No Good Deed 25

That hermit's cell remained small, despite a significant absence from it. I lifted the carpet bag onto the bunk. Removing all my clothes and the whiskey drummer's case, I ran my hands over all the cloth of the bag; inside and out. Turning the whole monstrosity outside to in, I reflected that the coarse lining was only marginally less objectionable than the busy pattern of the exterior. Having withdrawn my knife from the pocket of my frock coat, I ran the blade down the seams. My manual exploration of the bag had revealed nothing, but just wielding the knife brought its own comfort.

There was something hidden inside the bag, after all. Paper! Was ever anything of as little use to the world as paper? It was, however, paper of a most peculiar kind; preposterously thin, and its texture led one to believe that it was covered in a fine glaze. There were two sheets both of peculiar and distinct size. Their dimensions were reminiscent of those pertaining to some financial instrument rather than any size such as pinched post or Royal, whether cuarto or octavo of either. One sheet bore only a phrase or two in a familiar, but as yet un-confirmed hand:

“Found on Mudsill, January 1861: Facsimile.”

The second sheet of the strange paper appeared to be some kind of Government Bond, it was headed 'Confederate States of America' the date of issue was April 1st 1861. This was interesting indeed, not least because the date lay some weeks in the future. Really, I felt in need of an archivist, so many documents had I accumulated, thanks to the late Mr Northrup.

Fortified, if that were the word, by some of Northrup's samples, I laid out the papers and the journal-sized ledger on the cot. Briefly looking at the ledger, before deciding there was no sense to made of it, I looked once again at the hand-drawn map that had been hidden inside it. At first, I noted no more than earlier, a crude representation of the Mississippi, with initial letters marked alongside. Evidently the major towns on the river were annotated, for some reason. However, something I had missed before struck me. Underneath a spidery 'H', which I supposed to refer to Hannibal - although my geography regarding the river was hazy – in the most minuscule of glyphs, was written WS M's B. WS had surely to be Winona Shepherd, with whom I had been charged with making a rendezvous. M's B remained a facer, for a moment or so, until I glanced at the Warrant from the Governor of the State of Carolina. The owner of this and the exceedingly premature Bond were one and the same.

I chose not to waste time in attempting to fathom what these connections -or coincidences- meant; if indeed they meant anything. It seemed to me far more preferable instead to replace everything in the carpet bag, save the playing-card waistcoat - and then look for comfort in the blessed sleep of the less-than-innocent.