Chapter 9: Unbeholden

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_ferry

     "Yo Mr. Ferryman," Benny calls as he follows Lottie and leads Ajax off the cable ferry that had just pulled them across a placid stretch of the New River. "Can a fellow hire a delivery?"

"Bill Ingles is the name," replies the old man tying off a heavy hauling rope in the early dusk of late October. "That would depend on the job, young fellow."

"Taking this here cask to William Preston," Benny answers with uncharacteristic directness as he hands Ingles some silver coins. It had been a long day of riding the fifty miles from his cabin in the Tazewell hills.

"Just so happens that my son Thomas is coming through in a few days on the way to Smithfield," Ingles assents, barely hiding his amusement at the cavalcade of black and tan coonhound, white quarter horse, and brownsmith moonshiner.

     Benjamin Reed had decided to make the one-hundred-fifty mile trek in three days to get to the arranged mating of a dumb supper in Albemarle because the journey also allowed him to make good on what he was beginning to think of as a war debt. Colonel Preston had mentioned the one missing barrel during his pick up after the battle of King's Mountain, and his Smithfield Plantation was just north of the New River crossing at Ingles Ferry, which in turn was just north of the mouth of what would become known as Reed's Creek. 

     In colonial times the farms and mills of the lower Shenandoah Valley followed the waterways that replenished the bottomland, and the  roads followed the commerce that sprang up along those rivers and creeks. The trail from Tazewell to Smithfield became wider with each eastward mile, but Benny could have slept and the horse's memory still would have taken them back to it's former home in what is now Blacksburg, Virginia, even with a pony keg of whiskey strapped onto the tandem saddle. 

 

    "I'll give him two pieces-of-eight for taking it to Smithfield and a third on my way back if he hands it directly to Colonel Preston," Benny offers the ferryman as the downstream riffles gurgle in the background of their conversation.

"Who shall Thomas say this delivery is from?" Ingles asks by way of accepting the deal as he helps slide the little barrel off the horse.

"Just say it's owed him and leave it at that," Benny calls back as the trio trod on into the chilling evening under a nearly full hunter's moon in search of a suitable campsite for horse, dog, and man.

Bill Ingles lets out a chuckle when he hears old Benny Reed break into a fading song: 

     Dog save all dressed in green, 

     long live our noble queen, 

     dog save the queen....

    

                                                                          - The End -