The Whiskey Rebel

I expected Andrew to offer some kind of rebuke. In my mind I could see him gently scolding the braves, explaining that if they were to visit a white man’s house they must behave in accordance with the white man’s customs.

He merely sat with his hands in his lap. He blinked but otherwise remained motionless.

I stared at him. Andrew was no coward, but even so he was only one man, and here were three braves. What could he do? What could I expect him to do? I did not know, but oh, how I wanted him to do something!

The braves rose now, all three standing across the table from us. One took from his belt a knife. “We take your wife, we let you live,” he said.

“You are not taking my wife anywhere.” Andrew remained in his seat, looking like a clerk before a supplicant. He blinked again and again, as though trying to get something out of his eye, but he did not lift a hand to rub it.

“Not take away,” the brave corrected. “Take. You watch, we take.”

A second brave clarified his meaning, taking the index finger of his left hand and moving in and out of the circle of finger and thumb on his right. The gesture was so foolish, so much like that of a puerile apprentice, that I repressed the mad desire to laugh.

“We take your wife and you both live,” said the brave with the knife. “You fight us, you both die. This the deal.”

“I see,” said my husband, still the calm of a man who considered whether or not to buy a mule. “It is a rather unusual deal, is it not?”

“It the deal,” the Indian insisted.

“Does this deal come from Colonel Tindall?”

The braves exchanged looks, and then the one with the knife nodded. “From Tindall.”

“Very well,” said my husband.

There was then the loud report-louder for being so unexpected-of a pistol shot from nearby, followed almost immediately by a thud upon the table and then by another pistol shot. The air at once was singed with the bitter scent of powder, and our little cabin was full of stinging smoke. I looked around in terror, not knowing whence the shots had come, but the brave with the knife sank to his knees, his stomach darkening with blood. He clutched the knife so tightly, the skin of his hand turned white, but as he did so, he fell forward onto his face.

The second shot had struck another brave in the knee. He collapsed upon the floor and clutched his wound with his hand, but he made not a noise. The third brave bolted for the door-to get his gun, I presumed. Andrew let go of the pistols, and I now realized why he had been sitting with his hands under the table. I remembered Dalton ’s warning, and I could only think that Andrew had taken it to heart but had said nothing lest he upset me. He sprang to his feet, and I could see that his hands were stained with powder. His pants had been blackened by the shot, and it looked as though the fabric had caught fire and been put out. Andrew, however, remained utterly calm-focused and determined, but not hurried. Taking the hunting rifle mounted upon the wall above the fireplace, he turned, aimed, and fired.

Once more the scent of powder burst into the cabin, and smoke choked the air. Only after the ball struck the brave’s back did we see that the man had not been ru

Andrew reloaded the gun, grinding down the ball with a kind of mad calmness, and then handed it to me. “Keep it trained on him. Shoot him if he makes any move toward you.” He then fetched a piece of hemp rope and began to bind the brave’s arms behind his back.

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Tie him up while we fetch help. We need to speak to Dalton and the others.”

“You know they will kill him,” I said. I was not protesting or suggesting a course of action. I merely made a statement of fact.

“Probably. And then we go deal with Tindall.”

I should prefer to believe that it was the Indians who were the savages, while the white men bore the standard for civilization. It was not true. When we reached Dalton and told him our tale, he immediately sent word to others in the community. It was not long before a group of two score men, women, and children arrived at our cabin. They took possession of the brave. The bleeding had abated somewhat, but his leg remained atop a bloody patch of floor I would later have to cover with ashes and sawdust. I was, at least, spared witnessing what came next. The Indian was taken out to the woods to be beaten, tortured, and, in the end, scalped. His body was left to rot.

The Indians, however, were not the main source of consternation. Indians had ever been a problem, ever would be. Though I dreaded their violence, I felt sympathy for people who wanted only to protect their ancient rights and lands. These dead braves, however, had struck a bad bargain with a man who could not be their friend. They had agreed to do a terrible thing, for what I did not know. Maybe they thought it would gain them freedom or privacy or peace, but violence could never yield such things.

T he next day the bulk of the community met in the large cabin that served as the church and sat upon rough-hewn log benches that wobbled upon an earth floor. There were sixty or more packed inside, men, women, and children, faces dark with filth and anger. The air smelled of bear-fat candle and smoke and spat tobacco juice, and the faces around us were hard and set and angry. In truth, I thought they would be angry with us, as though we had visited this upon ourselves and, in doing so, visited it upon them. It wasn’t the case. We had not been living in the settlement two years, and yet these people took this assault upon us as an outrage. Some wanted to take up arms and attack Tindall’s house at Empire Hill, to set the whole city on fire. Some wanted to send envoys to treat with him that we might find some sort of peace.

There had been much shouting, but it was Mr. Dalton who brought the meeting to order. He rose, and his mere presence, great and wide and bald-headed, quieted the agitated gathering.

“This attack upon the Maycotts is an attack on all of us, make no mistake,” he said. “And ’tis a mighty low thing to get redskins to do what you won’t do yourself.”

The crowd, which hated Indians above almost every other thing, heartily agreed.

“But while we each have reason to take it to heart,” said Dalton, “I have more than most, and so does Skye, here, for this is about our whiskey. You all know Tindall has his own stills, and he sees he stands to lose money if we keep on with what we’re doing. For his loss is your profit. You have more to trade than anyone else in these parts. You all get richer. Tindall don’t like that.”

“That’s right,” shouted Mortimer Lyle, who worked a plot of land down by the creek. He was short but squat and muscular and was missing his left eye. “That’s it, all right. And that’s why we’ve got to go burn him out. Burn him out, is what I say.”

This got a general cheer of approbation, and though Dalton tried to quiet the crowd, he could do no good. Then Andrew stood and waved the men down, and slowly they calmed. My gentle Andrew soothed this group of border rioters. It was something to behold. Of course, he was known by now as a reasonable man, generous with his carpentry tools and eager to lend a hand to aid a neighbor. That he was the creator of the best whiskey in the four counties only added to his reputation. Yet that was nothing compared to what had just happened. He was new, a soft man from the East, but he had dispatched three murderous braves on his own, and that meant the floor was his if he wished it.