“Can’t you three keep people off this mountain?” the large mature black bear asked.
“No.” Tucker looked up at the long snout. “Our mother and her best friend, Susan Tucker, own the eastern side of this. No one should be here unless it’s one of them or someone with them. It’s trespassing.”
“They’ve set traps. I dropped rocks in them, so the traps are sprung.”
“Are they traps big enough for you?” Pewter wondered.
“No. Big enough for coyote, for fox, raccoon.” The bear sat down on her haunches. “But how do I know they won’t come back for me? Shoot me.”
“Odin didn’t get trapped, did he?” Mrs. Murphy liked the young coyote even if she didn’t completely trust him.
“No, most of the coyote traps are on Royal Orchard, northwest of here.” She named a spectacular estate on the mountain’s ridge.
“Have you seen who’s doing this?” Tucker lifted her head. Opened her nostrils, inhaling the light fragrance of rabbit on the air.
“Usually I see a clean-cut guy wearing a plaid jacket. Sometimes a woman is with him. She looks rich enough.”
“Odd,” the tough little dog replied. “Usually women don’t go in for that sort of thing.”
“Maybe the price of pelts went up?” the tiger suggested.
“Sweetpea,” Tucker addressed the bear by name, as she would usually be on Harry’s land in fall and early winter, then repair to one of the small caves on the mountainside to sleep for the hard winter, “be careful.”
“I am. We’re all careful ever since that man was stuck under the big rock. Too many people crawling around these mountains. Any time a human dies, never good. Never good at all.”
“You all heard about the man found shot at Sugarday? The Waldingfield beagles found him,” Pewter remarked.
“We did. Sugarday’s some miles from the mountains. It’s one thing when people kill one another on city streets. When they’re out here, I don’t know. I figure it has to do with us, with pelts, or with minerals—something in the ground they’ve found out about or,” she paused, “I don’t know. I just know it’s not the regular way people kill one another.”
“True,” Mrs. Murphy agreed.
As the three walked back down the side of the mountain, the temperature rising slightly as they reached the old rutted road or what was left of it, Tucker said, “Sweetpea’s right. Has something to do with pelts or something in the ground, like gold.”
“That will be the day when gold is found around here.” Pewter laughed.
“Maybe the men and women are scouting for black walnut. Cut a few, steal them. Big money.” Pewter glared at her. “Mother would shoot them.”
“Not if they shot her first.” Mrs. Murphy had a bad feeling about all this.
Having the two cats’ attention, Tucker changed the subject. “First, Sweetpea telling us about strange people, poachers maybe. Then when Cooper found the Tahoe, that scent.”
Tucker lurched a bit to her left. Going up was always easier than going down.
The two cats descended without saying anything. As they reached the lower pastures, following the creek up to the beaver lodge, Mrs. Murphy said, “Well, you can sure smell the beavers.”
“Mmm.” Pewter feigned disinterest.
“And I smelled old bones where the tombstones had been disturbed. You remember, where someone had thrust a knife into the earth a couple of times?” Tucker watched as a beaver dove into the water from the opposite bank.
“Of course you did,” Pewter sarcastically replied.
“I did and I said so at the time.” Tucker was angry. “Old bones not in the casket. Whatever it was, it was closer to the surface. Old bones. People don’t put bodies in a grave without proper burial.”
“Oh, poof. An old murder.” The gray cat tossed her head. “If it is one, who cares? I don’t even care about the new murders. If people want to kill one another, go ahead.”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Murphy picked up the pace toward the barn.
“Poof and piffle. When Harry and Fair ate breakfast today, they said it was Armistice Day.” Pewter stuck to her guns. “The end of World War One. They killed millions.”
“They killed even more in World War Two,” the dog replied.
“Then why worry about old bones in St. Luke’s graveyard and two dead men now? Who cares? People will keep on killing one another. It’s what they do.”
“But they kill us, too. Sweetpea’s sprung the traps. Who knows how many animals they kill each year?” Tucker sadly thought about it.
“Exactly. If they kill us, that’s terrible. If they kill one another, why should we care? They’re not right, you know. Something’s scrambled upstairs.”
Neither Mrs. Murphy nor Tucker could answer that.
March 21, 1786 Tuesday
The spring equinox brought fair winds, sunshine. Croci pushed fully aboveground. Daffodils peeked up through the soil. The snowdrops were about finished. Winter, long, hard, cruel, seemed to be loosening its grasp, but then Richmond felt spring earlier than the lands west of the fall line.
Georgina walked toward her establishment, passing gardens in front of houses, under windows, behind iron fences, radiant blooms, she adored the blooms and the color. When she passed another woman, she looked neither right nor left. The lady would never acknowledge her but Georgina knew those high-tone bitches, as she thought of them, envied her attire, her sure sense of line as well as adornment. And Georgina paid the milliner extra to be certain that her hats outshone everyone else’s, whether it be the wife of a banker, a lawyer, a preacher, or yet another politician on the make. Apart from the poundage, she was attractive, in her middle age, her mind most of all. She missed nothing. Given her business she heard a great deal. Men enlivened by good drink and the ministrations of a beautiful woman often become indiscreet.
She knew Sam Udall’s bank was growing. She also knew some of the more senior bankers, especially those tied to the old Tidewater families, were not growing yet seemed self-satisfied. The old money favored the status quo and the status quo suffered greatly during the war for independence. Udall, on the other hand, favored the new man, the businessman. If a bit of graft or payback greased the wheels of commerce, so be it. While he lacked social cachet, she felt he would eventually become the premier moneyman in Richmond. She liked knowing that. She especially liked knowing if she needed funds for expansion, they would be forthcoming at an attractive interest rate.
The new men did not have sons who would dissipate their fortunes. Often their sons worked with them. Dissipation would come with later generations—but they did have daughters, whom they needed to marry off at considerable expense.
Smiling as she opened the gate to the impressive but unadorned three-story home, she paused to consider her portico. Needed something.