Tom Dula topped the list, of course, and then came Ann, but after that he listed Tom’s first cousins Granville and Ann Pauline Dula. I don’t know what they had to do with anything, for we didn’t have much truck with them, but I wondered if the fact that Miss Dula is named “Ann Pauline” had something to do with it, as that is Ann’s given name, too. Well, it is also my name, if it comes to that. There are a few too many “Ann Paulines” for a place as small as this, if you ask me.
Well, I’ll bet Granville Dula and his sister were mighty surprised to find themselves in custody and bound over for a hearing on a charge of murder. They were close in age to Tom, and their daddy was Tom’s uncle Bennett, on his father’s side. They had more land and social standing than Tom and his widowed mother, and they were probably mortified to be dragged into the troubles of their no-account cousin Tom.
The next day, Friday the 29th of June, the lawmen and the local busybodies commenced a hearing at Cowle’s store, and Mr. Pickens Carter heard evidence in the matter of Laura’s disappearance. It didn’t take him long to realize that Granville and Ann Dula had been scooped up by mistake, on account of their names, and he turned them loose in short order. They hurried out of there without a backward glance, looking both scared and horrified, as if they thought we all had cholera.
Next off, the justice of the peace let Ann Melton go, perhaps because she is small and beautiful, and men seem to think that women who look like angels act like them as well. They are usually wrong about that, but it never seems to teach them anything.
It looked bad for Tom Dula that he was the only accused person not present at the hearing. Mr. Pickens Carter asked a constable where he was, and, with a good bit of throat clearing and foot shuffling, the lawman allowed as how Tom could not be found, and that he was believed to have lit out for Tennessee.
The justice of the peace was uncommonly annoyed by that information, and he remarked that things certainly did look black for Tom, given the facts of the matter. With a look of sour displeasure on his face, Mr. Carter made out a warrant for Tom’s arrest on suspicion of murder. He ordered copies of that warrant to be sent to the towns up the mountain, even over into Tennessee, where everybody figured Tom had gone.
The quickest way to leave Wilkes County from Reedy Branch is to follow the old buffalo trace that goes alongside of Elk Creek westward and up the mountain into Watauga County. If Tom followed the trail until it met up with the wagon road to Zionville, he could cross over the Tennessee line without delay. There were a lot of murmurs of place-names and speculation about where he might have run off to, and who he might know in Watauga County that he could hole up with.
The meeting was adjourned then, and everybody who didn’t know any better went away thinking that Tom Dula had murdered Laura Foster; the trial would be delayed until they caught him, but the verdict was already in. Nobody seemed interested in trying to figure out why he would have bothered to do such a thing. As far as they were concerned, his absence was proof of his guilt. I wasn’t about to tell them any different, neither.
“It won’t do no good to send warrants after him,” said Ann, when we got away from there. “He’ll be in Arkansas before long, or at least out west in Kentucky.”
He wasn’t, though. If he had any sense he would have been, but I think he was bound to Ann by some invisible thread-his heart strings, maybe-and he could not get far from her to save his life.
PAULINE FOSTER
Mid-July 1866
If it hadn’t been for Grayson, I’d a been in Tennessee.
Tom’s disappearance was a nine days’ wonder in Happy Valley. People hardly talked about anything else, and it pretty much settled the matter of his guilt as far as the settlement was concerned. Ann was wretched, listening to the talk about Tom, and worrying over what had become of him. I thought that if she ate any less she would waste away to a shadow long before Christmas, whether he came back for her or not, and if it would put an end to her moping and complaining, I’d be glad to see it happen.
As it was, though, he didn’t stay gone until Christmas. Just past mid-July, he was brought back hog-tied by two local lawmen. We were able to piece together where he went and what he did from the tales told by Jack Adkins and Ben Ferguson, the two busybody deputies that Pickens Carter sent to search for Tom and bring him back to Wilkes County. Once they had fetched him back, and seen him safely locked in the stout brick jail in Wilkesboro, the two of them high-tailed it back to Elkville to regale folks with the story of the capture of that dangerous fugitive, Tom Dula. Oh, they were full of themselves about their exploits, but the truth is that Tom’s capture had nothing to do with them. They just went and collected him as if he had been a parcel.
I heard the tale the day after Adkins and Ferguson got back. They were ensconced on the porch of Cowle’s store, surrounded by curiosity seekers, eager to hear about their apprehending the bloodthirsty criminal. It was as if the neighbors had that soon forgotten that Tom Dula was a lazy, amiable young man they’d known all his life. Now suddenly they would believe he was a monster. I slipped in amongst the onlookers, to hear the story.
“He went right where we figured he’d go,” Jack Adkins said, pointing westward toward the blue haze of mountains. “He took that Elk Creek Road to Zionville, and we reckon he laid out somewhere in Watauga County for a couple of days.”
“Where’d he stay?” somebody in the crowd called out.
Ben Ferguson shook his head. “We never did find that out, and he wouldn’t say. We’re only going by when he showed up over the line in Tennessee.”
“That was about two weeks ago,” said Jack Adkins, taking up the tale again. “He turned up, near as dammit to barefoot, and calling himself by the name of Hall, on the farm of Colonel James Grayson in the community of Trade.”
I put my hand over my mouth to cover my smile, for I was remembering what Tom had said about a colonel being a captain with money. When I thought to listen again, Ben Ferguson was telling how this Colonel Grayson had hired Tom as a field hand, and said he’d worked long enough to buy himself some new boots with his wages.
“We reckoned he’d go up the mountain to Watauga, and over the line into Tennessee, so we just rode up through Deep Gap, and started asking around up there if anybody had seen the fugitive.”
Jack Adkins took up the tale. “It took us a couple of days to work our way up to Trade, but when we finally did, we talked to Colonel Grayson, who told us right off that he had engaged a new farmhand that sounded like the man we were looking for.”
“He must have seen us coming,” said Ben. “For when the colonel went to look for him, he was gone. So he set off with us, tracking Tom Dula along the road that leads to Johnson City. He didn’t get that far, though. We ran him to earth in Pandora. He was on foot, so we were able to overtake him without too much trouble. We caught him soaking his feet in a creek there, and before he could get up, Colonel Grayson hefted a rock and ordered him to surrender.”
“What did he do then?” asked one of the onlookers in an awestruck whisper.
“Well, he give up,” said Jack, shrugging. “He wasn’t armed, y’see, but the colonel had a big old.32 Deermore on his hip, so I reckon it was not so much the rock as the pistol that made him decide to surrender. Besides it was three of us against one of him, so he let us take him, and he came along peaceable. I’ll give him that.”
“He came along peaceable right then,” said Jack. “But not the whole way back he didn’t.”