In one instant Benjamin saw it all—saw the reaction at the table, saw the quick look of fear Will Murdock and his brother exchanged, saw the alarm in the older man’s eyes, saw Mark Cooper drop his head quickly, saw the guilt on his own son’s face. They were all guilty. His son and this scum he was running with.
“You did it,” Benjamin lashed out. “At least be man enough to admit it.”
Joshua’s eyes narrowed and he lunged forward a step, his fists clenched. “I didn’t hit him,” he hissed, “but only ‘cause he was too fast for me. I tried!”
Benjamin stared, shocked into momentary silence by the open admission and the blazing defiance.
Nathan exploded. “Did it ever cross your mind that what you were doing was nothing more than plain robbery? Common thievery?”
“Them plates aren’t his,” the balding man snarled. “Smith himself admits he found them up top of old man Sexton’s hill.”
Asa Lilly came tumbling down the stairs in a nightshirt, followed by his son. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, then came forward slowly, holding up his hand. He knew Benjamin from the several times he had been in the tavern since the Steeds had come to Palmyra. “Ben,” he said soothingly, “have we got a problem here?”
“There’s no problem,” Benjamin spat, not taking his eyes from Joshua. “I’ve just come to fetch my son home. Seems like he’s not old enough to be on his own anymore.”
Joshua leaned forward, unable to believe what he had just heard. Then he threw back his head and roared.
Something inside Benjamin snapped. He stepped forward, swinging. Joshua saw it coming, strangled off the laugh, but was too stunned to duck. The flat of Benjamin’s hand caught him square alongside the head with a crack that seemed to thunder in the room. He went crashing backwards and hit the table, sending the whiskey bottle flying. His feet tangled in a chair leg and he fell heavily, smashing his face on David Murdock’s knee as he went down.
For several seconds, no one moved. “Joshua,” Benjamin stammered. He stepped forward, his hand extended toward his son. Joshua rolled frantically away from him, then came up into a crouch, blood trickling from his nose.
“Joshua, I’m sorry. I—”
Looking around wildly, Joshua’s eyes lit on the pistol stuck in Mark Cooper’s belt. With a cry like that of a wounded badger, he leaped forward, snatching the gun. He swung around, the pistol coming up just as his father reached him.
“Joshua!” Nathan screamed. “No!”
Benjamin froze, chest heaving, looking down the barrel of the pistol, the hole seeming as large as a cave. He felt suddenly, terribly sick. Joshua’s eyes were crazed, his hand trembling violently. Benjamin saw the thumb on the hammerlock of the pistol, white at the knuckle, and knew he was moments from death.
Then gradually, sanity returned to the eyes that stared at him over the barrel. Joshua fell back a step, the gun lowering, but only enough to point at Benjamin’s chest.
“Don’t do it, Joshua! Don’t do it!” Nathan’s voice behind them was almost a sob.
The pistol lowered a fraction more. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” Joshua cried, his voice trembling as noticeably as his hands. “Not ever!”
“Joshua!” There was no sound. “Joshua!” He could only mouth the word over and over.
In the room, everyone had frozen into immobility. Then Asa Lilly moved. Joshua swung around, the pistol waving wildly now. “Stay back!”
Lilly and his son cowered backwards. The men at the table dropped their eyes, huddling lower in their chairs. Those at Joshua’s table could only gape at him, as stunned as the others.
Joshua slowly backed around the table, keeping the gun steady now. He passed behind Benjamin, passed on Nathan’s left. Nathan, his face twisted with anguish, took a step toward him.
“Don’t!” Joshua whispered.
“Joshua,” Nathan cried, pleading.
“Just don’t!”
Then suddenly he turned and plunged out of the door. In a moment there was a hoarse cry, the sounds of a horse’s hooves pounding away. Then there was nothing except the soft sound of the rain on the roof overhead.
Chapter Fifteen
The month of June was closing out in western New York, and summer had now come with a vengeance. The afternoon temperature had climbed into the nineties, and a line of thunderstorms off to the west, spawned from the waters of Lake Erie, left the air laden with a muggy heaviness that effectively stifled any movement. Even the trees hung limp and lifeless, as though too weary to rustle their leaves. A raven circled lazily overhead, splitting the stillness with an occasional raucous caw, but no other birdcalls were heard. A few cows clustered together in a stupor beneath the spreading shade of an oak tree. Further on, a pair of horses stood side by side but facing in opposite directions, their flicking tails keeping the flies away from each other’s faces.
