The Madstone

by Elizabeth Crook

Genres: Action & Adventure; Civil War Era; Westerns

Synopsis

With echoes of Lonesome Dove and News of the World, the riveting story of a pregnant young mother, her child, and the frontier tradesman who helps them flee across Texas from outlaws bent on revenge, even as an unlikely love blossoms.

Texas, 1868. As nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to business in his workshop, he witnesses a stagecoach strand a passenger. When the man persuades Benjamin to help track down the vanished coach—and a mysterious fortune left aboard—he is drawn into a drama whose scope he could never have imagined.
 
The missing coach has a surprise in store: its other passengers include Nell, a pregnant young woman, and her four-year-old son, Tot, who are on the run from Nell’s brutal husband and his murderous brothers. After learning of their plight, Benjamin offers Nell and Tot passage to the distant Gulf of Mexico, where they can escape to safety. This chivalrous act will prove more dangerous than he could have expected, as buried secrets—including a cursed necklace—reveal themselves.
 
Even as Benjamin falls in love with Nell and imagines life as Tot’s father, vengeful pursuers are on their trail. With its vivid characters and expansive canvas, The Madstone calls to mind Larry McMurtry’s American epics. The novel is full of eccentric action, unrelenting peril, and droll humor—a thrilling and beautifully rendered story of three people sharing a hazardous and defining journey that will forever bind them together.

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 352

Sample

Comfort, Texas

November 1868

Dear Small Tot,

I hope to lay down these events in a manner helpful to you, concerning some days you will probably not fully remember when you get older. I think you will want a clear idea of what occurred. It is plain to me I should do this, as otherwise you might worry over too many hard questions you can’t ever answer.

I will arrange for this account to come to you when you are nineteen years of age or greater, not sooner, there being sundry adult matters involved in it.

Currently I am nineteen years of age myself and think it a suitable age for you to read this. That should give you time to of done a few things and known people and figured some of them out. Also to of read books. Amongst the books given or borrowed to me is a autobiography of Benjamin Franklin about his quest at the age of twenty to improve on his morals and scruples. I figure he must of had worthy ideas by the age of nineteen to of even embarked on such a notion, and from what I have seen of you, Tot, I believe you might grow to be equally wise and nineteen would do to read this.

As well, don’t read it if you don’t want to, on account of you didn’t ask for it.

Another point made by Benjamin Franklin was how the best method to live your life over again, if a person might want to, is to put down tracks to recall it even whilst it takes place. He advised noting events on paper. I can’t do that on your behalf, as you are but four years old currently and no doubt seen different things from what I did, and seen some of the same things in different lights as well. But I will do what I can to that end.

For myself, I am bound to remember these days I write about until the reaper should come fetch me.

It is not the best paper and my grammar is not perfect but I intend to be truthful and keep to the point and not go on about other things. To get to it, here is how I come to be mixed up in the matter of your life.

I first laid eyes on you earlier in this year, in the town of Comfort, where I live and now am. You will probably not remember the place. It sits just south of the center of Texas if maps is correct in their scale. Folks who live here is mostly Germans who built the town some fifteen years back. There is a few hundred citizens all told. I settled in here a year ago when I give up on some things in my life and a German widow allowed me use of a shed for my carpentry. I make chairs and coffins and tables and such items that might be called for. My specialty is chairs. I lodge in the woman’s house, pay board, and work in her shed.

I was stationed out in the yard on a morning in May, six months back from now, shaping the legs of a rocker, when I seen across the street our sheriff enter the privy alongside the livery stable. He had papers for reading and shut hisself in. It is a two seater privy intended for stage travelers, but the sheriff is in the habit of latching the door and keeping the place to hisself whenever he wants, no matter if there is travelers who need in it or not.

Whilst he was shut in the privy a coach of the Ficklin line rolled in and drew up at the livery. It was a mere mud coach, worse for wear, not the Ficklin’s best, coming south from Fredericksburg twenty miles off. The mules was jaded. A door of the coach swung open even before the mules come to a halt, whereupon a man sprang out in haste and headed direct to the privy, as a issue must of come over him. His shirt had a ratty aspect, his trousers was shabby, his hair called for a cut and his beard was untidy. He was a stout man. I had not seen him before. He attempted to open the privy door and was shouted at from within by the sheriff. I could not make out the exact words of the sheriff.

The traveler answered back, It’s urgent! I need in!

The sheriff denied him again.

The traveler shouted, It’s a two seater size! Is there two of you in there! Unlatch the door! He cursed to express he was in a hurry. He said, God damn, can you not understand the bad straights I am in.

He then commenced to pound at the door. A person or two who was passing seen the fuss but did not tarry. I wished I might offer the use of the privy back of the house where I live, but I required the right to do that.

