The Starbuck Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection

The study was a wonderfully wide room built at the house’s western extremity. It had creeper-framed windows on three of its four walls and a deep fireplace on the fourth. The heavy ceiling beams were hung with ancient flintlocks, bayonets and muskets, the walls with battle prints, and the mantel stacked with brass-hilted pistols and swords with snake-skin handles. A black labrador thumped its tail in welcome as Faulconer entered, but was evidently too old and infirm to climb to its feet. Faulconer stooped and ruffled the dog’s ears. ‘Good boy. This is Joshua, Nate. Used to be the best gun dog this side of the Atlantic. Ethan’s father bred him. Poor old fellow.’ Starbuck was not sure whether it was the dog or Ethan’s father who had earned the comment, but the Colonel’s next words suggested it was not Joshua being pitied. ‘Bad thing, drink,’ the Colonel said as he pulled open a bureau’s wide drawer that proved to be filled with handguns. ‘Ethan’s father drank away the family land. His mother died of the milksick when he was born, and there’s a half-brother who scooped up all the mother’s money. He’s a lawyer in Richmond now.’

‘I met him,’ Starbuck said.

Washington Faulconer turned and frowned at Starbuck. ‘You met Delaney?’

‘Mister Bird introduced me to him in Shaffer’s.’ Starbuck had no intention of revealing how the introduction had led to ten hours of the Spotswood House Hotel’s finest food and drink, all of it placed on the Faulconer account, or how he had woken on Saturday morning with a searing headache, a dry mouth, a churning belly and a dim memory of swearing eternal friendship with the entertaining and mischievous Belvedere Delaney.

‘A bad fellow, Delaney.’ The Colonel seemed disappointed in Starbuck. ‘Too clever for his own good.’

‘It was a very brief meeting, sir.’

‘Much too clever. I know lawyers who’d like to have a rope, a tall tree and Mister Delaney all attached to each other. He got all the mother’s money and poor Ethan didn’t get a thin dime out of the estate. Not fair, Nate, not fair at all. If Delaney had an ounce of decency he’d look after Ethan.’

‘He mentioned that Ethan is a very fine artist?’ Starbuck said, hoping the compliment about his future son-in-law might restore the Colonel’s good humor.

‘So Ethan is, but that won’t bring home the bacon, will it? A fellow might as well play the piano prettily, like Pecker does. I’ll tell you what Ethan is, Nate. He’s one of the finest hunters I’ve ever seen and probably the best horseman in the country. And he’s a damned fine farmer. He’s managed what’s left of his father’s land these last five years, and I doubt anyone else could have done half as well.’ The Colonel paid Ridley this generous compliment, then drew out a long-barreled revolver and tentatively spun its chambers before deciding it was not the right gun. ‘Ethan’s got solid worth, Nate, and he’ll make a good soldier, a fine soldier, though I confess he didn’t make the best recruiting officer.’ Faulconer turned to offer Starbuck a shrewd look. ‘Did you hear about Truslow?’

‘Anna mentioned him, sir. And Mister Bird did, too.’

‘I want Truslow, Nate. I need him. If Truslow comes he’ll bring fifty hard men out of the hills. Good men, natural fighters. Rogues, of course, every last one of them, but if Truslow tells them to knuckle under, they will. And if he doesn’t join up? Half the men in the county will fear to leave their livestock unguarded, so you see why I need him.’

Starbuck sensed what was coming and felt his confidence plummet. Truslow was the Yankee hater, the murderer, the demon of the hardscrabble hills.

The Colonel spun the cylinder of another revolver. ‘Ethan says Truslow’s away thieving horses and won’t be home for days, maybe weeks, but I have a feeling Truslow just avoided Ethan. He saw him coming and knew what he wanted, so ducked out of sight. I need someone Truslow doesn’t know. Someone who can talk to the fellow and discover his price. Every man has his price, Nate, especially a blackguard like Truslow.’ He put the revolver back and picked out another still more lethal-looking gun. ‘So how would you feel about going, Nate? I’m not pretending it’s an easy task because Truslow isn’t the easiest of men, and if you tell me you don’t want to do it, then I’ll say no more. But otherwise?’ The Colonel left the invitation dangling.

And Starbuck, presented with the choice, suddenly found that he did want to go. He wanted to prove that he could bring the monster down from his lair. ‘I’d be happy to go, sir.’

