The Ballad of Tom Dooley

that Tom Dula was willing to run away with any girl at all, especially if it would end with him having a wife to support…”

There were murmurs of agreement all around at this point. Nobody could quite picture Tom Dula choosing to work for a living, and he never seemed overly fond of Laura-not enough to make the sacrifice of his freedom, anyhow. Nobody came out and said, “You don’t buy a cow when the milk is free,” but I’ll wager I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

“She said that they were going to run away to Tennessee.”

I bit back a smile. So Laura had told the nosey biddy that she was running off with Tom. That might buy the pair of them some time, because nobody would have cared if she eloped with Tom. Let them worry that trifling scandal to death while she made away with her nut brown boy. That’s what I would have done. Let Miz Scott think that, then.

A stout old widow woman, who was no fool, spoke up. “The Bates’ place is north of you, ain’t it, Miz Scott? Why, I reckon it would take that Laura Foster the rest of her life to reach Tennessee if she was a-riding north instead of west.”

There used to be a blacksmith’s forge at the Bates’ place, but it was long gone now, and the place had fallen to ruin and the yard was choked with weeds. The only reason that anybody would go there would be to meet somebody they didn’t want to be seen with.

Miz Scott pursed her lips. “I am only repeating what I was told. Maybe the two of them met somewhere, and then turned around and headed west from there. There’s more than one road that will get you over the mountain to Tennessee. But I recall that I did tell her that if it were me, I’d have been farther along on the road by that time of morning. She said she had started as soon as she could, and that they were meeting at the Bates’ place.” She kept nodding her head, like she was daring any of us to contradict her. Nobody wanted to argue with her, for she looked on the verge of a temper, and that would have broken up the gossip party. Somebody said they hoped that Laura made it to wherever she was going.

“But it seems strange, all the same,” one of the younger wives said thoughtfully. “If Tom came to her place at sun-up, like she said, why didn’t she just go off with him then? Why would she wait and meet him a couple of hours later at the Bates’ place?”

“And Tom Dula doesn’t have a horse. Were the two of them fixing to try to get to Tennessee on that one mare?”

“But she did not go off with Tom Dula,” the stout old widow reminded them, nodding hard to drive home her point. “Because Laura Foster may be gone, but he’s still here.”

Mrs. James Scott touched her arm to show she agreed with her. “I thought of that myself.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to just above a whisper. “Now I saw him on that Friday morning. I had finished breakfast by then, and I spied him walking up the road. I asked him did he want to come in, but he said he wanted to meet up with my brother.”

Washington Anderson, that would be. And I knew where Wash had been the night before: at the Meltons’ place. There was a whole crowd of us in that little cabin-but not Ann and not Tom, for she had gone to her mother’s, and he was off somewhere-his mother’s house, for all I know. But that Thursday night, Wash Anderson was with me at the Meltons’. And he still would have been there Friday morning, like as not, as much as we all had to drink the night before.

Everybody looked interested in the other Mrs. Scott’s news about Tom. She said, “My neighbor Hezekiah Kendall says he saw Tom on Friday morning, too, just before I did. Around eight o’clock. Mr. Kendall asked Tom if he had been ‘after the women,’ and Tom answered, ‘No. I have quit that.’ When he stopped at my place, I didn’t ask his business, and he didn’t tell me. But he was headed toward the Meltons’ place.”

They all looked at me then, so I said, “Well, he got there, all right. I was just bringing in the milk pail Friday morning when Tom showed up.”

They looked at one another then and got all quiet for a minute. Then they all started talking at once about something else.

***

Anyhow, a day or so later, I heard that Wilson Foster had got his mare back on Saturday evening, although it wasn’t on account of me, and I never did collect that quart of whiskey from him, which is all I cared about the matter. The day after Laura stole the mare, it just showed up back in the yard outside the barn, still bridled, but with the lead rein snapped in two, as if it had been tied to a tree branch, and broke the rein, pulling itself loose when being tied up had made it hungry and scared enough to break free. The mare may have wandered around for a while, but it wasn’t far enough from home to be lost, so after a couple of hours it went on back to German’s Hill where it belonged. When I heard that, I thought: Wilson Foster got his wish. He got his horse back, but not his daughter. And it looked as if I had got my wish, too.

***

I was down at Cowle’s store when I heard about that, a day or so afterward, and at the time I had made no effort to join in the conversation, but later on, back at the farm when I was alone with Ann, I had plenty to say about it. “Did you hear Wilson Foster has got his horse back?” I asked her, that evening, as I was making the chicken and dumplings for supper.

Ann nodded, but she wouldn’t look at me. She had been mighty quiet herself those past few days. She didn’t seem to care if she ate or not, and she had spent most of last Friday in bed. Now, Ann was bone lazy at the best of times, but that was unusual, even for her.

“Well, I reckon they’ll be sending out the searchers by tomorrow, then.”

“Searchers?” She froze. “Why would you say that?”

“Stands to reason, don’t it? Last week Laura ran away on her daddy’s mare, and now she has not been seen for days. Then the horse shows up with a broken lead rein, and there’s still no sign of its rider. Since the mare found its way home, people will figure that where it was tethered couldn’t have been very far from home. Seems to me like Wilson Foster ought to be hollering for men and hunting dogs to start combing the woods to see if they can find Laura. She can’t be far off, not now that she’s on foot. The horse proved that.” I said all this as calmly as I could, but I was watching Ann’s every move while I was saying it, and it was all I could do not to laugh. She looked scared to death and her hands were trembling.

Ann glanced at me, and then she looked toward the cabin door, as if she expected a search party to break in on us at any moment, but all was quiet. James Melton was outside somewhere, still tending to his chores, and we’d had no visitors all day. Still she spoke so softly I had to strain to hear. “They’ll not find her.”

I shook my head. “The dogs might.”

***

I was wrong about the searchers, though. They didn’t use dogs, so it took them a lot longer to find her than it ought to have. In fact the whole thing began to look like a nine days’ wonder that would die down in a few more weeks until people completely forgot that a girl had gone missing.

Not that I cared one whit about her, but if I could help it, people wouldn’t forget she was gone.

The week after Laura Foster disappeared, the month of June began, and every time folks got together they were still making guesses about what happened to her.

I couldn’t let on that I had a good idea about what had happened to Laura, and who she had been going to meet. I was saving all that. I was looking forward to watching Ann fall apart, waiting for the trap to be sprung. I planned to say as little as possible, and let the rumors take their course, unless people showed signs of losing interest in the story, and then I might chivvy them along a little to keep it going. I thought I would do more than my share of visiting in the days to come, just so I could listen to the tongues wagging.

It turns out that I needn’t have bothered, though. All it takes is for one person to keep worrying away at something, like a dog with a marrow bone, and then you can rest assured that sooner or later something will come