met his death with Cornstalk in the Ohio country in ’77, had taught him woodlore in his youth. Sometimes a group of Carolinians, on their way to Boonesboro and the blue-grass country of Kentucky, stopped overnight at the big Stafford plantation. Those men had added their own wisdom to the canny teachings of the Cherokee.
Finding a branch tipped with foliage, Stafford broke it off close to the bole and used it as a drag along the ground behind him. Switching it back and forth, making it seem some grotesque tail that waggled as the horse walked, he obliterated his hoofprints in the sandy soil.
The rhythmic sway of the horse as he walked put a bemusement in Stafford. Behind him, a part of his life was ending. No longer would he chase a giggling, teasing Laura Lee through the upper rooms of the Hall, to catch and subdue her breathless with kisses. Never again would they ride side by side across the meadows to survey the ripening wheat and the little white puffs of budding cotton. The disunity between them, which they had tried to ignore as long as it was secret, was now an open sore.
Laura Lee was a loyalist. He was a rebel. From the agony of spirit inside him, he knew at last the wrenching fury that was splitting his Southland. For his country, because of this wild hope for freedom that was inside him, he was giving up his wife and all his wealth.
When he was five miles into the barrens, he dismounted beside a little stream and sat a while, brooding at the water as it gurgled over the pebbles and between fallen pine branches. The scent of forest underbrush was strong around him, and somewhere a wolf howled its hunger.
“It isn’t the wealth I mind losing,” he told the brook, “but Laura Lee.”
Yet Laura Lee was as determined in her way as he was in his own. She had called him traitor and turncoat when he first broached the idea that she go North, as so many Southern women were doing, at the start of the revolution. Fiercely she had challenged him, using tears and sobs to distract him from his beliefs. Finally, almost in desperation that last night, she had used her body.
A wry grin twisted his mouth as he remembered that night. He groaned and struck a fist to his knee. “If only I could convince her I was right! If only I could change her mind! She could live like a queen on those little chests of gold in the icehouse. She wouldn’t want for a thing! Just so I could get her North, in Philadelphia or Boston, away from these British officers who bedazzle her eyes with visions of society!”
And what sort of man could he call himself, an inner voice asked, if he gave up now, and rode off like a beaten creature? One last try, one last and final argument! He was her husband. Once she loved him deeply. Perhaps she loved him still. He came to his feet eagerly, a pulse of excitement making him shiver. She had been wanton with him short hours ago, welcoming home her husband as a loving wife should do. Were those sighs and soft moans only acting? If she loved him as much as it seemed, she might be willing to listen to him at last.
“No, by God!” he breathed through his teeth. “She couldn’t have been play-acting! She loves me! She told me as much today! Since she loves me so, she’ll do as I say, to please me!”
He laughed, and there was no memory of their former quarrels in that laughter. Like a boy he went to the gelding, talking in careless fashion to the big black horse, rising easily into the saddle. Sweep her off her feet! Give her no chance to refuse! Make her agree! Then bring her with him, stirrup to stirrup at a mad gallop for Charlotte Town, where Dan Morgan was gathering his men.
She can go North under the protection of Old Gem and some younger slaves, he thought. I’ll hire rifles to go with her, if need be.
As he rode he hypnotized himself with delusions that were born of his desperate need for affection and belief after the years of starvation and loneliness. He rode flushed and confident in his eagerness.
It was long after midnight when he came in sight of the Hall and its six towering white columns. The gigs and carriages were gone from the drive. Only the moonlight on white columns and Flemish brickwork relieved the darkness of the house. Quietly he walked the black across the grasses of the yard, until, by mounting onto the saddle, he could reach up and grasp the lowest crossbar of the latticework bordering the west wall. There was no sign that there were British soldiers still about, but he took no chances.
He pulled himself upward, foot by foot. The house was silent, dark, seemingly deserted. Now the middle bar was under his shoes, now the topmost.
A hand fumbled to find the window open against the autumn air. Then his leg swung over the white sill and he was halfway into the bedroom when he heard a voice cry out hoarsely.
A man and woman sat up in the bed where he had lain that afternoon. The woman was Laura Lee, with the moonlight silvering her body. She came out of the bed to stand staring at him.
“You fool!” she cried out hoarsely. “You poor, misguided fool!”
Then she was turning and running for the door, reaching out for its iron knob. The man who had been with her in the bed stood up now, and Stafford saw that it was Colonel Emerson. His right hand held a pistol that he had snatched from a little bedside table, and he trained it on Stafford, an inch above his belt buckle. The Colonel said triumphantly, “I told you he’d be back, Laury! I win our little bet! Now unbolt the door and summon the guards I posted below.”
“Laura Lee! As you love me, leave the door alone!”
He was not aware that he cried out so, with the bitterness alive in him and the numb shock and disbelief raging. Behind him his hand fumbled, and his fingers closed on a covered compote glass. Even as his grip hefted it, he remembered the day he and Laura Lee had bought it in a Charles Town chinaware shop.
Then he was darting sideways and hurling the glass, seeing the cover fly off as it hurtled across the room. Startled, Colonel Emerson fired. A spit of flame ran at Stafford. He heard the ball whistle past and shatter a window glass behind him. Then he was lunging forward, following the glass, taking Emerson about the knees and hurling him backward onto the bed.
Stafford was a madman for a few minutes. The hell light in his eyes was alive and leaping, and the frenzy rose up into his throat, shaking him with its power.
His fists thudded home on jaw and belly. He rode the man’s middle, hunting for his throat with hard hands. As his fingers tightened on that throat, the door opened and a shaft of yellow candlelight from a wall sconce came in and showed him the purpling face, the bulging eyes and protruding tongue.
Laura Lee was screaming at the doorway.
Heavy feet were pounding up the spiral staircase. Men were shouting, and the noise of their shouting was growing louder.
Remembering her nakedness, Laura Lee ran to a chest of drawers, snatched up a thin night robe, and slipped her arms into it. As if that were a signal, red-jacketed soldiers of the Thirty-third Foot came swarming through the door and raced for the men grappling on the bed.
Stafford whirled back to sanity as a rifle butt came stabbing through the pool of yellow candlelight at him. He rolled from the musket, taking the man who held it in the middle with a hard fist. As the man fell, Stafford shoved him sideways and dived for the open window.
Beyond the window was a big cypress. He bunched his legs under him and aimed for the branches. Then the air was cold on his face and the tree was coming nearer and there was nothing between him and the ground, thirty feet below. His hands went out and closed on bark. He slipped and slid, and then his hands caught purchase.
A musket spat at him from the bedroom window. Another musket joined it. He heard the balls bury themselves