‘Truly?’ The Colonel sounded mildly surprised.

‘Yes, truly.’

‘Good for you, Nate.’ Faulconer snapped back the cock of the lethal-looking revolver, pulled the trigger, then decided that gun was not right either. ‘You’ll need a gun, of course. Most of the rogues in the mountains don’t like Yankees. You’ve got your pass, of course, but it’s a rare creature who can read up there. I’d tell you to wear the uniform, except folk like Truslow associate uniforms with excise men or tax collectors, so you’re much safer in ordinary clothes. You’ll just have to bluff your way if you’re challenged, and if that doesn’t work, shoot one of them.’ He chuckled, and Starbuck shuddered at the errand that now faced him. Not six months before he had been a student at Yale Theological College, immersed in an intricate study of the Pauline doctrine of atonement, and now he was supposed to shoot his way through a countryside of illiterate Yankee haters in search of the district’s most feared horse thief and murderer? Faulconer must have sensed his premonition, for he grinned. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t kill you, not unless you try and take his daughter or, worse, his horse.’

‘I’m glad to hear that, sir,’ Starbuck said dryly.

‘I’ll write you a letter for the brute, though God only knows if he can read. I’ll explain you’re an honorary southron, and I’ll make him an offer. Say fifty dollars as a signing bounty? Don’t offer him anything more, and for God’s sake don’t encourage him into thinking I want him to be an officer. Truslow will make a good sergeant, but you’d hardly want him at your supper table. His wife’s dead, so she won’t be a problem, but he’s got a daughter who might be a nuisance. Tell him I’ll find her a position in Richmond if he wants her placed. She’s probably a filthy piece of work, but no doubt she can sew or tend store.’ Faulconer had laid a walnut box on his desk, which he now turned round so that the lid’s catch faced Starbuck. ‘I don’t think this is for you, Nate, but take a look at her. She’s very pretty.’

Starbuck raised the walnut lid to reveal a beautiful ivory-handled revolver that lay in a specially shaped compartment lined with blue velvet. Other velvet-lined compartments held the gun’s silver-rimmed powder horn, bullet mold and crimper. The gold-lettered label inside the lid read ‘R. Adams, Patentee of the Revolver, 79 King William Street, London EC.’ ‘I bought her in England two years ago.’ The Colonel lifted the gun and caressed its barrel. ‘She’s a lovely thing, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, sir, she is.’ And the gun did indeed seem beautiful in the soft morning light that filtered past the long white drapes. The shape of the weapon was marvelously matched to function, a marriage of engineering and design so perfectly achieved that for a few seconds Starbuck even forgot exactly what the gun’s function was.

‘Very beautiful,’ Washington Faulconer said reverently. ‘I’ll take her to the Baltimore and Ohio in a couple of weeks.’ ‘The Baltimore …’ Starbuck began, then stopped as he realized he had not misheard. So the Colonel still wanted to lead his raid on the railroad? ‘But I thought our troops at Harper’s Ferry had blocked the line, sir.’

‘So they have, Nate, but I’ve discovered the cars are still running as far as Cumberland, then they move their supplies on by road and canal.’ Faulconer put the beautiful Adams revolver away. ‘And it still seems to me that the Confederacy is being too quiescent, too fearful. We need to attack, Nate, not sit around waiting for the North to strike at us. We need to set the South alight with a victory! We need to show the North that we’re men, not craven mudsills. We need a quick, absolute victory that will be written across every newspaper in America! Something to put our name in the history books! A victory to begin the Legion’s history.’ He smiled. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It sounds marvelous, sir.’

‘And you’ll come with us, Nate, I promise. Bring me Truslow, then you and I will ride to the rails and break a few heads. But you need a gun first, so how about this beast?’ The Colonel offered Nate a clumsy, long-barreled, ugly revolver with an old-fashioned hook-curved hilt, an awkward swan-necked hammer and two triggers. The Colonel explained that the lower ring trigger revolved the cylinder and cocked the hammer, while the upper lever fired the charge. ‘She’s a brute to fire,’ Faulconer admitted, ‘until you learn the knack of releasing the lower trigger before you pull the upper one. But she’s a robust thing. She can take a knock or two and still go on killing. She’s heavy and that makes her difficult to aim, but you’ll get used to her. And she’ll scare the wits out of anyone you point her at.’ The pistol was an American-made Savage, three and a half pounds in weight and over a foot in length. The lovely Adams, with its blue sheened barrel and soft white handle, was smaller and lighter, and fired the same size bullet, yet it was not nearly as frightening as the Savage.