I should tell you our sheriff is not a person to suffer nonsense nor rudeness, nor even excuses from others, no matter his own bad habit to hog the stage privy. He was brought down here from up north by the U.S. army that has took over to see folks abide by the laws and won’t go about cheating and mistreating Negroes and local folks who was true to the Union in the war, as that time is meant to be over. He gets along fine with the Germans here, as they had nothing to do with the fight between Yankees and rebel Confederate sesesh. Mostly the Germans tried to escape that, down to Mexico. They are fond of the sheriff and give him all manner of treats and strudel. He wears his Yankee uniform and is friendly with them but not with folks passing through, such as the traveler, as they are often a bad lot and cause strife and yell at the Germans to go back where they come from. The sheriff affords such travelers no second chances, and rightly not, mostly, although on this occasion I thought he might of been nicer, given the man’s trouble.

Therefore I tried to warn the traveler of who it was in the privy. I whistled to get his attention but he did not hear me nor turn.

He shouted such things as, I’ll kick this door down!

You might think the Ficklin driver would act on the issue, but he did not. The traveler appealed to him, yelling, There’s somebody hogging both shitholes! Is there another privy!

The driver paid him no mind. I suppose he had seen worse quarrels. He was old for a driver and missing a ear. He got down from the box in a weary manner, called for the stable boy, hauled a mail sack out of the boot and started across the livery yard to the store with the postal office. He appeared as spent as the mules. It was a warm day, although early.

The stable boy commenced to exchange the mules in harness with a team eager to cut loose. The fresh ones caused a fuss, and he jerked them about and hollered at them in German and put on their blindfolds to get them settled. The fracas jolted the coach and swung the door open. The traveler must of not properly closed it, being in haste to bust out.

That was the moment I seen your mother seated within, and you there alongside her. You was both mostly hid by heaps of parcels and bags of mail piled up around you, however I made out one of you was a child, the other being a woman. I wondered why neither of you had got out to visit the privy nor walk about for a respite, as most people do. Your mother then pulled the door closed. I did not see more after that, on account of the window flaps was all down.

Whilst this happened the traveler give up the shouting, looked about him and seen nobody passing at that moment, it being early, as I have stated. He then jabbed a hole with his boot in the dirt close alongside the privy and squatted and done as he needed.

It was not lucky for him the sheriff come out at that time. The sheriff give him a look of disgust.

The traveler got hisself up and arranged his clothes. I figured he might be sorry to learn how it was a sheriff he had been hollering at. This was not the case, however. He told the sheriff, You son of a bitch. Look what I had to do.

The sheriff said, That is publicly lewd behavior. You’ll have to clean that up. You’ll need to be fined. I’m charging you with crimes against public morals and decency.

The traveler spat to express he was not sorry.

The sheriff said, There is a steep fine for public indecency.

If this is public indecency, where is the public, the traveler said. There is no public about. I see no public just now. I see a coach with the shades down. I see a store with nobody at the windows. Where is the public. Nobody seen me but you.

The sheriff looked about, and spied me, and called out, Young man! Come over here!

What else could I do but go. I crossed the street to him.

He said, What is your name.

Benjamin Shreve, I told him.

You witnessed what happened here at the privy, did you not, he said.

I owned as I had.

Well then, here is your public, he said to the traveler, and told me to state the particulars of what I had seen occur.

I related the traveler had undertaken to enter the privy, had been denied, had appeared in discomfort, and then had done what he did.

The traveler become heated at hearing events of the wrong inflicted on him recounted. He cursed the sheriff a great deal, to which the sheriff replied there was now two charges, those of public indecency and public profanity. Raise your hands, sir, he said, I need your piece.

The traveler scoffed but done as ordered, and the sheriff disarmed him of a pistol. The sheriff then got fetters out of his belt pouch and said, I am taking you to my office to decide what penalty should incur and collect the charges.

On seeing the fetters, the traveler commenced to beg. He said, I got to get back in the coach. I got business. I got important matters! The coach is fixing to leave soon and I got to be on it!

The sheriff granted no hint he might yield.

I have a through ticket to San Antonio! the traveler said. Name me a fine and I’ll pay it, but I got to get back on the coach!

He drew a large money pouch out of his coat to show he could make the payment, but the sheriff ordered he put it away, as papers would have to be signed in his office for proof of the charge and imbursement.

Tot, if I had behaved in a different manner from what I did in that moment, I would now be telling a different account, or none at all. Moments have either a short bend or a long bend in the way they turn how things go, and this one had a long bend to it.

There stood the traveler and sheriff, face to face. And there stood I, called to the situation for being the only public. It was a unlikely pair of men I stood alongside. The traveler was husky and shabby, whilst the sheriff was tidy. The sheriff had made a name for hisself as a Yankee soldier, which I believe was the best side to of been on. But he was mistaken in this occasion.

