David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Sir!” called out my husband in his most commanding voice. I had no doubt that, during the war, such a tone would have made even the highest-ranked officer stop in his tracks, but here it meant nothing. As he called out, Hendry rode astride and kicked Andrew hard in the back, just below his neck. He lurched forward and fell into the dirt.

Hendry let out another burst of shrill laughter, and a horse whinnied, and then all fell silent. The horses had stopped, the mules held still, the settlers milled in place. I knelt by Andrew, making certain he was unharmed, and heard nothing about me but the endless singing of birds. Once I had found it melodic, but suddenly it became cacophonous, the unnerving music of chaos, the orchestra of Hell. Andrew looked up at me. His cheek bled from a cut of some three inches below his left eye, but it was not deep and would heal well enough. The wound to his pride was another thing. I met his gaze and shook my head. Honor demanded that he not let this pass, but I demanded he did. He could not hope to defeat these men, and even if he did, then what? We were at their mercy for another month or more of hard travel. The luxuries of pride and reputation were no longer for us.

“Listen to me,” cried Reynolds. He held up his rifle by the barrel, pointed to the sky, like a brutal general rallying his barbarian troops. In his rage, the scar across his eye had turned as pink as the inside flesh of a strawberry. “This ain’t the East. You’ve left the lands of manners and justice. There ain’t no law here but force, and while you’re in this traveling party, that law is mine. If I choose to call your woman a whore, then a whore she is until I say otherwise.”

He unlocked the catch upon his rifle’s flintlock and pointed it at Andrew. Then he swiveled around and pointed it at one of the French settlers. “I don’t care who among you lives or dies,” he said. “It ain’t my trouble to care. I’ll kill one of these Frenchers to make my point unless you”-here he glanced at Andrew-“get on your feet and start walking and keep from looking at me for the next few days. Maybe until we get to Pittsburgh. So up with ye and keep your tongue still.”

How can a man be made to endure such a humiliation? I did not think Andrew could have been made to bury his pride and his rage to save himself, but he did it to save the stranger. He pushed himself to his feet, and, keeping his eyes straight ahead, he began to walk. In so doing, the entire procession began to move. I put my arm about Andrew, but he did not respond. I do not know that he could have made himself speak.

Reynolds returned the catch on his rifle and lowered it. Hendry rode alongside us and laughed softly, as though he recalled a joke from a long time past. Then he scratched at the rash under his beard. “Next time you forget yourself, Maycott, you’ll be sorry for it. Reynolds might like to kill Frenchers, but I think I’ll fuck your wife instead.”

He did not wait for an answer but rode ahead, leaving us to our silence and to watch Phineas glower at Hendry for the rest of the day.

The weather, at least, was fair. We made our trek in the first full bloom of spring, and the sun, wreathed with unthreatening wisps of cottony clouds, was warm but not hot. At night, the cool was refreshing rather than uncomfortable, and mosquitoes were not out in full abundance. At times it rained, but a little wetness did us no harm, and it did not persist long enough to make the roads, such as they were, unbearably muddy.

Far more distressing was the tense disposition of our guides, who clutched their rifles perpetually, keeping them taut and ready like the muscles of a crouching beast. Ceaselessly they scanned the tree line for signs of danger, though they never spoke of what form it might take-bears, panthers, Indians? One of the Frenchmen attempted to inquire of Hendry, but he only told him to shut his Frencher mouth.

One day followed another with blunting drudgery, and though the memory of Andrew’s conflict with the guides lingered, the wound grew less hot. Reynolds or Hendry would, from time to time, make some trivial comment to Andrew, perhaps to make him feel that all had been forgotten.

Three weeks in, we had begun to make camp for the night in a grassy clearing. We sat huddled by a small fire that danced in a strong breeze and ate what the guides had hunted during the day-a medley of rabbit, squirrel, and pigeon-and a porridge made of cornmeal. We rarely spoke to the other settlers, and Andrew and I, who had so often passed countless days and night in easy conversation, now spoke to each other with increasing infrequency.

While we ate I looked up and observed emerging from the trees an Indian woman and a little girl. The guides raised their weapons, and I believe Hendry would have shot them as they approached, but Reynolds stayed his hand. He bared his teeth like an animal. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said, and Hendry lowered his weapon, grinned a largely toothless grin, and spat tobacco onto the dirt, near a Frenchman, his wife, and their little boy.

The Indians approached tentatively. The woman walked with a limp. She wore a ruined dress of animal skins, perhaps once quite pretty but now soiled and torn and, as we found when she approached, rank to the nose. The girl, not above ten or eleven, wore a cotton shift, formerly white, now the color of all things unclean. She had been the victim of a burn; her face was scorched, and she was missing her entire right eyebrow, there being only a horrific red welt.

The woman might once have been a regal squaw, but circumstances had brought her low. Her face was filthy, smeared with mud and hardened, I had no doubt, by much violence, for her lower lip was split, as if by a fist. It took little imagination to see that these poor wanderers had walked through chaos and might yet trail it behind them. Andrew must have felt it too, because he took my hand and held it in a firm grip.

Once the Indians were no more than ten feet from our little camp, the woman moved her hand to her mouth, making signs of eating. She had, I observed, lost several fingernails, and a fresh cut on her thumb bled freely.

Though we could have spared enough for a meal, charity would no more occur to Reynolds than would sprouting wings and taking to flight. He waved his weapon at the poor creatures. “Git on,” he said.

“We cannot let them run off those unfortunates,” Andrew said.

I felt my stomach lurch. Andrew was anxious to restore his honor, if only in his own eyes, and I knew he could not remain still while these refugees were sent away. Yet I knew full well that he could not challenge our guides on this matter. There was nothing he might say to persuade them, and he would only make them more determined to be cruel.

“They know their business,” I said, hoping for the best. “We know nothing of Indians.”

He would not be moved. “We know of human beings, and these are in want.”

He began to rise, but before he could do so, I pushed hard upon his shoulder, forcing him down and rising myself. Andrew had no time to object before I was several paces away and had begun talking to Reynolds. “Perhaps we can be charitable and spare some food.”

Hendry laughed his unpleasant laugh. The veins in his neck began to bulge.

I did not let my attention waver from Reynolds. “It is the Christian thing.”

“They ain’t Christians,” said Reynolds. “They’ll repay your kindness with blood.”

The boy Phineas nodded his young head, showed his teeth, and made a trigger-pulling gesture with his finger. His stringy hair fell into his eyes, and he did nothing to brush it aside.

“Even that burnt girl’ll kill us if she gets a chance,” Reynolds said, “’Tis what they do.”

“How can you be certain they are not Christianized?” I said.