The Colonel put the Adams back into his drawer, then turned and pocketed the key. ‘Now, let’s see, it’s midday. I’ll find you a fresh horse, give you that letter and some food, then you can be on your way. It isn’t a long ride. You should be there by six o’clock, maybe earlier. I’ll write you that letter, then send you Truslow hunting. Let’s be to work, Nate!’

The Colonel accompanied Starbuck for the first part of his journey, ever encouraging him to sit his horse better. ‘Heels down, Nate! Heels down! Back straight!’ The Colonel took amusement from Starbuck’s riding, which was admittedly atrocious, while the Colonel himself was a superb horseman. He was riding his favorite stallion and, in his new uniform and mounted on the glossy horse, he looked marvelously impressive as he led Starbuck through the town of Faulconer Court House, past the water mill and the livery stable, the inn and the courthouse, the Baptist and the Episcopal churches, past Greeley’s Tavern and the smithy, the bank and the town gaol. A girl in a faded bonnet smiled at the Colonel from the school house porch. The Colonel waved to her, but did not stop to talk. ‘Priscilla Bowen,’ he told Nate, who had no idea how he was supposed to remember the flood of names that was being unleashed on him. ‘She’s a pretty enough thing if you like them plump, but only nineteen, and the silly girl intends to marry Pecker. My God, but she could do better than him! I told her so too. I didn’t mince my words either, but it hasn’t done a blind bit of good. Pecker’s double her age, double! I mean it’s one thing to bed them, Nate, but you don’t have to marry them! Have I offended you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I keep forgetting your strict beliefs.’ The Colonel laughed happily. They had passed through the town, which had struck Starbuck as a contented, comfortable community and much larger than he had expected. The Legion itself was encamped to the west of the town, while Faulconer’s house was to the north. ‘Doctor Danson reckoned that the sound of military activity would be bad for Miriam,’ Faulconer explained. ‘She’s delicate, you understand.’

‘So Anna was telling me, sir.’

‘I was thinking of sending her to Germany once Anna’s safely married. They say the doctors there are marvelous.’

‘So I’ve heard, sir.’

‘Anna could accompany her. She’s delicate too, you know. Danson says she needs iron. God knows what he means. But they can both go if the war’s done by fall. Here we are, Nate!’ The Colonel gestured toward a meadow where four rows of tents sloped down toward a stream. This was the Legion’s encampment, crowned by the three-banded, seven-starred flag of the new Confederacy. Thick woods rose on the stream’s far bank, the town lay behind, and the whole encampment somehow had the jaunty appearance of a traveling circus. A baseball diamond had already been worn into the flattest part of the meadow, while the officers had made a steeplechase course along the bank of the stream. Girls from the town were perched along a steep bank that formed the meadow’s eastern boundary, while the presence of carriages parked alongside the road showed how the gentry from the nearby countryside were making the encampment into the object of an excursion. There was no great air of purpose about the men who lounged or played or strolled around the campground, which indolence, as Starbuck well knew, resulted from Colonel Faulconer’s military philosophy, which declared that too much drill simply dulled a good man’s appetite for battle. Now, in sight of his good Southerners, the Colonel became markedly more cheerful. ‘We just need two or three hundred more men, Nate, and the Legion will be unbeatable. Bringing me Truslow will be a good beginning.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Starbuck said, and wondered why he had ever agreed to face the demon Truslow. His apprehensions were sharpened because Ethan Ridley, mounted on a spirited chestnut horse, had suddenly appeared at the encampment’s main entrance. Starbuck remembered Anna Faulconer’s confident assertion that Ridley had not even dared face Truslow, and that only made him all the more nervous. Ridley was in uniform, though his gray woolen tunic looked very drab beside the Colonel’s brand-new finery.

‘So what do you think of Shaffer’s tailoring, Ethan?’ the Colonel demanded of his future son-in-law.

