Treason's River by Edwin Thomas

Author:Edwin Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld

17

WE BEACHED OUR BOATS ON A THIN ISLAND AT THE JUNCTION OF THE two rivers, where the blue waters of the Cumberland met the grey-brown torrent of the Ohio. For a few hundred yards the two currents flowed side by side, the divide obvious on the surface of the water. Then, abruptly, the Cumberland disappeared.

There was no grand estate on this island – no sign of habitation at all, save an abandoned fisherman’s shack built on exposed tree roots by the water’s edge – but it was not entirely deserted. Two flatboats had been drawn up on the sandy embankment, and a freshly trampled path led into the interior. We followed it, pushing past low-hanging branches and foliage until it opened into a broad clearing in the middle of the island. A dozen men slouched around its margins, whittling at pieces of wood or carving their initials on the tree-trunks, but I barely looked at them. Directly opposite where the path emerged, seated on a grey mare which he must have brought ashore for that express purpose, was Colonel Burr.

He had been a shadowy presence for so long in my thoughts, my fears and even my dreams that the reality was, inevitably, an anticlimax. Far from being the hulking warrior of my imagination, he was in fact about five and a half feet small with a delicate complexion and dainty hands. Instead of bestriding his horse he perched atop it, and in place of a colonel’s uniform he was dressed, almost to the point of fastidiousness, in a neatly tailored black suit. He held his head with a classical poise: a broad nose, a proud chin, and long sideburns, with a touch of severity in the high-domed forehead rising above. The receding, greying hair was pulled straight back behind his collar, dropping almost to the shoulder. He watched as our men entered the clearing one by one and assembled in a rough circle. As the last man filed in, and it became apparent there would be no more, I saw him bend down and whisper something to Tyler.

Tyler blushed, and murmured something I did not catch.

‘No matter.’ The colonel straightened in the saddle and turned to face his army. ‘Gentlemen, I welcome you to our expedition. Many of you, of course, know me personally, or by sight; others among you may know me better by reputation. I hope you do not hold that against me.’

An appreciative chuckle went around the assembly.

‘For you others, I am Colonel Aaron Burr, the notorious outlaw –wanted for duelling in New York, for murder in New Jersey, and now for treason in Ohio. I was also, until last year, Vice-President of the United States. God willing, I will be known by better titles before this war is done.’

If the rest of the men found this statement as absurd as I did, they did not show it. Instead, they thumped the butts of their muskets on the frozen ground and murmured approval.

Burr spread his arms wide. ‘I know that you have risked hardship, reputation, even violence to stand here.

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