I thought I might speak up for the traveler and felt a urgent need to do so, and yet my better angel did not advise me of it. And whilst I stood quiet and considered what I might do, I caught sight of you, Tot, looking direct at me from under a window flap in the coach. I seen only your eyes and a small share of your face, but you looked eye to eye with me, and I felt you evaluating my actions. I felt the weight of your expectation, and words was urged to my lips. And yet the voice that come in my ear was my worse angel’s. It whispered at me to stay quiet, as who wants to be on the wrong side of the law. I had lived in Comfort but one year, having moved from my home near Camp Verde, and my carpentry business was on the rise. I had nobody but myself to depend on, and I did not want to bring any trouble upon my standing. On that account, I said nothing. I seen your eyes witness my silence from under the flap in the Ficklin, and I felt shame, and yet my mouth remained shut.

The next I seen was the hand of your mother draw you away from the window, and the window flap fall shut. Your judgment of me, whatever it might of been, was not to be seen anymore. This left me to bear the weight of my own judgment of myself, the sort that’s hardest to shoulder.

The sheriff then called to the stable boy to bring over a shovel, and he come running with one.

The traveler had a forlorn look whilst he shoveled a hole and buried his shat. He piled the dirt neater than called for, yet the courtesy gained him no favor. When he was done, his wrists was placed in the fetters, even whilst he continued to make his case and ask, in desperate terms, if he might be turned loose. He showed distress at the risk of his rifle and bags going off on the coach without him and repeated a number of times, I need my bags! There’s one in the coach and one in the boot. I need to be on the coach. My hat is in there! I got to get to San Antonio and catch a stage out!

The sheriff give me permission to take my leave. Whilst I crossed back over the street I heard him charge the stable boy to let the driver know the traveler was apprehended. He further told the boy to check the waybill and remove the traveler’s bags and rifle and hat before the coach should depart. The boy answered in English so I supposed he knew enough of the language to work out the instructions.

I retired into the shed to get tools and my water jug, it being a warm day, although early, as I have aforesaid. Whilst in there, I heard the coach depart. When I come out, the sheriff and traveler was nowhere in sight neither, as they was off to the sheriff’s office to settle claims which was, to my thinking, trumped charges.

For a half a hour or so after this event, I seen nothing unexpected, just folks starting about their morning routines. I returned to my work on the rocker. It was a nice piece in my opinion and better than what the cabinet maker in town turns out, and that is saying a lot. He studied back in the old country of Bohemia and learned his trade in a place called Prog. He turns out good looking furniture named Beedamiyer and does scroll-back in walnut with a cross splat carved like they do it on islands in Greece. I have not been to Greece, nor anywhere else, but that is what he told me. He has asked me to work for him, but I work best on my own. My customers is loyal on account of the fact I am cheaper and my work is just as good. Also I will make a hide seat if requested. The folks here generally do not want hide, but some lack funds for the Beedamiyer and look to the new ways here, not the old ones back there.

I don’t know if any of that is of any interest to you.

So for a short time I worked on my rocker. I was powering the lathe and getting warm, as it was hard foot work. The spindles was looking nice, and I was thinking of taking a rest when a rider come charging down the street from the same direction the coach come before, dodging folks and carts and aggravating people. He reined in hard at the livery. His horse was a fine looking roan but must of been rode some distance at a reckless pace, as it was badly lathered and winded.

The rider was dressed in a frock coat and bowler hat and appeared to be greatly agitated. He had a shotgun strapped to his saddle. He alighted and run into the livery calling for assistance. However, he found none to his satisfaction. I heard him exchange but a few words with the stable boy before he come back out in a hurry, seen me across the street working my lathe, and headed my way whilst hollering about there being no mount to be had at the livery.

He said, Do you know of a horse I can let! Mine is played out. I’ll pay good money!

I did not care to offer the use of my mare, as she is a good mare, if past her prime, and by the lathered look of his roan I knew the man was a hard rider.

I said, If the livery don’t have one, I know of none.

In the whole town, he asked. Not one horse to let.

I said, There might be. I don’t know of it.

I did not like the way he seemed to blame me for the fact. He appeared about ten years my senior, perhaps thirty years of age, and his features was decent but there was a meanness about him. His whiskers was dark and thick, not mutton chop but almost. His shirt was nicely pleated, however I noted the buttons was loose. His frock coat was frayed and looked to be made for a man bigger around, like maybe he’d lost some heft of recent. Whereas mostly a belt or suspenders will do on their own, his pants was held up by both. His shoes was fine but appeared to of spent time roaming on soggy ground. He carried a sidearm as well as the shotgun. It was a Colt’s revolving belt pistol such as was used in the war.

