Publisher: Wire Gate Press
Page Length: 292 Pages
Genre: Historical/Literary Fiction
Synopsis
A young entrepreneur from a youthful Philadelphia, chances upon a French aristocrat and his family living on the edge of the frontier. Born to an unwed mother and raised by a disapproving and judgmental grandfather, he is drawn to the close-knit family.
As part of his courtship of one of the patriarch’s daughters, he builds a château for her, setting in motion a sequence of events he could not have anticipated.
Excerpt
Excerpt from Chateau Laux, starting on Chapter TEN, Page 81 . . .
Then, the pounding of horse’s hooves caught his attention. He could see them below, through the bare trunks of winter hardwoods, two dark horses making long strides, a man hunched over each, urging it onward. The one man had something across the saddle in front of him, something thick and heavy, like a rolled carpet or a large duffel. The men kicked their heels and the horses lengthened their strides and Jean’s interest flared. It was no way to ride a horse, he thought, not across an open field covered with snow, with rocks and holes and broken tree branches possibly hidden from view. The men drove their horses like desperados. They fled from the direction of the river stone farmhouse, crossed a meadow, and angled up through the trees, and Jean saw that what had appeared to be a duffel was the rump of a human being, the hem of a dress jerking and flapping, a white, shoeless foot bouncing with the horse’s strides.
Something seemed wildly irregular. Why would a man be carrying someone across the front of a saddle, someone with bare legs and no shoe in callous disregard of the bitter cold? Something needed to be done, but what? If the men were making a getaway, what were they getting away from? Where were they headed and who was to stop them?
The men headed toward a narrow pass in the ridge above, and Jean knew that beyond this point lay the wildlands, where the farmers hunted and sometimes found Indian sign. Heeling his horse, Jean felt the power of the beast as it surged forward, not recklessly but with purpose. By heading straight up through the trees, he was able to get to the pass before them, and he quickly dismounted, hiding his horse in a clump of hemlocks and positioning himself at a rock outcropping.
The woods seemed to mushroom with silence around him. From below came the sound of a hoof against rock, the crack of a branch, the grunt of a laboring horse. Jean could no longer see the men but knew they would lurch into sight soon, and his thoughts flew and fluttered like trapped birds banging against a windowpane. His musket lay on a rock before him, but he had never so much as pointed it at another person before. When he thought about joining the marines, he had been thinking of adventure and glory, and not the other thing, at the meanest level, the pulling of a trigger against a fellow human being.
Suddenly he was out of options. The men appeared, the head of one and then the shoulders, the head of the other. The man at the rear used his reins to lash his horse and it bent its head and muscled forward, climbing toward the pass. Jean lay down against a rock and sighted along the barrel of his musket. He cocked his flint back and his hand shook so hard he was afraid the gun would discharge before he could aim it. And still he didn’t know what to do. Surely, the men were up to no good. He had heard the stories of women and children who had been kidnapped to be traded as slaves or far worse, but what was he to do about it? What would his father do if he were here right now and had to act?
His finger touched the trigger and the gun kicked back into his shoulder. A fog of smoke belched out in front of him and one of the horses reared. It was the second horse, the one carrying the girl, and a man shouted, cursed. The lead horse bolted left and took off back down through the woods, angling away, the rider whipping it with the tail ends of the reins. The other horse bucked again, and the rider clung to the saddle, then flung the girl from her position across his lap. She hit the ground and flopped to her side, where she lay without moving, and the rider threw his weight forward, righting the horse and kicking it in the flanks. The horse bolted toward the pass and the man rode hard and out of sight in a matter of seconds.
The girl lay in the snow and Jean reloaded his musket, shivering with both cold and the violent shakes of adrenaline, the ramrod missing the borehole of the gun again and again before he was able to drive down the new charge. The magnitude of what he had just done rolled in on him and he crouched behind a rock and gasped for breath, paralyzed with fright, waiting for the men to come back. He watched and waited until his fear gradually subsided. The girl had not moved and he thought his bullet may have struck her and that she was dead.
