I sat on the big bay and waited for my Dad to finish counting out a small pile of gold coins to pay the shopkeeper. The old man waited with his hand outstretched as if my pa would run off without paying. Our indentured servant was loading 100 lbs. sacks of beans, flour and corn onto the wagon atop the cleverly constructed false bottom that was filled with Federal Reserve gold and notes. He was off to the side where he could keep an eye on me, and I could watch both my pa and him. I heard him curse, he wasn't supposed to say those words around me, but I'd heard them enough to know he said them too much. I giggled and echoed him. Shit-fire and damnation.
I wasn’t supposed to know about the secret cache in the wagon but being a curious and nosy eight-year-old, I was into everything, so I watched from my hiding place in the big oak as Pa’s helper transferred it from the government coach to his wagon.
“Find anything you want, Crispin?” Pa asked before he finished paying. “Rock candy? Molasses snaps? Sarsaparilla?”
I shook my head but looked longingly at the pocketknife in the display case. Dad saw, of course. He saw everything. The rows of goods laid out on bare planks, barrels loaded with foodstuffs, bolts of cloth laid on sheets of wood, and the sour pickles in a crock that gave off a vinegary smell. He saw the long counter with penny candy and ammunition stacked behind the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper was an older man, bald with sharp gray eyes and wattles, smooth-shaven save for a tiny mustachio and thick wormy lips.
“Got some suckers for your young’un, Cap’n Lacey,” he said his eyes searching out the wagon hitched to a matched pair of Missouri mules. Dad had brought them all the way from Washington although they were not branded US Cavalry but had been purchased from the Loomis Brothers out of upstate New York. The Loomis Brothers were well known smugglers and horse thieves.
Dad smiled and bought me the knife. As he handed it over to me, he held my hand on it. “Won’t tell you to be careful, Cris,” he said. “You’re a smart boy, know what’s safe and not. You won’t cut yourself.”
“No, Dad,” I promised, eyes wide in delight. I popped the blade out and ran my thumb down the blade’s edge. Said, “it needs sharpening.”
“I’ll do it once we get going,” he promised and climbed on the seat of the wagon. He clucked to the mules and the big long-eared bays trotted smartly out of town. I rode behind the wagon on his saddle horse, the big bay named Ballycor, after the village in Ireland where my Dad been born.
Irish, he’d come over in the early 1800s with my mother and settled not in Boston but in the Capital. He’d come with money and aspirations, joined the cavalry as an Officer and been pulled in to serve on the General Quartermaster Staff of the newly formed government. He rose quickly through the ranks., reaching the position of Captain and been tasked with ensuring that payrolls were met. He’d done well and made money. He’d moved my mother and me to a gentleman’s farm out in the country, a small house with some acreage. My mother had been a farmer’s daughter from Ireland and had run the farm with boundless enthusiasm. Without slaves. Instead, she hired indentured servants who grew hay, corn, and hops, quietly profiting and setting them free when their time was half-up.
Then the war came, and she was one of the first casualties, murdered by British-backed Indians but not before she had faced down four braves. She had killed two before they could steal the livestock or harm any of the people that she had taken in. The servants used hatchets and pitchforks to drive off the Indians, but not before one had shot my mother with an arrow. Mr. Fitzsimmons had rescued me from my mother’s dying arms.
When my father came home, he found three servants and Fitzsimmons hiding in the ice-house with me. The house, barns, and fields had been torched and burned to the ground along with my mother’s body.
He packed up what he could salvage, moved to the city and into the Officers’ Barracks with me and tried to resign his commission. He was coerced into a special assignment before his Commander would allow him to resign.
My father was a small neat man with the looks of the Black Irish, dark hair and bright blue eyes that flared flame hot. He laughed easily and often before Mom died but had turned quiet and somber afterward.
In his uniform, he attracted much attention from other women, but he paid them little notice, telling me he missed my mother still.
He had procured the mules and the wagon, loaded, and drove it out of the city all within the same week. We were now traveling down the Cumberland Gap Trail headed for the dark and bloody ground, Kentucky.
Ballycor snorted and dipped his head, pulling the reins out of my hands. Luckily, Dad tied them together, so I didn’t drop them.
“Pay attention, Crispin,” he said. “He’s telling you he smells something.”
“What?” I looked around apprehensively but saw nothing except trees, dirt, trail and more trees. An occasional stonewall or small creek broke the monotony.
“Someone else is coming up the trail behind us,” he offered.
“Bandits?” I reached for my knife and he smiled.
“I hope not. More than likely, it’s just other folk who are moving out west, too.”
“Why, Dad?”
“Seeking a better life, maybe more land, more freedoms. Running away from bad memories,” he finished quietly.
