A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [194]
Regulator sentiment still ran high in the backcountry, even though the main leaders of the movement, such as Hermon Husband and James Hunter, had left the colony. In the aftermath of Alamance, most Regulators had grown more cautious of expressing themselves—but several Regulator families who lived near Brownsville had become vocal in their criticism of the Browns’ influence on local politics and business.
“Tige O’Brian was one of those?” I asked, feeling the buttered toast coalesce into a small, hard lump in my stomach. Jamie had told me what had happened to the O’Brians—and I’d seen Roger’s face when he’d come back.
Jamie nodded, not looking up from his pie.
“Enter Arvin Hodgepile,” he said, and took a ferocious bite. Hodgepile, having neatly escaped the constraints of the British army by pretending to die in the warehouse fire at Cross Creek, had set about making a living in various unsavory ways. And, water having a strong tendency to seek its own level, had ended up with a small gang of like-minded thugs.
This gang had begun simply enough, by robbing anyone they came across, holding up taverns, and the like. This sort of behavior tends to attract attention, though, and with various constables, sheriffs, Committees of Safety, and the like on their trail, the gang had retired from the piedmont where they began, and moved up into the mountains, where they could find isolated settlements and homesteads. They had also begun killing their victims, to avoid the nuisance of identification and pursuit.
“Or most of them,” Ian murmured. He regarded the half-eaten egg in his hand for a moment, then put it down.
In his career with the army in Cross Creek, Hodgepile had made various contacts with a number of river traders and coastal smugglers. Some dealt in furs, others in anything that would bring a profit.
“And it occurred to them,” Jamie said, drawing a deep breath, “that girls and women and young boys are more profitable than almost anything—save whisky, maybe.” The corner of his mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile.
“Our Mr. Brown insists he’d nothing to do wi’ this,” Ian added, a cynical note in his voice. “Nor had his brother or their committee.”
“But how did the Browns get involved with Hodgepile’s gang?” I asked. “And what did they do with the people they kidnapped?”
The answer to the first question was that it had been the happy outcome of a botched robbery.
“Ye recall Aaron Beardsley’s auld place, aye?”
“I do,” I said, wrinkling my nose in reflex at the memory of that wretched sty, then emitting a small cry and clapping both hands over my abused appendage.
Jamie glanced at me, and put another bit of bread on his toasting fork.
“Well, so,” he went on, ignoring my protest that I was full, “the Browns took it over, of course, when they adopted the wee lass. They cleaned it out, stocked it fresh, and went on using it as a trading post.”
The Cherokee and Catawba had been accustomed to come to the place—horrid as it was—when Aaron Beardsley had operated as an Indian trader, and had continued to do business with the new management—a very beneficial and profitable arrangement all round.
“Which is what Hodgepile saw,” Ian put in. The Hodgepile gang, with their usual straightforward methods of doing business, had walked in, shot the couple in charge, and begun systematically looting the place. The couple’s eleven-year-old daughter, who had fortunately been in the barn when the gang arrived, had slipped out, mounted a mule, and ridden hell-for-leather for Brownsville and help. By good fortune, she had encountered the Committee of Safety, returning from some errand, and brought them back in time to confront the robbers.
There then ensued what in later years would be called a Mexican standoff. The Browns