Long Hunt (9781101559208) by Cameron Judd Read Free Book Online Page A

the blade broke skin, he discovered something unexpected. The pain of his smashed and torn leg was so intense that he hardly noticed the new pain caused by the knife beginning to enter his chest, a mere pinprick of discomfort by comparison to what already overwhelmed him.
    Even so, he hesitated. The impulse to live was strong—but so also was the need to be free of his pain.
    â€œForgive me, God,” he said again, and pushed a little harder.

CHAPTER FOUR
    P eople began gathering early in the morning, arriving in wagons and on horseback. Those on foot began to show up a while later. By noon the great valley meadow near Edohi Station was well populated, several tents pitched and even a few arborlike shelters in place, the materials for them mostly carried in by the families who made them.
    Crawford Fain stood on the rifle platform inside the stockade wall of his fort and watched the crowd grow. The platform from which Abner Bledsoe would preach had been completed two days earlier, and during that time Bledsoe had hauled in, by wagon, a stout oaken pulpit lectern that would not have been out of place in an ornate chapel in England or one of the older New England cities, but which was incongruous indeed on this rustic frontier setting. Abner Bledsoe, it was said, insisted upon always having that lectern with him when he preached. There was a story behind it; something to do with Whitefield, the famed preacher, once having preached from behind it.
    â€œFain!”
    The call came from somewhere among the scattered crowd of people below, and it took a moment for Fain to locate who had called to him. A waving hand finally caught his eye and he saw an old acquaintance, Zeb Cable, who was busy stoking a cook fire over which his wife, Mae, had hung a black kettle. With a keener sense of smell than most men—another legacy of his long hunter days—Fain could smell the simmering stew even across the distance.
    â€œHow fare you, Zeb?” Fain called.
    â€œQuite fine, Edohi! You?”
    â€œWell indeed! Come to the gate!”
    He saw Cable speak to his wife and gesture toward the fort, then begin to advance in Fain’s direction, a broad grin on his face. At the same time, Fain heard a bumping on the nearby ladder that led up to the rifle ledge. He looked around and saw that Langdon Potts, who had arrived at Fort Edohi the day before, was climbing up to join him. Potts stepped lithely to Fain’s side, looked out, and saw the approaching man.
    â€œFellow looks familiar,” Potts said. “Somebody I should know?”
    Fain shrugged. “Don’t know if you’ve ever met him. His name’s Cable, and last I knowed of him, he was living over on the Nolichucky. The fact that he’s come farther west might indicate he’s moved off from there, or maybe that he’s such a follower of Abner Bledsoe’s preaching that he just didn’t want to miss the camp meeting.”
    Potts noticed that Fain was watching Cable’s approach with a look in his eye that didn’t seem entirely a happy one, and commented upon it. Fain sighed. “Truth is, Potts, Cable is one of them singers that only knows one song. By which I mean he talks about the same thing all the time. Franklin and Carolina and the government and all such as that. Blast my soul! Why did I call him into the fort? I should have left him out there with his family around their stewpot.”
    â€œHe a Franklin man or does he favor Carolina government?”
    â€œHe’s Franklin, unless he’s changed since last I spoke with him.”
    â€œI reckon that’s good.”
    â€œDo you?”
    â€œReckon so,” replied Potts, shrugging. “I don’t pay a lot of heed to such things. I’m taking it that maybe you think t’other way?”
    â€œI don’t think on it at all, son, if I can avoid it. Let the folks over round Jonesborough and Greeneville fight that one out. They can just