She’d stepped a bit away from the field, listening for Shaker or a hound. The hounds were casting back into the covert by a narrow creek bed. She’d turned to look back at Nola, Sybil, Guy, Ken, Ralph, and Xavier, off from the others, a small group of the younger set. Now she remembered seeing Nola, radiant from the run, at the center, the object of all male eyes, while Sybil cast her gaze down, then looked back into the Lorillard graveyard.
She remembered thinking to herself at the time that that tableau moment said it all.
CHAPTER 24
A cool jet stream of Canadian air dipped over Virginia in the middle of the night, bringing with it a breath of fall.
At five-thirty in the morning, heavy fog like gray cotton candy wrapped the earth. Sister rose and felt the chill, for she had forgotten to turn on the heat in the upstairs section before going to bed. She threw on her heavy robe, slipped on her sheepskin slippers, and clicked the thermostat to seventy degrees.
The house was divided into zones, each with a separate thermostat. The intention, to save money, never panned out and the need to check all four thermostats irritated Sister.
By the time she reached the kitchen she was wide awake—which could not be said for Golly. Nestled deep in the pillow, she still snored lightly. Both Raleigh and Rooster dutifully followed their master downstairs.
Sister put down kibble for “the boys,” as she called them, then ground coffee beans and soon had a pot percolating. She couldn’t see a thing from the kitchen window. The outdoor thermometer in the window read forty-nine degrees.
She poured coffee into a big mug, then hurried upstairs by the back stairway. She put on two pairs of socks, one thin, one heavier, jeans, and her work shoes with rust and yellow around the laces. Layers worked best in changing weather. She slipped on a thin undershirt, a T-shirt over that, and topped it off with an old navy pullover. Then she was down the stairs and out the back door with Raleigh and Rooster scampering to keep up.
The hounds would fuss if they heard her, so she gave the kennel a wide berth, moving slower than usual because of the fog. Blurry shapes would suddenly appear, then, as she neared, transform into the hay barn or an ornamental pear. She reached the farm road and headed without hesitation toward Hangman’s Ridge, as though drawn there.
Inky, returning to her den at the edge of the cornfield, smelled the approaching human and two dogs, then heard their footfalls on the dirt road. She shadowed them, curious, keeping downwind.
Raleigh wouldn’t chase her, but every now and then Rooster wanted to prove a harrier could hunt a fox as well as a foxhound. Sister would walk out with Rooster and let him hunt rabbits, making a big fuss over him. She’d call him back if he picked up fox scent, which was easy to tell since the fox covered more territory than the rabbit, but if the line was good and he was slow to obey she didn’t get angry at him. Can’t punish a hound for hunting.
Inky enjoyed being a few yards behind everyone. She could turn on a dime and give you a nickel’s change. Even if the wind shifted and Rooster got a whiff of her, she could literally spin and run right under his belly. Hounds were agile as far as dogs go, but the only creature as quick and nimble as the fox was the cat. As they both hunted the same game this made sense. They had developed the same strategies for killing mice, moles, rabbits, and the occasional lazy bird.
A soft whoosh alerted Inky to Athena’s presence. Another swoosh meant Bitsy. They passed low overhead.
Sister looked up but saw nothing through the fog. Rooster opened his mouth, but she swiftly put her hand around his muzzle, putting her finger to her own lips. All her pets knew the sign. Rooster said nothing.
The dampness of the fog made Sister wish she’d put on yet another layer. Rooster lifted his nose, then put it down on the farm road. Comet had passed that way, the dampness holding down scent. But he said nothing, keeping close to Sister.
They reached the base of Hangman’s Ridge in twenty minutes. Mimosa trees near the farm road would appear and disappear in the fog, their beautiful pink-gold blossoms adding color to the gray mist.
The climb to the top, not as steep on this side of the ridge, proved steep enough to make them breathe heavily.
A soft light in the eastern sky, gunmetal gray underlined with dove gray, announced the sun would rise in another thirty to thirty-five minutes, but Sister knew fog this thick would not lift for hours after that. Only when the sun had sufficiently warmed the thick blanket wrapping the meadows, ridges, and mountains would it evaporate, leaving slivers lingering just above the creeks and rivers, tongues of silver gray.
Once on the ridge, Sister paused to catch her breath. Inky ducked off the dirt road, slinking under a clutch of mountain laurel, slick with dew.
The mild breeze on the ridge tousled Sister’s hair. Ahead, the huge outline of the hanging tree took shape, its massive silhouette mute testimony to its centuries of life. What a pity such a magnificent oak had been used to kill.
Hanging, not a pleasant way to die, could at least be quick if the length of rope was correct and the drop proper. But those criminals executed here were strung up to dangle and choke to death, which could take four or five minutes. Occasionally the convict’s windpipe would be broken by the violence of the initial jerk and lift as the horse on which he sat was slapped out from underneath him. Death came with merciful swiftness then.
Lawrence Pollard, the first man ever to be hanged from the tree, had so enraged his enemies, they hauled him up without benefit of a horse in 1702. His executioners believed he had swindled them in land speculation— which he had. By all accounts a dark-haired, handsome man, a smooth talker, an elegant dresser, he seduced the few hardy families who had settled this far west, the Wild West at that time, into putting up money to purchase tens of thousands of acres in what is now Lewisburg, West Virginia.
He did buy thousands of acres in that area, but he also kept a portion of the money for dissolute living in Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies. Word of his profligacy filtered back to the Tidewater and even there leached out to the farthest borders of civilization, this particular county at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Through guile, the irate investors lured Lawrence back to his death.
The last man hanged in this spot was Gilliam Norris, a Confederate veteran, a brave and well-respected man who lost his mind, killing his mother, father, two sisters, and brother with his service revolver.
In between 1702 and 1875, eighteen men were hanged, all murderers with the exception of Lawrence.
Two shapes in the tree startled Sister until she drew closer and recognized Athena and Bitsy. Neither flew away as she approached them.
The sound of a moan stopped her in her tracks. Both Raleigh and Rooster swept their ears forward.
Inky, behind them, stepped out of the fog.
Sister saw her and said to Rooster, “Leave it.”
But Rooster paid no attention to Inky, as something by the trunk of the tree had his full attention.
“I’m here to find something. I don’t know what it is,” she said as if to reassure the animals, but mainly to calm her own fears.
When the swirling fog momentarily parted in front of her, she thought she saw the form of a man by the tree, disfigured, wearing silk breeches and silk stockings, his neck horribly twisted.