Benjamin Steed snapped the reins once lightly just to remind the mules he was still there. An ear flopped backwards momentarily. Other than that there was no sign that they noted his presence. Benjamin sat back, content to let them set their own pace. Though he had left his home just a few minutes earlier, the sweat already trickled from beneath his widebrimmed hat and into his eyes, and there was a stickiness in his arm pits, but he gave little mind to it. His thoughts were on other things, primarily on his oldest son.
Nine months had now passed since that dark September night and the bitter confrontation between father and son. Benjamin still felt sickened whenever he let his mind run over those few moments in Asa Lilly’s tavern—the angry words, Joshua’s mocking laughter, the stinging blow Benjamin had given his son. His mind always stopped at that point, freezing the imagery of the crazed blankness in Joshua’s eyes as he had grabbed the pistol and come within a hairsbreadth of killing his father. They learned later that from the tavern he had gone to the boardinghouse and cleaned out his room, then disappeared.
Since he took the horse with him, technically he had stolen it, a charge even more serious than attempted robbery. But Benjamin, using some of their last cash reserves, had paid for it, and the charges were quietly dropped. The men of Palmyra keenly felt Benjamin’s shame and let him know he had done all that was expected of a man.
Since that time, there had been no direct word from Joshua—no letters, not even as much as a note. There were only the rumors—he was fired from a job in Buffalo for drunkenness; he had made it to Pittsburgh and lost the horse gambling; he was working the keelboats along the Ohio; he had been in a brawl and nearly killed a man in Cincinnati. His mother had grown more despondent with the passing months, and they rarely spoke openly of Joshua anymore. But each time a rider came into the yard she would step quickly to the window, her eyes lighting with momentary hope, before she saw who it was and slowly lowered the curtain once again.
The latest report, brought in just three days before, was the closest they had come to hard news of his whereabouts. A teamster on his way east to pick up a train of wagons and take it back west reported that Joshua was working for a freight outfit in a little town called Independence, Missouri, on the western borders of the United States. Trailhead for both the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, it was a town with a bawdy reputation and wide-open opportunity. Ben had not told his wife the part about the bawdiness, only that the word about Joshua was positive, or at least it seemed to be, for a change. She had immediately sat down and written a letter and insisted Nathan take it into one of the stores and have it posted.
Swatting at a horsefly buzzing past his ear, Benjamin frowned. He understood Joshua’s hurt and the pride that kept him from writing. Had it been strictly directed toward himself, he could have forgiven his son’s silence. But Joshua’s quarrel was not with his mother or the rest of the family, and it only galled Benjamin further that he wouldn’t give in and write his mother a letter.
Benjamin had never been one to give credence to the idea of bad blood, but with Joshua he found himself wondering. At first he had been filled with a deep guilt. If he had treated Joshua more gently, not always jumped with both feet on his stubbornness, would things have been different? But he had finally put it aside. He had treated Joshua no differently than he treated the other children. Nathan had never reared back like a rebellious colt fighting the halter rope. Melissa spoke her mind freely enough, heaven knows, but it had never brought her into open battle with her father. And no Steed—not in all the eight generations since the first one stepped off the boat in Boston almost two hundred years earlier—no Steed had ever been taught to go after another man’s property, be it gold plates or whatever.
Benjamin was jerked out of his brooding as a movement off to his right caught his eye. He was heading for Palmyra Village and was just passing the Martin Harris home. A man came out of the side door and started around the house. Benjamin yanked sharply on the reins, pulling the mules up. “Ho, Martin! Is that you?”
The well-dressed man turned and one arm came up instantly. “Benjamin Steed. How are you?”
“Fine, Martin,” Benjamin called. He clucked at the mules and turned the wagon into the yard.
Martin strode over and stuck out his hand. “Ben, good to see you again.”
“And you as well,” Benjamin responded, returning the firm grip. “Heard tell you been away.”
