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SWAINS LOCK
Edward A. Stabler
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2013 Edward A. Stabler. All Rights Reserved.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
SWAINS LOCK is a work of fiction and its characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of these characters to actual persons living or dead is unintended and coincidental.
*****
For Martha, who made this book possible, and for those
who have walked the towpath or put their feet in the river.
*****
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Blood Pendant
PART ONE
Chapter 1 – Figure Eights
Chapter 2 – Discovery
Chapter 3 – Whites Ferry
Chapter 4 – Candles
Chapter 5 – Sightseeing
Chapter 6 – Books
Chapter 7 – Newspapers
Chapter 8 – Spanish Ballroom
Chapter 9 – Snowshoeing
Chapter 10 – High-Water Marks
Chapter 11 – White Mules
Chapter 12 – Falling
Chapter 13 – Fever
PART TWO
Chapter 14 – Locking Through
Chapter 15 – Paying for Ten
Chapter 16 – The Big Fish
Chapter 17 – Shadowmen
Chapter 18 – Cordwood
Chapter 19 – Silver and Gold
Chapter 20 – Sunset
Chapter 21 – Unwinding by Starlight
Chapter 22 – Swains Lock
Chapter 23 – Angling
Chapter 24 – Pe
Chapter 25 – Grave Dance
Chapter 26 – Paper Spear
PART THREE
Chapter 27 – Rising
Chapter 28 – The Level Trade
Chapter 29 – Edwards Ferry
Chapter 30 – Emmerts Lockhouse
Chapter 31 – Archives
Chapter 32 – One Red Leaf
Chapter 33 – Reeds
Chapter 34 – Sharpsburg
Chapter 35 – Pas de Deux
Chapter 36 – Joined Sycamores
Chapter 37 – Full Circle
Chapter 38 – Revisiting
Prologue
Blood Pendant
Tuesday, May 3, 1831
The two men sat on sloping rocks shaded by a Bear Island hackberry tree. Sweat trickled down their backs and foreheads and their reddened hands were streaked with dirt. Five hours of work on a spring morning had raised a thigh-high stone wall that bisected a swampy drainage. The feeder was operating now, watering the C&O Canal down from Seneca, and the sixty-foot depth of Widewater across the towpath was slowly filling. When their half-built wall was finished, it would prevent this grafted vein of the canal from draining out across the island toward the Potomac River.
Glancing through slender trees toward the towpath, the man with curly hair noticed the girl when she was still forty paces away. He caught the other man’s attention with a low whistle. Screened by sunlit trunks, they could watch her approach without being seen. She wore a tan skirt that might have been buckskin and a long-sleeved blouse. Her hands and dark hair swung a gentle rhythm as she glided forward with feline grace. A grin widened on the face of the man with curly hair as he watched the girl.
“She moves like an animal, eh Richard?” He gathered a clot of saliva in his mouth and spat it out tersely between his feet. “Bet she fucks like one too.”
“Just one way to find out,” Richard said, stroking his red-gold mustache. He rocked forward to crouch in the shade on the balls of his feet.
“No sign of poppa today,” the man with curly hair whispered, gri
“Probably sleeping off his whiskey back at the quarry,” Richard whispered back. “It’s lonely out here on the island today, Joh
Joh
Richard lowered her to horizontal, hand still across her mouth, and the gesture jerked open her top button, displacing the silk cord of a pendant necklace that lay against her dust-colored skin. She writhed and twisted as the men carried her back into the Bear Island woods. Past their half-built stone wall, a fish-shaped pond occupied the lap of the drainage. They carried the girl along a slope of brown grass toward the tail of the pond.
“I think we’re beyond earshot,” Richard said over his shoulder.
“Aye. We ain’t seen no one pass in hours anyway.”
Together the men dropped their arms to the ground. The girl tried to roll onto her stomach, screaming as her mouth came free, but Richard quickly muzzled her with one hand and pi
“Well now, Joh
“Here I come, darlin’,” he said, pawing at her underwear and smiling, “like a big old barge sliding into a tight little lock.” With his hands still pressed to the girl's mouth and elbow, Richard glanced down and saw that her eyes had dried. She was reaching inside the neck of her blouse and pulling something with her free hand.
“Hey, Joh
“God damn it!” he roared. “Fucking half-breed whore!” Joh
In one motion he grabbed a fistful of hair and stood up, yanking her to her feet. He pressed his wrapped fist to her scalp and dipped to sweep her legs off the ground. When she tried to scream, he pulled her hair until the tears resurfaced and her voice trailed off. The pond was a half-dozen paces away and he strode quickly toward it. Joh