I wonder if any of those searchers wanted to catch the prisoner because they thought she deserved to die, or if they were simply acting on impulse, like hounds who will chase anything that runs, simply because it runs. It was a game of hide-and-seek, with the trackers pitting their skills against the wiles of the elusive prey. I am sure that there was a great deal of shouting and boasting and drinking done by the posse, and that in the end it all seemed such a great sport to them that they forgot the deadly purpose of their chase.
She was not taken easily. Day after day went by with no word from the searchers, and news of the escape spread far beyond the borders of Burke County. Colonel Newland said that even the Raleigh newspaper carried an article about the missing prisoner, and we knew that other lawmen from the neighboring counties had joined in the search. Still, it had been a good many days since her escape, and it seemed likely that she was gone for good.
“Seven days,” Miss Mary announced at dinner one night. “Surely she is out of reach by now. The Tennessee border is four days’ ride at most, is it not?”
The squire gave his daughter a reproving glare. Such things are not talked of before white linen and crystal. “Are you referring to the escaped murderess, my dear?”
“Of course she is, Father,” said Elizabeth. “We can talk of nothing else! We are quite beside ourselves with worry.”
“I don’t think you need worry,” her father replied. “I do not believe that Mrs. Silver will break in to Belvidere and take an ax to us in our beds.”
The Erwin women all stared at him for a moment’s consternation before they burst into laughter. It is the squire’s way of joking to pretend to misunderstand his wife and children, and then to allow himself to be instructed in the true significance of their remarks.
“Oh, really, Daddy!” said Delia, who is the baby of the family, nearly twenty, and a great pet of her father. “We do not think Mrs. Silver presents any danger to anyone. We are allso in hopes that she will get away!”
“Really?” said the squire in mock amazement. “You wish her to escape justice? Delia, my dear, has anyone informed your Dr. Hardy of your feelings regarding husband killing?”
Delia squealed and blushed prettily at the mention of her most ardent admirer, and the others began to laugh and tease her, and so the subject was forgotten. Later, however, as we were leaving the table, Miss Mary turned to me and murmured, “I hope that Delia will be more fortunate in her choice of a husband than Mrs. Silver was.”
“There is no doubt of that,” I said. “And as for Mrs. Silver, at least it has ended well. She has made her escape, and we can only hope that she deserved this second chance at life that she has been given. Even now she is probably safe in Tennessee, making plans to go west and picking the wild blackberries she spoke of so fondly.”
“I hope that you are right,” said Miss Mary. “But I shall continue to pray for her deliverance. Indeed, I will not rest easy about it until the hunt is abandoned and the last of the searchers has come back from the mountains.”
“Do you not think that the governor would pardon her if she returns?”
My sister-in-law hesitated. “Very likely he would,” she said. “But I think it is best not to put too much faith in men-or governments.”
I heard the returning search party before I saw them. I had walked down to Newland’s to see if the stagecoach had arrived yet, and just as I was crossing the street to have a word with the colonel himself, a mighty whoop and a couple of piercing yells echoed down the street, accompanied by the drumming of hooves. A frail old man on a nearby porch jumped up and reached for his pistol before he remembered himself. The Indians had been gone for a generation or more. No one any younger than the old man would have even considered the possibility of a raid, for such Indians as there were nowadays lived farther to the west, or miles to the south in the Cherokee towns like Chota. These screaming warriors were savages of a different kind, and an instant after I heard their whooping I knew what it meant: the search party had come back, successful in their quest.
I clambered onto the safety of Newland’s porch, in case the revelers decided to take a victory gallop along the main street of Morganton. Colonel Newland was emerging from his office just as I reached my vantage point by his doorway.
“What is all this commotion?” he demanded, peering down the street in the direction of the noisemaking.
“I am afraid it is the posse,” I told him.
He glanced at me as if he wanted to dispute my theory, but curiosity got the better of both of us, and we jettisoned the argument in favor of leaning across the railings of the stage-office porch, straining for a glimpse of the returning riders. A moment later the procession came into view. Half a dozen mud-caked riders on sweat-soaked horses rounded the bend in the road. The three leaders were waving their hats and shouting to passersby, glorying in the impromptu parade. Three more solemn horsemen followed a short distance behind, each holding the reins of his own mount, each leading a second horse on a short rope. I did not immediately recognize any of the search-party members, but I knew at once the identity of the three ragged and weary persons tied to the saddles of the horses in tow.
Isaiah Stewart sat slumped forward, as if his weariness had overcome even his sorrow and his anger. His clothing was torn and muddy, and there were flecks of blood in his grizzled beard. He had not been taken easily, I thought. Beside him, Jackson Stewart sat up, defiantly glaring at the onlookers as though daring them to jeer at his plight. He is a great bear of a man, six feet in height and not lacking in girth, and all the welts and bruises upon him I imagined had been repaid with interest upon the persons of his captors. He wore iron shackles about his wrists, and over them a rope tying him to the saddle. Although Frankie Silver would have been regarded as the main prisoner, it was this accessory to her escape that the posse most feared. Mrs. Silver herself rode with eyes downcast, as oblivious to the stares of the crowd as she had been at her trial. Her hands were bound with rope, but her feet dangled at the horse’s side, not tied together beneath the belly of her mount, as were those of her accomplices. She was wearing men’s clothing: buckskin breeches and a homespun shirt beneath a man’s coat, and her blond hair tumbled out from beneath a wide-brimmed leather hat, although it must have been bound up when the searchers came upon them. She was small and sturdy enough to pass for a young boy. I thought the clothes must have belonged to Blackston Stewart, and I wondered if he had been left at home to tend the homestead, or if he had got away into the forest when the lawmen came.
An old man in the crowd called out: “How did ye take her, boys?”
One of the rear guard reined in his bay mare, and leaned back in the saddle with a grin of lazy triumph.Whatever happened, I thought,you had least to do with it. “Well,” he said, “it weren’t an easy hunt. It’s perilous country out there, and you could turn around twice and be lost, but we tracked them well enough, though the going was slow when they left the trail and took to the woods. We might not have caught them at all, but for the high water.”
Someone laughed and called out, “Come hell or high water, was it?”
“Some of both, I reckon,” said the rider. “We reckoned on them heading west into Buncombe County and then making for the Tennessee line, but that is not what they done. They was in Rutherford County when we caught up to them, trying to ford the river, which was so swollen from the spring rains that their horses could not manage the crossing.”