‘You look superb, sir,’ Ridley responded dutifully, then nodded a greeting to Starbuck, whose mare edged to the side of the road and lowered her head to crop at the grass while Washington Faulconer and Ridley talked. The Colonel was saying how he had discovered two cannon that might be bought, and was wondering if Ridley would mind going to Richmond to make the purchase and to ferret out some ammunition. The Richmond visit would mean that Ridley could not ride on the raid against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Colonel was apologizing for denying his future son-in-law the enjoyment of that expedition, but Ridley seemed not to mind. In fact his dark, neatly bearded face even looked cheerful at the thought of returning to Richmond.

‘In the meantime Nate’s off to look for Truslow.’ The Colonel brought Starbuck back into the conversation.

Ridley’s expression changed instantly to wariness. ‘You’re wasting your time, Reverend. The man’s off stealing horses.’

‘Maybe he just avoided you, Ethan?’ Faulconer suggested.

‘Maybe,’ Ridley sounded grudging, ‘but I’ll still wager that Starbuck’s wasting his time. Truslow can’t stand Yankees. He blames a Yankee for his wife’s death. He’ll tear you limb from limb, Starbuck.’

Faulconer, evidently affected by Ridley’s pessimism, frowned at Starbuck. ‘It’s your choice, Nate.’

‘Of course I’ll go, sir.’

Ridley scowled. ‘You’re wasting your time, Reverend,’ he said again, with just a hint of too much force.

‘Twenty bucks says I’m not,’ Starbuck heard himself saying, and immediately regretted the challenge as a stupid display of bravado. It was worse than stupid, he thought, but a sin too. Starbuck had been taught that all wagering was sinful in the sight of God, yet he did not know how to withdraw the impulsive offer.

Nor was he sure that he wanted to withdraw because Ridley had hesitated, and that hesitation seemed to confirm Anna’s suspicion that her fiancé might indeed have evaded looking for the fearful Truslow.

‘Sounds a fair offer to me,’ the Colonel intervened happily.

Ridley stared at Starbuck, and the younger man thought he detected a hint of fear in Ridley’s gaze. Was he frightened that Starbuck would reveal his lie? Or just frightened of losing twenty dollars? ‘He’ll kill you, Reverend.’

‘Twenty dollars says I’ll have him here before the month’s end,’ Starbuck said.

‘By the week’s end,’ Ridley challenged, seeing a way out of the wager.

‘Fifty bucks?’ Starbuck recklessly raised the wager.

Washington Faulconer laughed. Fifty dollars was nothing to him, but it was a fortune to penniless young men like Ridley and Starbuck. Fifty dollars was a month’s wages to a good man, the price of a decent carriage horse, the cost of a fine revolver. Fifty dollars turned Anna’s quixotic quest into a harsh ordeal. Ethan Ridley hesitated, then seemed to feel he demeaned himself by that hesitation and so held out a gloved hand. ‘You’ve got till Saturday, Reverend, not a moment more.’

‘Done,’ Starbuck said, and shook Ridley’s hand.

‘Fifty bucks!’ Faulconer exclaimed with delight when Ridley had ridden away. ‘I do hope you’re feeling lucky, Nate.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir.’

‘Don’t let Truslow bully you. Stand up to him, you hear me?’

‘I will, sir.’

‘Good luck, Nate. And heels down! Heels down!’

Starbuck rode west toward the blue-shadowed mountains. It was a lovely day under an almost cloudless sky. Starbuck’s fresh horse, a strong mare named Pocahontas, trotted tirelessly along the grass verge of the dirt road, which climbed steadily away from the small town, past orchards and fenced meadows, going into a hilly country of small farms, lush grass and quick streams. These Virginia foothills were not good for tobacco, less good still for the famous Southern staples of indigo, rice and cotton, but they grew good walnuts and fine apples, and sustained fat cattle and plentiful corn. The farms, though small, looked finely kept. There were big barns and plump meadows and fat herds of cows whose bells sounded pleasantly languorous in the midday warmth. As the road climbed higher the farms became smaller until some were little more than corn patches hacked out of the encroaching woods. Farm dogs slept beside the road, waking to snap at the horse’s heels as Starbuck rode by.

Starbuck became more apprehensive as he rode higher into the hills. He had the insouciance and cockiness of youth, believing himself capable of any deed he set his mind to achieve, but as the sun declined he began to perceive Thomas Truslow as a great barrier that defined his whole future. Cross the barrier and life would be simple again, fail it and he would never again look in a mirror and feel respect for himself. He tried to steel himself against whatever hard reception Truslow might have for him, if indeed Truslow was in the hills at all, then he tried to imagine the triumph of success if the grim Truslow came meekly down to join the Legion’s ranks. He thought of Faulconer’s pleasure and of Ridley’s chagrin, and then he wondered how he was ever to pay the wager if he lost. Starbuck had no money and, though the Colonel had offered to pay him wages of twenty-six dollars a month, Starbuck had yet to see a cent of it.