He bore down a hard look on me, saying, You must know of a person to ask for a horse.

It’s not my business to find you a horse, I told him. I got my business here with this rocking chair.

He give me a long stare and I give him one back. He had already made it such that even had I known of a horse, I would not of told him of it, but I knew of none. Comanches was coming through town at nights and helping theirselves to horses.

The man turned about and hollered at folks that was going into the store, Do you know of any mounts to let, buy or trade in this town!

Two men give him a look but declined to answer and went on into the store. They was Germans, and Germans is not by habit the friendliest people.

The man crossed back over the street and went into the store hisself. He must of found no satisfaction by way of a horse for offer, as he come back out in a huff, stomped to the livery, mounted his spent roan, set spurs to it and rode off.

I sat in my yard to rest my foot from the pedal and drink water, and to reflect on the man and to further consider the question of if I might be a coward not to of spoke up to the sheriff on behalf of the traveler at the privy earlier in the morning. I could not get that issue out of my head.

About then, here come the traveler hisself, freed of the fetters and wearing his pistol again, tramping back down the street from the direction the sheriff had took him off in. He went direct into the livery, from where I heard him engage with the stable boy within and commence to argue.

The stable boy shouted in English, despite it sounded like German. He yelled, I do not have blame of your baggage!

The traveler replied, Then where is it! There was two bags! There was one in the coach and one in the boot. The one in the coach was small. Did you not get it out! The sheriff told you to hold two! You was told to check the waybill!

The stable boy answered he did not have the waybill, it was the driver that had it. He maintained he had told the driver to check it, and the driver only give him the rifle and one bag. He yelled at the traveler to take them and go, and commenced to shout what likely was curses in German. The traveler demanded a horse, and the stable boy yelled, I have none horse!

The traveler come out red in the face, hauling his rifle and one bag. It was a sizable bag. I could not see why he would need another.

He spied me and come over, saying, The driver took off with one of my bags! Do you know of a horse for sale or let! I need to catch up with the coach!

He appeared beside hisself and breathed hard. I figured the gone bag must hold money or some other valuable item. Yet how a traveler as grubby as him might come by a bag of money was hard to fathom. If I was to judge by his ratty attire, I would say he had not spent much in a while.

I asked what the bag might hold that was crucial, but he did not say.

He said, I appeal to your earnest nature, which I see that you’ve got. The coach is headed to San Antonio. I need a horse to catch up.

I said, I have only my mare and she’s not for let.

The traveler tossed down the bag he carried, opened his coat and seized from a inside pocket his money pouch, it being large and leather and tied with a hide string. He took from the pouch a coin the likes of which I had not seen before.

He said, Help me get hold of a horse in decent shape and I’ll give you this piece. It’s a twenty peso piece from Mexico worth a dollar. It’s gold. I got more of these in here. I’ll hand over your asking price, just ask it. You look like a fair man to me. I appeal to your tenets.

I will tell you, small Tot, I was not prone to let him take off with my mare, but there was that in his eyes which I somewhat trusted, and that in his speech which struck me as genuine and which I liked. Also I felt I owed him, as I had not spoke up for him to the sheriff, so my tenets was smart to appeal to. As well, the desperation he showed is hardly that which a man will pretend at. He might claim he is doing just fine, and that things is all to his liking, and to his own devising, but a man is not apt to pretend despair. I believed the fellow. His teeth was bad, his attire was seedy, and he wore no socks. But he did not seem a swindler by trade, as his eyes was accordant with his words, and his consternation appeared true.

He give me the coin to study, and it decidedly looked to be gold. It was the size of a silver dollar and but two years old, dated 1866. One side had a man’s head and said Maximiliano Emperador. The other side said Imperio Mexicano, 20 pesos, and had on it a crown and a eagle and dragons alongside the date I already said. The pouch appeared like it might hold nearly a hundred such coins of that size.

I said, Here’s the problem I’ve got. I won’t chance my mare. There might be a person in town with a horse to sell you, but I don’t know who that might be. Comanches was through here a night last week and taken four horses I know of. If there’s none for let at the stable, then you’re unlikely to find one. Horses that folks has hired out don’t always come back, so folks here in town won’t chance letting.

That was the truth of the matter. There was thieves attacking travelers in every direction. Out west was bands of Comanches and Mescaleros and others not fun to meet up with. Roads north and east was preyed on by low life robbers. South was plenty of Mexican bandits. The bandits was primarily known to be friendly and not harm and kill folks like Comanches done on the roads, but nevertheless they was thorough in what they took. This traveler wanted to head southeast on roads that was pretty well used, but who could say what danger might arise out of the brush.

I offered, I won’t put my mare at risk without me along to see to her, but I could take you myself in my wagon as far as Boerne. You might find you a horse fo. . .