Riding Shotgun (14 page)

She let go of the bit as a jagged bolt of fear ripped into her. For a fleeting moment she could almost believe it was 1699.

A polished wooden trunk contained gorgeous blankets. She found a conté crayon, a hardened piece of rectangular graphite like artists use, on the lip of a standing desk like an old schoolteacher’s. She placed her Smythe notebook on the
slanting top, pulled out the small pencil from the spine and scribbled; tore out the page and hung it outside Throttle’s stall where another bridle rack was placed for the convenience of tacking up in the stall.

Normally Cig didn’t attach Master of Foxhounds behind her name unless corresponding with other foxhunters but she thought it would help the Deyhles if they wanted to check her out before calling. All they needed to do was call the Master of Princess Anne, down the river, or Deep Run, upriver. Foxhunters are a good pipeline for information.

She then walked Full Throttle out to the massive mounting block, a huge, smooth, flat-topped river stone. She swung her right leg over, he twitched his ears, then they moved off as the three cats watched in fascination.

Cig trotted west on the winding river road. She passed the small dock that served Buckingham. She knew that nearby there was a two-lane paved highway, Route 5, which fed into Route 156. She vaguely remembered a gas station at the intersection. Anxious to call the kids, she urged Full Throttle into a brisker trot. They were both stiff from yesterday’s wild ride but she’d be at the phone booth soon enough. The road didn’t appear where it was supposed to, though; in fact, nothing familiar appeared except the James River, which conformed to her memory of it. Timber towered overhead. She’d never witnessed so much abundant wildlife. The great estates along the James were nowhere to be found. She
knew
this territory. She’d hunted this territory since childhood, plus she’d attended William and Mary, which was 150 miles from her home.

The James lapped against the shore. Unconsciously she squeezed Full Throttle and he broke into a canter. She slowed him down, tried to keep cool and trotted on. As the sun rose higher, she peered over the wide expanse of the river. She perceived a few cleared fields amid the thick woods but nothing else. Nothing. Not a stick.

The road continued. She slowed to a walk. It wouldn’t do to push the horse or herself. She needed to think clearly, calmly, sensibly. A rustle to her right alerted her. She turned as a ten-point buck leaped out, saw her and Full Throttle, then leaped back into the forest. She heard him crashing away.

The road hugged the river. She peered down, hoping for a track, a hoofprint, anything to quell her fears. Baked hard as brick, the road yielded no comforts. Although the temperature couldn’t have been over fifty degrees, sweat rolled down her back, under her armpits.

She scanned the river for sight of a boat, a skiff, a dingy, even a raft. Nothing.

As she rounded a bend, a wedge of mist, ground fog, curved across the road. Full Throttle snorted and stopped. She knew her horse well enough to trust his senses more than her own. A human form appeared, as startled to see her as she was to see him. He looked like an Indian, in ragged leather pants. The right side of his head was shaved clean, and a long knot of hair, braided, hung down the left side. She thought she saw a tomahawk in his belt, a knife in his right hand. That quickly he darted into the woods.

“Hey, hey, wait a minute. Please,” she called out.

She again looked down at the road as the mist swirled around. Drops of blood dotted the dry, dusty surface. The mist lifted, and she rode forward. More blood. She shivered.

A crumpled figure lay to the side of the road. She hurried over. Cig had a strong stomach but it turned over.

An Indian, his neck half-severed, lay on his side. The killer had started to lift off his scalp at the forehead. His full head of hair was trimmed blunt at his shoulder. She must have startled the attacker just as he cut into the forehead.
Full Throttle snorted and backed up. The odor of fresh blood upset him.

“Whoa boy, whoa boy.” She stared at the corpse. A copper gorget protected his neck. His breeches, soft buttery leather, amazed her they were so beautiful. Blood seeped through his ripped deerskin shirt.

She had to call the sheriff and then her children. Why would anyone murder another human being like this?

She headed back down the James. If nothing else she knew where the Deyhles were and strange as they might be with their living history trip, surely they would summon a sheriff.

They cantered, brightly colored trees flying by, and a black bear scurried to get out of the way. Within twenty minutes she was back at the solid brick building.

Tom shot out the door. “Pryor, you had us worried to death.”

“You have to call the sheriff—right now! A man has been killed. An Indian.”

Margaret almost stumbled out of the house. Bobby and Marie, the indentured servants, frankly stared, mouths agape.

“You’ve got to call the sheriff!”

“Sheriffs are in England. We don’t have them here,” Tom evenly answered.

“Oh, for Chrissakes, drop the charade, will you? A man’s been murdered up the road. You’ve got to call the police!”

“Margaret, stay here. Tell Bobby to load up the muskets—just in case. You know what to do.” He dashed around to the back and reappeared mounted on Helen.

“Lead the way,” he told her.

“Wait!” Margaret ran inside and returned. She handed up a flintlock pistol to Tom who stuck it in his belt.

She handed another to Cig who took it without grumbling. If it was the only weapon around, she was going to use it.

“Come on.” She turned Full Throttle west on the river road.

The two rode in silence. As they reached the body, Tom dismounted.

He whistled. “This is a bloody harvest, all right.”

“I saw the killer. For a second he appeared in the mist and then ran into the forest. He was going to scalp this man.”

“They always do that. You know that.”

“Not today they don’t!”

“Pryor, you’re not in possession of your senses,” Tom firmly chided her. “This is a Tuscarora Iroquois.”

“What are you talking about?” She was mad as hell now.

“The Iroquois and Manahoac peoples are west and north of the fall line for the most part, the Algonquin, east of it. Even though the savages have treaties between them this fellow”—he broke off and knelt down, rolled the corpse over on his back—“robbed him, too.”

