The Ballad of Frankie Silver - By Sharyn McCrumb Page 0,147

law, now that the territory is a state. One must also contend with old deeds from French jurisdiction, and also with Mexican law, which is based upon the Spanish system. It must be quite a challenge to an old fellow who has never practiced law outside the boundaries of North Carolina.”

I had no answer to this. Woodfin leaned back to watch me as he prolonged the silence, so that I should have ample time to reflect with him upon the absurdity of my statements. Why indeed should a man of nearly sixty leave his

farm and his law practice of twenty years to go to a remote village in Texas, removing his only son from a chance at a university education? If I had been an ordinary citizen upon the witness stand, I would have burst forth with the explanation simply to end the awkwardness of the encounter. But I, too, am an attorney. Perhaps I am not the seasoned trial lawyer that Woodfin is, but I hope I can hold my own in a discourse with my peers.

“Well, Mr. Wilson has gone off to seek a new life,” I said as heartily as I could manage.

“There is a saying I’ve heard in recent years,” said Woodfin thoughtfully. “Some men come to a time in their lives when they either go to hell or Texas.”

I managed a watery smile. “I’m sure we all wish Mr. Wilson luck in his bold new endeavor.”

Nicholas Woodfin nodded thoughtfully, for by now he had realized that as a gentleman I could not disclose Thomas Wilson’s reasons for leaving Morganton. “Wish him luck, indeed,” Woodfin echoed. “So you should, Mr. Gaither, for he will need all of it, and more, I think.”

I cast about for another subject to distract my colleague from further inquiries about the Wilsons. “Do you remember Jackson Stewart, the elder brother of Mrs. Silver?”

“I do,” said Woodfin. “He glowered at me from ten feet away throughout the trial. He had been in Kentucky with his father when the murder occurred, had he not? What became of him? Not hanged, too?”

I smiled. “Quite the reverse, I’m happy to say. You recall that there has been a new county that has been carved out of the western portion of Burke. Yancey County, it’s called. Jackson Stewart is running for the post of sheriff there.”

“I had not thought to hear that.”

“They say he stands a good chance of winning, too. He is prominent and well liked in the district. Odd that you should mention hanging, though, Woodfin, for I have heard that the other Stewart brother—the younger one who was arrested with his mother and sister— washanged as a horse thief in Kentucky. It may be idle talk, of course, but one of the Yancey constables swears that the whole Stewart family was cursed.”

Woodfin smiled at this superstitious extravagance. “Cursed? How so?”

“They have all died violent deaths, apparently. The father—Isaiah Stewart—was killed while felling a tree. Crushed. And a few years after that, Barbara Stewart, his widow, was out picking blackberries, and a rattlesnake bit her. She died a terrible death, I was told.”

“The poisoning of snakebite is slow and painful. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t prefer the hangman’s rope,” said Woodfin. “I suppose folks in the hills think that the hand of Providence has struck down the Stewarts for their part in the killing?”

“I suppose some of them do think that,” I said, “but I would not agree with them. Life is hard on the frontier. There are a good many ways to catch your death before you succumb to old age.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Silver have a child? Has it, too, felt the wrath of divine retribution?”

“I don’t believe so. The little girl would be twenty-one or thereabout today, as I recall. I know that she lived to grow up. About four years after her mother’s execution, the Stewarts appeared in court here in Morganton, petitioning for the right to custody of the child.”

I remembered the sad scene in the courtroom. The little girl was her mother in miniature, with a calico dress and flaxen hair spilling out from beneath a little poke bonnet. Her large, troubled eyes that stared at strangers without fear or favor. She clung to the hand of one of Charlie’s sisters, but she sat still and quiet through the little hearing, though I am sure that she understood none of it. Perhaps if she had understood, she would not have listened so calmly to the arguments concerning her fate.