“I was, I was.” Martin noted the sweat on his brow. “You look like you could stand a spell out of the sun. Come on, I’ve got some wine cooling in the icehouse. Or are you in a hurry?”
Benjamin shook his head and swung down.
Martin nodded, glancing up at the sun, brassy now with the haze which filled the air. “It’s a scorcher today. Too hot to do much of anything.”
As they walked around the back of the house to where a table sat beneath a large hickory tree, Martin called toward the house. In a moment a girl in her late teens appeared at the door. “Lucy, bring Mr. Steed and me some glasses.”
As they settled back, Benjamin took off his hat and wiped at his brow. “Heard tell you were down in Pennsylvania.”
“Yes. Just got back a few days ago. Hold on. Let me get the wine.”
As Martin walked toward the icehouse, Benjamin felt a quick rush of envy. He looked around at the solidly built home and the outbuildings. According to reports in the village, Martin had left in mid-April. That meant he had been gone about two months. Someday, Benjamin vowed, he would bring
his
farm to the point at which he could leave it in the hands of hired help for two months if he chose. That was what it meant to be a gentleman farmer.
The door to the house opened and the girl came out carrying a small tray with two glasses. Martin also reappeared, a bottle of wine in his hand. “Benjamin, this is my daughter Lucy.”
Benjamin nodded as the girl smiled and curtsied slightly. Mrs. Harris was also named Lucy, and Benjamin could see the resemblance between mother and daughter. “Thank you, Lucy.” Martin uncorked the bottle and poured each man a glass as the girl went back into the house.
“You been gone on business?” Benjamin asked, sipping the cool wine, letting it roll on his tongue so he could savor its cool tang.
Martin leaned back, took a drink, then another, then reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.
Benjamin sensed his sudden reticence and was embarrassed he had seemed to pry. He turned and gazed out across the cornfields to the south of the house. The corn was now over a foot high and had the deep green color which foretold a bounteous harvest. “It’s a good crop you’ve got comin’, Martin,” he said quickly.
Martin nodded. “It’s going to be another good year.” He sipped at the wine, watching Benjamin over the top of his glass. “Your place is looking right smart now too.”
Benjamin swung around to look to the north. The tree line along the creek mostly hid his property from view, but he nodded nevertheless, not trying to hide the satisfaction he felt.
“How many acres do you figure you’ve got cleared now?”
He calculated slowly, though he already knew the answer. “Well, we finished off about forty acres last season, and between last fall and this spring Nathan and I cleared thirty or thirty-five more.”
“It’s a right handsome farm.”
“It’s good land. A place where a man could be happy to sink down his roots once and for all.”
“Yes.”
Both men fell silent. Martin stroked his beard thoughtfully. Although it was very much in fashion, Benjamin had never much cared for the Greek-style beard Martin chose to wear. It ran from ear to ear, but the chin and jaw were kept clean shaven so the beard looked somewhat like a bandage one wrapped around the face to cope with a toothache. Benjamin himself was clean shaven, and preferred it that way.
Feeling Martin’s eyes upon him, Benjamin concentrated on his wine. In the heat it was quickly losing its chill. Benjamin drained his glass, now suddenly anxious to be on his way.
“I went south to help Joseph Smith translate the Book of Mormon.”
Benjamin set the glass down slowly. “The what?” he finally said when the words sank in.
“I wasn’t on farm business. I went down to Harmony to help Joseph translate the sacred record. It’s called the Book of Mormon.” He picked up the wine bottle and motioned toward Benjamin’s glass.
Benjamin pushed it toward him, trying to keep his face impassive. After the events of that night nine months ago, Palmyra Village and the surrounding township was a turmoil of wild rumors and “confirmed” facts: Joseph for sure had the gold Bible. There was no such thing as gold plates. It was a hoax. It was absolute truth.
Several men swore they had seen the stone box at the top of the hill owned by Pliney Sexton. In fact, the hill south of town was pockmarked with holes dug by hopeful treasure-seekers. Benjamin had seen that for himself. One man claimed to have actually peeked through a window and seen the plates in Smith’s hands, though the man was a known liar and no one gave him much credence. Reports of Joseph being shot at by unknown assailants were more likely true. The whole countryside was in an uproar, and more than one group was determined to get their hands on the gold.