In the back of the wagon, Mr. Fitzsimmons smiled at me but pulled up his rifle. He was in his early 30s, one of the few left after the massacre that took mom and he’d stayed on after my father had freed all the other indentured servants. He had been a poacher in the old country and to feed his family after the potato famine, had been caught stealing salmon. He had been transported rather than hung and sold for seven years work to pay off the Lord’s salmon. It hardly seemed fair.
“Crispin, me lad,” he said. “Bring Ballycor up to your Dad.”
I kicked my heels into the stallion’s ribs, and he trotted up and around to the near mule’s shoulder. I was watchful, the mule liked to kick at us, and I’d been in the way too many times. Dad turned on the seat and reached for his sidearm, unhooked the leather tie on the hammer. He was a careful man and wary.
Four men on horseback came into view astride big horses, sleek with a lot of leg under them. None of them were branded US nor were the riders dressed in anything other than homespun and leathers. Their rigs were heavy saddles, Military style except for one whose gear was an Officer’s field saddle and bridle. Their horses were sweaty and looked tired. They’d either been running or had come a long way. As a group, they pulled up. The man in the front wore homespun trousers and a butternut shirt with a ratty coat open from neck to waist.
He had long curly yellow hair and whiskers of gold and white on his face that resembled porcupine quills. His eyes were a lazy hooded amber, his nose broken and ugly.
“Cap’n Lacey,” he greeted his eyes running over the wagon, mules, Mr. Fitzsimmons, and me.
“Jimmy Johannsen,” Dad said flatly.
"Shit-fire," Mr. Fitz said under his breath but I heard him.
“Heard you left the company. Sorry to hear about your missus. Saved the boy, I see. Heading out west?”
“St. Louis. Far enough to run from the memories,” Dad said offhandedly. “You too?”
“Running toward land. Heard it’s free for the taking.”
“Long as you can hold it against hostiles,” Dad added. “It’s a lawless wasteland.”
“You’re going. With the young’un," the ugly man said.
“Crispin’s an army brat. Raised on bases. He’ll be fine.” My Dad flashed me a smile but kept his eyes on the group.
The man called Johannsen tipped his hat and they moved ahead, disappearing down the trail. Dad waited and finally, got the mules going again. They rode warily, eyes searching everywhere and didn’t relax their vigilance until we reached an open turnpike leading to a small town in the Smokies called White Creek. By that time, I was sore, hungry, and ready to get off the saddle.
We came into town on the main street in a haze of dust so that all I could see were the top floors of the bank, hotels, and shops. It was a larger town and prosperous with a port on the Cumberland River, paddle boats, and barges lining the dock. Men were busy loading and unloading goods as we rode by. There was a strange smell in the air that my father told me was tobacco and cotton.
Dad had called Mr. Fitzsimmons up front once we’d entered town, so I knew the danger he was afraid of had lessened.
“Tired, Crispin?” The servant asked, turning to watch me. I nodded and wiped my mouth tasting nothing but dust.
Dad steered toward an office building on a street corner near the wharves where a sign hung, listing it as a Naval Depot. He jumped down and let Mr. F hang onto the heads of the mules as he came over and lifted me off the stud horse as he carried me inside tucked into his shoulder. I was sleepy, almost too tired to care that we were in a new place, when all I wanted was a soft bed that didn’t move.
The hallway was cool and dark. His boots echoed hollowly on wooden plank floors and a Naval Officer came out of one of the doors to ask if he could help us.
“Captain Lacey, from the Capital,” Dad said quietly. He saluted. “Brought the cargo for the Commander.”
“Who’s this?” The Captain asked as he dropped his gaze to my head. I tucked myself back against my father’s shoulder and made a sleepy protest.
“My son, Crispin. You have a couch or chair I can drop him in for a few minutes while we unload the wagon?”
“You going on to a hotel after?” The other Captain asked.
“HQ wants me on the road by Monday,” Dad sighed. “In St. Louis by May 15.”
The Navy Captain stared. “That’s pushing it. Unless you take a paddle wheeler up.” His eyes traveled over the wagon. “Not with the load that they have you scheduled for. The gold weighs –”
Dad hushed him. “Less said, the better. No one knows what I’m carrying, and I’d like to keep it that way.” He paused. “Taking my boy to the Claremont for dinner, spend the night. We’ll be ready to leave at sunup. See that my wagon is loaded.”
“You want an escort?”
“Dispatch promised me two off-riders. I’ll take them. Saw Johannsen in the neighborhood and he was eyeing the wagon. I don’t trust him.”
“Everything will be ready in the a.m., Captain. Have a good meal.” He saluted, Dad picked me up and carried me back out to the dusty street as we walked a few blocks to the hotel and went inside.