judith sighed. Having someone who knew you so well, who cared enough to give you a chance, was a lovely thing to think about, now she’d had a taste of what the alternative might have been. David was clean as new split wood, kind as a mother cat, and she knew he respected her, whether or not she might be female. His family had far different ideas on that matter.

  The thought reminded her. “Where can we get married?” she asked him, bending to keep her thick coil of auburn hair from catching on a low-sweeping branch. “I’ve never been over this way and I don’t even know what towns are there.”

  David grunted. “I know just the place. Pa’s Cousin Martin is the preacher at the Pine Knot Settlement half a day’s ride beyond the river. Our Newberry kinfolk settled there a piece back, and I know Cousin Martin will tie the knot for us without any fuss or bother.”

  It was still early, and sunlight shafted down through the thick layers of branches and leaves. Squirrels chattered and scampered along the thick limbs, paying no heed to the riders far below them. The day felt fresh and clean and new, and she realized her own life did, as well.

  Judith experienced a sense of freedom unlike any she had ever known in all her constricted life. She felt as if she could shinny up one of the big oaks or maples and play tag with the squirrels, if she wanted to. Many was the time her Ma had scolded her, when she was little, for just such antics. She had a feeling David would only laugh if she climbed a tree, instead of going pale with shock and dismay as her own kin did.

  When they came to the river, the water was high, but all the horses were strong swimmers; their riders came out on the other side pretty well damped down but without mishap. They stopped to build a fire and dry off, and Judith took the opportunity to change George’s breeches for her own gray cotton skirt. It seemed fit, somehow, to get married looking more like a girl than a boy.

  Yet the sun went down long before they reached the Settlement, and they stopped again, this time for the night. Amid the hoots of owls, the chirring of crickets, the mournful calls of a whippoorwill, and occasional screams of a distant painter, she helped Cassie cook bacon and skillet bread.

  She had no qualm about settling herself beside David for the night. He was her friend, and she knew he would never push her for anything she wasn’t yet ready to give. Her back was warm where it touched his blanketed shape, and that was a comfort.

  Joseph was on the first watch, his figure dark against
the faint glow of the covered coals. Cassie, pregnant and uncomfortable, whimpered in her sleep from time to time.

  But Judith, free and happy in her escape from a miserable marriage, slept at once. She never stirred until David shook her gently, when dawn was only a thin line in the eastern sky and the birds of morning were beginning their sleepy trills.

  “Wake up, Lady,” he whispered. “Today’s our wedding day.”

  And this time the words did not toll like funeral bells in her heart.

  * * * * * * *

  The Settlement was tucked into a narrow valley that ran up beside a river flowing down the mountains. Here and there were fields of corn or cotton or tobacco, set amid patches of woodland. Houses were few but stoutly built of logs, and those early-birds working among the rows straightened their backs and hailed the travelers in a friendly manner.

  Cousin Martin was one of them. His cornfield was beside his two-room house, and when David recognized him, knee deep in young corn, he yelled, “Come out of the field, Cousin, and meet my intended. We want to get married—you still a preacher?”

  The tall, thick shape straightened, pushed back his wide hat, and spat between his teeth before he began moving toward the road. “That sounds like young David. What you doin’ so far from home, boy?”

  David had dismounted, now, and Joseph was helping Judith down from Jess. Together they went to meet the big fellow, and he put his hands on his hips and grinned at them. “You runnin’ away together?” he asked. “I hate to help young’uns spite their families.” But he didn’t sound as if he meant a word of it.

  Mittie, Martin’s wife, had come out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron. Now she called to the group in the road, “You all come in here out of the sun and tell me what in tunket is going on. We don’t get any excitement here from year’s end to year’s end, so if any is happening, I want to be in the big middle of it.”