37
The damage done to his tobacco, fields, and barns was beyond calculating. But the main house was spared, and all within it. None of his indentures had been hurt aside from minor burns. For now, Xander’s every thought belonged to Watseka. He set about gathering a search party of determined if worn men just before midnight. He’d not wait till morn.
McCaskey, not wanting to remain behind, insisted he accompany them, leaving the charred plantation to farm managers. Xander assented, looking over the soot-stained, red-eyed lot of them. Only Ruby and Jett seemed up to the task, ever spirited, only settling when Watseka’s garments appeared. They sniffed thoughtfully, able to follow a scent on the air and the ground.
“Can they search after a soaking rain?” McCaskey questioned.
“Most assuredly,” Xander replied. He had little doubt his hounds, equipped with harness and tracking lines, were up to the arduous task. His only doubt was if Watseka would be found alive. The sobering thought lined his soul with lead.
They began at the Hopewells’, the last place Watseka had been that fateful night. As they stood before the empty house, the musketeer gone, there was a hushed, weighty silence as Xander bent his head and prayed for wisdom and direction.
In the light of pitch-pine torches, the hunt began. Xander was tossed between hope and dread with every step they took, by turns yanked and at a standstill as the hounds sniffed and searched, noses to the ground and then the air. Their extraordinary powers were fueled by more silent prayers. The men fanned out around them, some on horseback and others afoot, all eyes on the landscape as they followed the dogs’ leading.
Why was he not surprised when the scent led toward Laurent’s land?
The closer they came, the darker his thoughts grew. With the physic’s dim regard of the Naturals and how snug he was with Governor Harvey, the matter would likely never be investigated even if harm had been done the girl. Just as Xander knew to his core that the Naturals would respond to such a heinous crime against a peace child by retaliating in kind.
Why did he feel even now he was walking toward his own demise? Could evil be felt? Aye, it could, as every fiber of his being urged him to turn back. To retreat. Was he putting the search party in harm’s way?
Evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.
Unbidden, the timely Scripture assuaged the ragged parts of him. He halted the party at the boundary stone of Laurent land. “I need but one man with me. The rest of you wait here. Put out your lights or seek cover where you can’t be seen.”
“I shall shadow you,” McCaskey said.
There was no argument. All sensed the risk. Coupled with the utter darkness, even a sliver of moon denied them, the night turned more menacing, even haunting. The dogs, till now stealthy and quiet, reached fever’s pitch, straining at their tethers, clearly growing closer to whatever was riveting them.
As McCaskey watched, Xander turned Jett loose.
“Is that wise?” the factor murmured.
“If he finds Watseka, he’ll return and lead us to her.”
“Aye. But not Ruby?”
“Jett is the keenest tracker and rarely goes wrong.” Xander pitched his voice low, eyes on Jett as he disappeared into the darkness. “If we encounter anything threatening in the meantime, Ruby will protect us.”
Understanding dawned on the factor’s sun-weathered face. He cast a look back at the men fading into the woods to wait, no longer visible save a few flickering lights. Ruby led them on, nose to the ground. Soon they would come to Laurent’s dwelling, a rough-hewn blend of wattle and daub with a thatch roof, a far cry from his framed-timber rowhouse in James Towne. But first they passed by the rude hovels of his Africans.
Again, Xander’s hackles rose. The stench of their quarters was like a fetid wall. Denied even the simple right of bathing as well as eating? Even a privy pit?
A sudden movement to the left halted them, Ruby poised like a statue. The night watch? A lantern flared some twenty yards distant. Holding it aloft was a gaunt African, eyes huge in his bony face. Fearful. Questioning. One of Laurent’s slaves.
“We mean you no harm,” Xander reassured him. “’Tis a lost Indian girl we seek.”
A burst of gibberish followed, likely Angolan. Slavers oft went to the slave-trade port of Luanda. Laurent’s Africans knew little if any English, being so new to Virginia.
“He looks so weak he can barely stand.” McCaskey spat into the grass. “God help the Indian girl if she is indeed here.”
At their approach the man sank to his knees, his lantern casting pale light on the wet grass. McCaskey pulled him to his feet. Sunken eyes on Xander, the man gestured to his mouth and then his belly.
McCaskey released his hold on him. “I believe he may be your smokehouse thief and believes you’ve come to whip or hang him.”
“Aye. He’s too afraid to be merely hungry.” Pity overrode Xander’s exhaustion. “I simply wish he understood our mission.”
The cords in the man’s neck constricted as he swallowed. He began backing up as a rustle to their right drew their attention. Jett emerged, attention on Xander. Without a word, Xander stepped in the hound’s direction and they started west, still in pitch darkness save the torch, leaving the night watch behind and moving nearer Laurent’s own dwelling.
Xander braced himself for the confrontation to come. The pistol at his waist was a dire reminder of the course the night might well take. When Jett gave a short, shrill bark nearer the house and a moving light shone from inside, Xander faced the main doorway, McCaskey just behind him.