By midafternoon the dirt road had narrowed to a rough track that ran alongside a tumbling, white whipped river that foamed at rocks, coursed between boulders and worried at fallen trees. The woods were full of bright red blossom, the hills steep, the views spectacular. Starbuck passed two deserted cabins, and once he was startled by the crash of hooves and turned, fumbling for the loaded revolver, only to see a white-tailed deer galloping away through the trees. He had begun to enjoy the landscape, and that enjoyment made him wonder whether his destiny belonged in the wild new western lands where Americans struggled to claw a new country from the grip of heathen savages. My God, he thought, but he should never have agreed to study for the ministry! At night the guilt of that abandoned career often assailed him, but here, in the daylight, with a gun at his side and an adventure ahead, Starbuck felt ready to meet the devil himself, and suddenly the words rebel and treason did not seem so bad to him after all. He told himself he wanted to be a rebel. He wanted to taste the forbidden fruits against which his father preached. He wanted to be an intimate of sin, he wanted to saunter through the valley of the shadow of death because that was the way of a young man’s dreams.

He reached a ruined sawmill where a track led south. The track was steep, forcing Starbuck off Pocahontas’s back. Faulconer had told him there was another, easier road, but this steep path was the more direct and would bring him onto Truslow’s land. The day had become hot, and sweat was prickling at Starbuck’s skin. Birds screamed from among the new pale leaves.

By late afternoon he reached the ridge line, where he remounted to stare down into the red-blossomed valley where Truslow lived. It was a place, the Colonel said, where fugitives and scoundrels had taken refuge over the years, a lawless place where sinewy men and their tough wives hacked a living from a thin soil, but a soil happily free of government. It was a high, hanging valley famous for horse thieves, where animals stolen from the rich Virginia lowlands were corralled before being taken north and west for resale. This was a nameless place where Starbuck had to confront the demon of the hardscrabble hills whose approval was so important to the lofty Washington Faulconer. He turned and looked behind, seeing the great spread of green country stretching toward the hazed horizon, then he looked back to the west, where a few trickles of smoke showed where homesteads were concealed among the secretive trees.

He urged Pocahontas down the vague path that led between the trees. Starbuck wondered what kind of trees they were. He was a city boy and did not know a redbud from an elm or a live oak from a dogwood. He could not slaughter a pig or hunt a deer or even milk a cow. In this countryside of competent people he felt like a fool, a man of no talent and too much education. He wondered whether a city childhood unfitted a man for warfare, and whether the country people with their familiarity with death and their knowledge of landscape made natural soldiers. Then, as so often, Starbuck swung from his romantic ideals of war to a sudden feeling of horror at the impending conflict. How could there be a war in this good land? These were the United States of America, the culmination of man’s striving for a perfect government and a godly society, and the only enemies ever seen in this happy land had been the British and the Indians, and both of those enemies, thanks to God’s providence and American fortitude, had been defeated.

No, he thought, but these threats of war could not be real. They were mere excitements, politics turned sour, a spring fever that would be cooled by fall. Americans might fight against the godless savages of the untamed wilderness, and were happy to slaughter the hirelings of some treacherous foreign king, but they would surely never turn on one another! Sense would prevail, a compromise would be reached, God would surely reach out his hand to protect his chosen country and its good people. Though maybe, Starbuck guiltily hoped, there would be time for one adventure first—one sunlit raid of bright flags and shining sabers and drumming hoofbeats and broken trains and burning trestles.

‘Go one pace more, boy, and I’ll blow your goddamned brains to kingdom come,’ the hidden voice spoke suddenly.

‘Oh, Christ!’ Starbuck was so astonished that he could not check the blasphemous imprecation, but he did retain just enough sense to haul in the reins, and the mare, well schooled, stopped.

‘Or maybe I’ll blow your brains out anyhows.’ The voice was as deep and harsh as a rat-tailed file scraping on rusted iron, and Starbuck, even though he had still not seen the speaker, suspected he has found his murderer. He had discovered Truslow.