“How do you know that?”

Tom pointed to two cut thongs at the waistline on the Indian’s leather breeches.

Cig squinted. The awful reality that this
was
another time was beginning to sink in. She pushed it back. “There has to be some authority. You’ve got to tell someone.”

“I will. I’ll tell our neighbors and I’ll tell James Blair who has a brain in his head.” Tom, a trace of bitterness in his voice, continued, “Won’t do a bit of good to tell the governor or the House of Burgesses. They’re too consumed with collecting taxes and sending them back to King William. The last time the Indians started slaughtering us, they wouldn’t even raise a militia. Of course, that was a different governor so I’ll hold my peace on this one. Still, the Crown wants our money but refuses to spend any to defend us.”

She folded her hands over the pommel of her saddle. “What about the body?”

“Help me.”

Cig dismounted and the two of them heaved the corpse over Tom’s horse behind the saddle.

They walked back toward Buckingham.

She kept, her mouth shut. Scanning each bend of the river for a landmark, anything, her despair deepened. She
felt herself enveloped by time, as though a velvet glove was closing around her. All she wanted was a telephone. She regretted the times she had cursed Alexander Graham Bell for interrupting her life. She prayed there would be some logical explanation—that Tom Deyhle was suffering from schizophrenia or manic-depression or any psychological term she could fling at him. He seemed sane and sound although at this moment he was worried. Her teeth chattered. She clamped her jaws shut.

He noticed and said soothingly, “Don’t worry, sister. It’s been over twenty years since the last uprising. This is heathen killing heathen.”

She turned to him with tears in her eyes. “That’s not why I’m afraid.”

“What then?” He smiled, his voice kind.

“I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what time it is. I’m not sure I know who I am.”

He tilted his head back at the sky. “Eight o’clock about, you’re on your way home, Pryor Deyhle. You know, I think the mind is like a child’s toybox. Sometimes things are tossed inside and there’s a jumble. It will all sort out.”

“You really do not have a telephone?” The tears flowed.

“Sister, I never heard of such a thing.” Love and impatience carried in his voice.

“Then what year is it? Truly, Tom, what year?”

“1699.”

“Oh, God.” She bit her lip until it bled. Otherwise she would have sobbed uncontrollably.

Drawing on reserves of self-control she scarcely knew she possessed, Cig continued to keep silent. Since the murdered Indian had riveted everyone’s attention, she didn’t have to say much. She tried to give no cause for alarm, because she figured this group of people wouldn’t be different from any other group of people: they’d gossip.

If she acted too peculiar or disoriented she might find herself in a worse mess than she was already
in
.

Tom took the body to Shirley Plantation about eleven miles downriver. He quietly instructed Margaret to be vigilant—just in case.

Tom said the killer would probably head north or south toward the great swamps but not west over the fall line. Since an Indian in Jamestown was relatively uncommon he’d probably move through the woods to reach his destination.

Cig struggled to absorb what wasn’t being said. The suppressed fear was palpable. Naturally, everyone’s first concern was his own immediate safety. The next worry was that
this killing could presage a war between the tribes with the colonists caught in the middle.

Tom wanted to get hold of Lionel deVries of Wessex Plantation and William Byrd, downriver. Both men were amassing fortunes by setting up trading posts with the Indians. Byrd rode into Carolina, specializing in coastal tribes, whereas deVries, apparently a bold soul, crossed the fall line, continuing even over the mountain range that people said was blue. He traded in the fertile Shenandoah Valley where few whites traveled.

Cig, as if in a daze, untacked Full Throttle, wiped him down and turned him out in the paddock closest to the barn. The two cows in the paddock paid no attention to him.

Margaret appeared, carrying two pails of milk. Cig took one from her.

“You’ve been buffeted about these last hours. Exhausted, hungry, and then this morning—well…. Not the homecoming you imagined, I fear.”

“The truth is, I don’t know where I am. Except geographically.” Cig knew she wasn’t making sense. She concentrated on not spilling the milk. Having a chore to do made her feel better.

“It must be terrible to lose your memory.” Margaret sympathized.

“Memory? It’s my mind I’m worried about,” Cig blurted out. “There’s got to be a telephone, a telegraph, hell, two tin cans on a string.”

“String I have. As to the two other objects…” Margaret shook her head. “Do you recognize any of us?”

“Your voice sounds familiar but I can’t place it.”

“Tom?”

“Only that we look alike.”

Margaret, genuinely sympathetic, said, “I am sorry, Pryor.” She hesitated. “What about Castor and Pollux?”

“Don’t recognize them either.”

“Ah, well, fretting will only make it worse. Patience…”Margaret left off her sentence as she opened the heavy oak door to the fieldstone springhouse. She placed
the milk pails in the stone-lined trench through which the cool water flowed. Big, round wrought-iron circles bolted into the side of the springhouse provided tethers for the pails. Margaret lifted the pail onto a long wrought-iron S-hook, one end hooked onto the pail handle and the other through an iron circle.

“Beautiful stone work!” Cig exclaimed.

“William Henry Harrison, in his kindness, lent us two of his shipyard men. He has great plans for the Berkeley Hundred and the shipyards will no doubt provide him, in good time, with the money to build and build. It’s his vice.”

Margaret lifted up a white square chunk of butter as they left the springhouse, and the young woman carefully closed and bolted the door.

“Are you worried about thieves?” Cig wondered.

Margaret laughed. “I learned the hard way.” She pointed to the cats. “We bolt the smokehouse, too. Of course, I think the raccoons and the fox have a lot to answer for, not to mention Highness, Nell Gwyn, and Little Smudge. She looks like a smudge, doesn’t she?” Margaret pointed to the dark gray cat, her bright green eyes full of playfulness.