I was walking I knew not where when a thought came to me. I considered how much easier it would be simply to duel, how I had avoided doing so with Dorland, and how even Dorland, who had challenged me, seemed disinclined to duel. And then, at once, a question of no small significance occurred to me. If he was so disinclined to duel, why had Dorland challenged me?
Of course, there could be a thousand reasons. He may have believed his honor demanded it, and he may have been convinced I would not accept the challenge, but he did not know me very well. He only knew that I had served in the war, and what man, cowardly and so disinclined to duel, would risk to challenge a man he knew to be a soldier?
Suspicions gathered in my mind, and though I ought to have left him and his poor wife alone, I did not hesitate to approach his house and ring the bell. When his man answered, I said that I must speak to Mr. Dorland, and for the sake of decorum, I would do so outside his house rather than inside it. My intention here was of sparing his wife the discomfort of seeing me, particularly in her husband’s presence.
I hardly believed the man would answer my summons, but indeed he came to the door, and if rather reluctant to step out of it, he remained slightly behind his footman, who was a good head taller. He peered out at me, his fleshy face pale. “What is it, Saunders? Why do you trouble me at my own house?”
“For God’s sake step outside, Dorland. I have no intention of harming you, and what I have to say is for your ears alone. Our business cannot be the business of those belowstairs.”
“It is not a trick?” he asked.
“You have my word as a gentleman.”
“You are not a gentleman,” he said.
“Then you have my word as a scoundrel, which, I know, opens up a rather confusing paradox that I have neither the time nor inclination to disentangle. Now step outside and give me five minutes of your time, and I’ll not trouble you again.”
I believe it was my impatience that carried the day. Had I been more unctuous and less urgent, he might well have been too cautious to leave his lair. My unwillingness to use any art must have bespoke my sincerity. I would have to recollect that trick for the future, I decided.
He stepped cautiously down his stoop and stood facing me, a good three feet away, close enough to admit conversation, too far for me to make, as he supposed, any sudden moves. He must have confused me with Lavien, for whom three feet would be as nothing. For me, it only made conversation more trying.
“Dorland, why did you challenge me to a duel?” I demanded.
“How can you ask me that?” Much of the rage he had demonstrated in our previous encounters, and which I had mocked, was gone. Now he seemed only saddened.
“I do not ask why you believed you had cause. I ask you why you chose to challenge me. Was it your own notion?”
He swallowed and looked away, then back. “Of course.”
“Who put you up to it?” I asked, my voice gentle. “Who suggested that you challenge me?”
“Must someone have suggested it?” he asked, but he had, with several signs and gestures, already answered that question.
“You are wasting my time, Dorland, and trying my patience. Who suggested it?”
“Jack Pearson,” he admitted. “It was he who told me about you and my wife, and it was he who told me to challenge you. He said you would never accept, and then I would be free to take revenge as I saw fit.”
It is strange. I ought to have been outraged, but I’d already learned that day that Pearson had stolen Cynthia and murdered my best friend, so this news could offer me no new anger. If anything, I felt victorious, for I had pulled from the fabric of the universe this thread of truth, and I had yanked upon it. Life offers such small triumphs. We must rejoice where we can.
“I have only begun to suspect the depth of Pearson’s villainy in deceiving you, Dorland. He had his own reasons for wishing to be rid of me, so he told you horrible falsehoods about your wife to prompt you to attack me. Only think of it. A man willing to ruin another’s domestic happiness in order to commit a vicarious murder.”
Dorland now came closer. “One moment,” he said. “Do you mean to say that you and my wife-I mean, that-that you-”
“Oh, just say it, Dorland. Were she and I together? No, of course not. I have addressed her more than once, and she is lovely, but how could you ever doubt so good a lady as your Susan?”
“It’s Sarah,” he said softly, his mind elsewhere.
“What do I care about her name?” I asked. “You ought to pay more attention to her goodness and less to her preferring to be called one thing or another.” It is well that Dorland was not so good at detecting a lie as I was. I saw no reason why I should not offer the lady this small comfort. I had made her life uneasy. Perhaps I could, with little effort, restore it.
“Why did you not say so before?” he asked me.
“Because you annoyed me,” I told him. “You threatened violence, and then you performed violence. I saw no reason to put you at your ease, but I was wrong, for it harmed your wife, and she had done nothing to deserve it. I was foolish, and for that I am sorry.”
He now stepped even closer and gave me his hand. “I must thank you,” he said. “I wish you had told me sooner, but I cannot tell you the joy this news brings me now.”
We shook hands and Dorland rushed inside, no doubt to see his good lady and apologize in a thousand ways. I could only hope the woman was clever enough to hold her tongue and accept.
I turned to head back to my rooms to prepare to leave the coming morning on the express coach, which departed at 3 A.M. I now had a new dilemma to ponder on my voyage. Even before I had met Kyler Lavien, before I had troubled myself with William Duer, heard from Cynthia, or known of a plot brewing against the Bank of the United States-before all of this, Pearson had been plotting to kill me. It was time to discover why.
Joan Maycott
Summer 1791
Our little log cabin, despite the damage from the fire, fetched far more than I would have supposed. I was not surprised that Skye’s property, as prim and proper as he made it, brought in a fair amount, but by far the greatest wealth came from Dalton’s share-not his buildings, which were excellent, or his land improvements, which were significant, but his stills, which were, in the West, close in nature to a mint and, for practical purposes, a license to manufacture money. Certainly there were concerns about the new excise tax, but no one truly believed that the distant government in Philadelphia, particularly now that Tindall was gone, would be effective in collecting it or in otherwise hampering the production of Monongahela rye. To make certain, Brackenridge, at our behest, made it clear that whoever bought Dalton ’s land and stills would also buy his whiskey-making recipes.
I will not burden the reader with the details of our return to the East. The money we procured from this transaction did not make us rich, but it gave us what we would need for the scheme. Mr. Dalton spoke to five of his whiskey boys, the five he considered most trustworthy and intelligent, and given that they now had no means of earning their living, they were content to throw in their lot with us, particularly when we could offer them both money in hand now and the promise of more to come.
Thus it happened that we relocated to Philadelphia in the early summer of 1791, renting a small house in the unfashionable but neat Elfreth’s Alley. It was a narrow thing, with no room more than six feet in width, and it could have housed perhaps four comfortably, but we nine frontier folk made do. The men required a bit of abusing if I was to keep things neat. We could not have the neighbors gossiping about a woman living alone with eight men, so we put it about that Mr. Skye was my brother, and no more was said.