Resolutely, he forced himself to approach her, and he squared his shoulders, preparing for the worst. Her eyes were closed. Her forehead and cheeks were blue, and he placed his hand to her mouth, where he felt a faint breath. Leaning his gun against a tree, he crouched down and picked her up, carrying her to the clump of hemlocks where his horse waited. The girl’s eyes opened and she stared up at him, expressionless.
“Are you all right?” he said.
She didn’t respond but stared at him vacantly.
“We gotta get out of here,” he said. “Those men could come back. If they knew it was only me, then we’d both be in trouble. If I put you on the horse, can you hold on?”
Slowly, she roused. One of her hands tightened against his arm, and he sat her on the horse and held her steady in the saddle.
“Who were they?” he asked, his heart hammering. He wanted desperately to hear that the men were indeed the outlaws he had assumed them to be, and that firing his weapon had been the right course of action.
She didn’t say anything but reached out and grasped the horse’s mane.
“You’re freezing,” Jean said, shifting his focus to what mattered most in the moment.
Taking off his coat, he draped it across her shoulders. He wrapped his muffler around her bare foot, tying the ends of the scarf together. The cold bit into him hard and he started to move. Holding the horse by the bridle, he led it down to where his musket leaned against the tree. Briefly, he scanned the woods for any sign of the men before continuing his descent.
“I heard a sound,” the girl said, dully.
Jean stopped the horse and waited to make sure she was all right.
“Cold . . .” she said.
He steadied her and then led the horse a few more steps, looking back over his shoulder, pausing, leading the horse on and then pausing again. The girl swayed. Hunching in the saddle, she held on to the horse’s mane and pressed with her knees, and Jean led the animal on the easiest downhill slope he could find.
They finally emerged from the woods onto the white expanse of meadow. Twilight already purpled the air and, cold as it was, the temperature dropped even more. Jean didn’t know if the girl came from the river stone farmhouse, but that was the nearest shelter and they both would die of the cold if trapped outside overnight. As they approached the house, the door flew open and a woman charged out, waving a broom above her head as if it were a weapon. But when she saw their faces, she threw the broom aside and ran toward them, arms outstretched, fingers wide. Grabbing hold of the girl, she pulled and Jean helped the girl get down from the horse. The woman clutched her and sobbed.
“My baby, my baby!”
The girl had trouble standing, and Jean picked her up and carried her into the house. The woman wouldn’t let go of the girl, and he had to drag them both along. Inside, the heat from the fireplace enveloped them. There was a wooden table and chairs, a bearskin rug. Cooking pots hung from the mantle.
Jean carried the girl into a second room, where he found two beds. He placed her on the first one. She still wore his coat. The woman yanked at a comforter, pulling it up over the girl, and the girl closed her eyes and started to cry.
“There, there,” the woman said, kissing the girl’s eyes and forehead.
The girl clutched at the woman’s shoulders, her breasts.
“You’re all right now. It’s all right. You’re home. We’re safe.”
Jean backed out of the bedroom. His knees gave way and he sank down into a kitchen chair. His hands and feet were still numb from the cold, and the heat of the fireplace made them ache. But he was safe, and it began to dawn on him that something extraordinary had happened. He, Jean, had saved the life of another human being, and long forgotten was the unfortunate visit to the Souder farm and any second-guessing he might have had about a military career. At the same time, however, he felt more and more aware that anything could have gone wrong. He could have been too far away to attempt a rescue. The shot fired could have hit a horse, leaving Jean to scuffle with the rider on the ground. Or the shot could have killed the girl, as he had earlier feared. Had the kidnappers realized he was alone, they could have circled back around. In retrospect, he and the girl were both lucky to be alive.
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Meet the Author
Chateau Laux is his first novel. He lives in the Eastern Sierra with his wife, Lynn.
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